Dow Jones’ Sherry Weiss on marketing at the speed of a newsroom

Dow Jones CMO Sherry Weiss reveals the marketing strategy behind growing subscription businesses for publications like The Wall Street Journal.    Episode Transcript Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.   Damian Fowler (00:00): I'm Damian Fowler. Ilyse Liffreing (00:01): And I'm Ilyse Liffreing Damian Fowler (00:02): And welcome to this edition of The Current Podcast. Ilyse Liffreing (00:09): This week we're delighted to talk with Sherry Weiss, the CMO of Dow Jones. Damian Fowler (00:14): And Sherry's responsible for growing Dow Jones' subscription business across the publisher's. Numerous business titles, which include the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, and Investors Business Daily, Ilyse Liffreing (00:26): But that's not all. Sherry also heads up the brand and enterprise go-to-market strategy for Dow Jones Research and Newswire services like Tiba Damian Fowler (00:35): In an era where publishers are facing many challenges to their business models. From the pullback of third party cookies to the advance of ai, Sherry gets into how the publishers answering back by building a subscription strategy. Ilyse Liffreing (00:48): We start off by talking about the Wall Street Journal's latest campaign. Sherry Weiss (00:56): So it's your business. It's not only our new campaign, but our new brand platform, which we launched in June of last year. A little bit about the history of how we got into this new platform. So our previous platform was Trust Your Decisions and I joined the organization about two and a half years ago. One of the first things that the team and I did at that point in time is really dive deeply into understanding our current and then our future growth audience needs. And when we were going through that research, one of the things that came out was the idea around trust and how that's table stakes (01:33): And what our audience are saying that's a given and kind of don't tell us to trust you, we will determine that. And so we realized that there was this need to speak a little bit differently to our future audiences and also to crack the code on what Wall Street Journal is. So Wall Street Journal is a storied brand, it's well known, but oftentimes we were seeing with our growth audiences that people did not think the journal applied to them. And in all of our customer research, what we were beginning to piece together is the folks that read the journal and folks that we believe are our editorial content applies to. They have a lot of similarities underlying them. They're all ambitious, they want to be knowledgeable, they're quite intellectual, but they may be in different stages of their career. And so part of what we needed to do with this brand platform was help bridge the gap is to explain to our future audiences why the journalist for them. (02:31): And the other thing that's interesting about this campaign is that it's the first time in quite some time that we truly leaned into the journalism, our actual core product. And in that campaign we brought out specific articles into the actual campaign and balance those articles between things that you would expect the journal to write about and things that you would not expect us to write about. And a really good example is that we had an article around folks that were becoming lifelong renters and those were decisions that they were making. And so one of our headlines leaned into that. Another one was around make hotdog economics your business when you talk about food and inflation. And that was showing up in a hot dog truck. And the great thing there is it killed two burns with one stone because we were able to go loud with an awareness campaign, but it also enabled us a way to drive back to sampling. And in all of our campaigns we had QR codes, it actually drove back to the original article and that was quite successful. Damian Fowler (03:38): That's really fascinating. One of the things before we get into what you learned from this campaign, how did you identify where those potentially net new audiences readers were coming from? You say you have this core group of people who are interested in business, but then you have people who are kind of adjacent to it but also interested in business. I'm just curious, how did you think about that and how did you sort of build that into your strategy? Sherry Weiss (04:06): Sure. So everything we do is data-based and customer reader first. So as part of this re-looking at our platform, we did a deep audience study and within that audience study we went out obviously across the market around news readers who are willing to pay and really started having deep conversations, both qualitative as well as quantitative research into what people are looking for and also finding common threads around attitudes and life point of views. And what we found was we have a really core group of readers tried and true folks that you would expect over index more into investing and working on Wall Street and more of your traditional business folks, but business expands so much more than that. And what we were finding is that there were a deep growth area where there are people who are outside of what we would say are our traditional professions, marketing, consulting, government actually that have, they are interested in the type of content that we write, they just may not be aware that we're writing it. And again, as I mentioned, we're also looking at our audiences that it's not so much around your profession or where you live, but the attitudes in which you hold in common, right? So your desire to be well-informed, your ambition to get ahead in whatever way you want to get ahead, they all have that in common. And so that's really how we started crafting the growth audiences. And then obviously within that with the research we gleaned a lot of information on where they're engaging and that's where we would go out to find in marketing. Interesting. Ilyse Liffreing (05:51): Now you said the first phase of the campaign started in June and I remember going to the Wall Street Journal house in Canon, seeing that all over the place there, what other areas did the campaign come to life in that aspect besides maybe the articles? Sherry Weiss (06:09): Sure. It's interesting because again, all of everything really in the campaign, everything that we put forth had an article that was underlying it. But the cool thing about it is that you could do what you would call traditional marketing. So display on social out of home, we did a Penn Station takeover, but you could also, we were able to leverage this campaign to make it more experiential as well. So as you mentioned, we had the Wall Street Journal, cafe A can. If anybody listening was in there, you probably saw there were things like our salt and pepper shakers and on there had QR codes that had, I can't remember the article that we raised there, but it drove back to an article that had something to do with salt and pepper on the menu. Everything had a article that was associated to it. And so there was an article that we were featuring Make Sleep, divorce Your Business, and we were able to put that above a space that was a mattress store, make EV economics your business, and we would take out space in charging stations so you could take the content that we write about, which is so embedded in every day, build it into the context in which a potential reader is engaging and that actually cracks the code, right? (07:24): It's your business. It's so much more than stock trading or what's happening in banking these days. Ilyse Liffreing (07:31): Yeah, it's everywhere. Sherry Weiss (07:32): Yeah, exactly. Damian Fowler (07:33): And you're sort of changing perception Sherry Weiss (07:35): Of Damian Fowler (07:35): The paper. Sherry Weiss (07:36): Yes, definitely. Damian Fowler (07:37): And now obviously the Wall Street Journal is one of several publications that you manage. I guess it's maybe the vanguard of the Dow Jones Business publications, but you have many other prestige publications like Barron's Investors Business Daily, which is probably more niche for people actually on the front lines of business. When you think about the whole portfolio, are there crossover audiences or are they distinct audiences? Sherry Weiss (08:04): I mean, the short answer is yes and yes. So the nice thing is, as you had mentioned, we have a four premier consumer publications, wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, IBD, all of them in one way, shape or form is journalism with a business lens. But each one provides a different take on an issue or a topic and serves a different purpose. And you mentioned IBD, right? IBD is really focused on helping people make decisions on trading in growth stocks. And it's not just about information but tools that investors can use. And so we believe that there are, again, taking an audience first approach, there are audiences that fit squarely into each one of those publications but may not overlap. But we also believe that there are audiences that would find value across all of our publications. And interestingly enough, we had done some testing into this over the last two years, really more so from a marketing offer. (09:10): What happens if you bring somebody on with an introductory subscription offer to a variety of our publications? And we found that number one, people were opting into it at really high take rates. We also found that once they were on this proposition, people were reading actively across our publications were very engaged and increased engagement over standalone and retain better. And so we've now made this into a true proposition WSJ Plus, and this is just the beginning, but basically we target very specific audiences who are investors who are hungry for knowledge from all different angles, and WSJ Plus is a platform that enables them to do that. Damian Fowler (09:56): What was the kind of goal there? In a way, Sherry Weiss (09:58): The main goal is to provide additional value and deep in relationships with our subscribers and frankly our future subscribers. But we know across our ecosystem that we have news and information. And then if you think about Dow Jones overall and news data information and analysis to help people, whether it be you as a person outside the office or in a professional capacity to make decisions. And so the idea around the plus offering is how do you open that up so that your readers are able to find additional ways to find value with you Ilyse Liffreing (10:36): When you have so many publications and you are trying to grow a business, that first party data that you get from subscribers is very important. How is the Wall Street Journal and other publications under Dell Jones, how are you guys using that first party data to perhaps reach new subscribers and then I guess carry on that same messaging across publications? Sherry Weiss (11:08): Sure. Prior to joining Dow Jones about two and a half years ago, I come out of consumer financial services most of my time in the credit card industry. And for anybody who has worked in credit cards or financial services knows that everything that you do, all of your strategies are seeped in deep, deep data payment companies know a lot about you. And so one of the first things that I did when I came in was really to take a look at how we can start supercharging our strategy to not make it a holistic strategy actually or a monolithic strategy, but really start building out personalized ways of engaging with our prospects and our readers. First from a segment perspective, but eventually we want to get to a way of engaging via a of one what worked in media a few years ago is not going to be the secret sauce that drives growth for the future. And so leaning into unlocking our data and analytics is important. Over the last two years, we've built out an internal analytics team really focused on building out predictive models to help drive our strategies forward. And that obviously is all built off of our first party data. A really interesting one that is in beta right now when you talk about this is more around engaging and retaining our customer base is being able to predict customer behavior based on market fluctuations (12:34): And really being able to take not only our first party data but indices and market research sets and pull together into models to say, okay, what flags are there four weeks out from a market shift that could help us determine whether or not we need to think about our retention offers more aggressively or whether we should be leaning into paid media a little bit more to start acquiring customers on certain products that perhaps are more sensitive to market shifts. Ilyse Liffreing (13:06): That's so fascinating. So basically if the market is down, say like today if the market is down, you can predict that you'll have more readers that day. Sherry Weiss (13:20): Well, it could be one of a few things, right? In some respects, and it's interesting because how you apply that model across each one of our products, and as I mentioned it's not just publications but there's tools as well. How you tweak that model to help you make decisions is going to be different based on how someone uses each one of your products. So in some cases, if you have a product that's more geared towards trading and you're seeing swings, let's say the market is swinging upwards, you really want to lean in during that period of time to start acquiring customers because there's an uptick in interest. Or to your point, if you are seeing volatility in the market and they're coming to the journal or they're coming to market watch to understand that that also is a time to really start thinking about is your engagement strategy different? Are you willing to shift again from an acquisition perspective, pull forward media that you would've been spending later in the year? Things like that secret. Ilyse Liffreing (14:16): How are you guys able to predict that though four weeks in Advance? Sherry Weiss (14:19): That secret secret? That's the secret sauce. Okay. Secret sauce, that's the secret sauce you don't have to tell us, Damian Fowler (14:25): But it's fair to say that the marketing campaigns are much faster now and more (14:30): Iterative based on current events Sherry Weiss (14:33): Very much. And I think that is the other area that we've focused on When I first came in, if you are in marketing in a news organization and you cannot respond at the speed of news, then you are not appropriately supporting your newsrooms. And when we first came in, we did an end-to-end assessment of how quickly we would be able to get creative into market based on breaking news. And it was days and we're now at a place where it's hours and in some case less than an hour. So being able to react that quickly, and it's not just about creative development, but making sure you have your audience targeting in place, you're able to turn things on. It obviously was a mix of people, process and tooling. So yes, we are able to react very quickly. Damian Fowler (15:20): That brings us to a question we might call a bigger picture question, but so in terms of the marketing channels that enable you to react to these conditions, where do you see value? Where do you look? Sherry Weiss (15:34): Well, let's put it this way. We're looking daily and constantly evaluating where we're putting investment in and where we're showing up. And it's also very product specific. So there's certain products that are quite niche that you're leaning into, really niche influencer strategy for instance. And then there's other that you want to go broad. So obviously traditional channels, paid search, paid social, that all still is very important for us. Organic traffic is still a quite substantial part of our conversion strategy. And so how you show up organically in the ecosystem, if you think about on social media and other outlets, really important. The brand campaign is actually quite important because what we're really trying to do is the referral ecosystem evolves and it perhaps is, well, it's not perhaps is being disrupted. What makes somebody wake up in the morning and want to type in Wall Street journal.com for instance. That's where the brand campaign is really important and why we're leaning into brand marketing more so than we ever have before. Ilyse Liffreing (16:39): Now at the same time, publishers are facing multiple challenges to their business models, what's new there, but the pullback of third party cookies to the advance of ai. What has been the most helpful way to stay true to the business during this time of constant change? Sherry Weiss (16:57): What just popped into my mind is the quote, my dad always to this day always says, but always told us when we were kids. And it's this idea around adversity breeds opportunity. And so you can think about adversity or changing landscape or changing business models and you can be fearful about it and you can try to push back or you can lean into it. And I think what we're doing is we're leaning into it. The journal as a business has historically leaned into it. So interesting fact. We were the first ones to put up a paywall many moons ago and that was a time of disruption and we're going into a time of disruption now. The first thing is while you're thinking through, alright, what new channels do we want to go into? What brings people to us directly? How do we start building relationships with people in new and different ways? (17:51): You also have to lean into and feel really clear about, but who are you and not change that? And so the focus on, we have a storied history about delivering quality journalism through the lens of business that is what we're leaning into. And then trying to find our growth audiences where they are is where we need to crack the code. And what worked before is not going to work in the future. So test and learn is huge. And I know that sounds like a buzzword, but as I mentioned, we, it's not only about predictive analytics that we've introduced, but being okay with rapid testing and figuring out what's working and what's not and then switching quickly to either scale what's working or to stop what's not and everything needs to be measured. Ilyse Liffreing (18:39): We've noted and written about recently how certain social media channels have been inconsistent with promoting news, changing their own strategy with that. Is this something that you have to constantly think about and stay ahead of? Sherry Weiss (18:57): We can't sit back and rely on refers that traditionally sent traffic our ways. It's not just social media. A lot of places that were traditional referrals channels are really, their business models are looking to keep people on platform and social media. It will continue and continues to play a really important role both not only from a paid perspective but from a organic and amplification perspective. That's where our current and future audiences are engaging. And I think what we need to think about is cracking the code in two ways from an owned and operated perspective. How do we get people to come to us directly, but then also in these off platform channels, how do we show up differently? We've also made a lot of inroads into organic content on TikTok and I think the next place that we have to think about is we're engaging with our future audiences in those areas. How do we then think about new and different monetization models in order to capitalize on that? Ilyse Liffreing (20:01): What are you obsessed with figuring out right now? Sherry Weiss (20:06): The one thing, and it's going to sound cliche but it is on everybody's mind, is how to start capitalizing on the advent of gen ai. And AI has been around for a long time. We are using a machine learning at Dow Jones most. I talked about predictive modeling earlier, but really the next step on this is how do we start applying generative ai? And when I talk about obsessed with trying to crack the code, it's twofold. How do we leverage this technology to build more value added consumer facing propositions, but also how do we leverage it internally? How do we leverage to start helping us drive our marketing at scale? For instance, how do we leverage it to really start enhancing our predictive models? And so it's something top of mind, it's something that I'm actively learning about. It's something I want my team to really deeply engage in and it's here to stay. So cracking the code on that is important. Damian Fowler (21:10): Is marketing a science or an art? Sherry Weiss (21:13): Both marketing is both an art and a science. And if you miss each side of it, you miss the secret sauce of it. You can lean too far in each direction. Obviously I would say that I'm more of a science first marketer. That's where I lean first. But if you miss the human element, you can go way far into data and you miss the human element, the way you connect with people, your marketing is not going to resonate, it's not going to land. And it's interesting because I'm not going to be able to state the exact fact, but there was something that I saw at a speaking event the other day where it was saying, when you think about your testing agenda, you can actually make more progress in your creative testing than in your pricing. And that was an interesting thing because that says something about the art of marketing. How do you connect with your audience? And so to that point, although I just said that I tend to be more of a science marketer, most of my decisions are how I figure out how to engage with audiences is everything is based on what the customer is saying first. It's an outside in versus what we are assuming we should be saying to our end users. Damian Fowler (22:27): What would you do if you had an unlimited marketing budget? Sherry Weiss (22:32): Oh my goodness. All right, let me get the list out. It's like Santa came a hundred, a hundred cafes (22:39): A hundred. Well, no, interestingly enough, I guess that's where I'm going to lean into if I had an unlimited marketing budget. When you're trying to determine where to place your next dollar and you're talking about the mix of art and science, for better or for worse, you lean towards the science. And so your next dollar is always going to be you have to make the trade off of, am I going to place my next dollar in something that I know will return? Why? Or am I going to place my next dollar into something that's really unique, different, may not be measurable, but is breakthrough? And if I had an unlimited marketing budget, there would be Wall Street Journal cafes all over the place. Really being able to lean into really interesting different types of experiential events at scale could be really fun. Ilyse Liffreing (23:30): That was a great conversation with Sherry. Damien, what were some of your takeaways? Damian Fowler (23:34): Yeah, I love hearing from people who are marketing publications probably because I come from a background of journalism and it's always fascinating to hear, talk about how to build and find new readers, which is basically the big question for publications everywhere. When you've got a brand like the Wall Street Journal though, which is really a premium newspaper, probably the Vanguard newspaper in the United States along with the New York Times. It's interesting to hear Sherry talk about how she's trying to find those readers that might not be obvious beyond the business community and how she's using marketing to broaden that reach along with the tagline, which is it's your business. Business is everybody's business. And I think we increasingly realize that and it's smart of her to build a marketing campaign around that concept. Ilyse Liffreing (24:24): No, I know what you mean Damien. And what really interested me too is, and I wish she would've revealed her secret sauce here, but it's fascinating how they're able to predict their audience four weeks ahead of time and to be so on the cutting edge with news. And as she spoke about they had to reinvent the wheel a little bit and how they can cover certain news events with their team, being able to predict those insights of how their audience is going to react so quickly ahead of time is so powerful. Damian Fowler (25:01): I think that was really a great point. And the fact that marketing moves so much faster now based on what's happening. And especially for a publication like The Journal, which is built around market fluctuations and obviously has a huge political and business readership. So it's really important for them to be able to react to what's happening. And that was a big takeaway for me, talking about the speed at which now marketing moves, which is not built on six month or annual campaigns, but much more rapidly iterating as it were, which is that word we all use in the marketplace. Ilyse Liffreing (25:38): No, that's very true and that's what I'm going to think about the next time I go to Wall Street Journal Cafe as well. Damian Fowler (25:47): That's it for this edition of The Current Podcast, and I'm Damian, and we'll see you next time.