With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created around the world every day, scientific and scholarly publishers need to be picky about the kind of data they collect.
Hum’s SVP of Business Development, John Challice, recently joined Christopher Kenneally on CCC's Velocity of Content Podcast to share what types of data publishers should focus on and how to use it.
See the sneak preview below, or check out the full episode here.
What Types of Data Are Most Important for Publishers?
John starts with the suggestion that zero-party data is where to start. Zero-party data is the data people give you about themselves, such as their name, institution, and interests. However, the real value comes when publishers move beyond zero-party data to first-party data, which is what publishers observe by being a careful listener of what people do on their digital platforms.
Challice advises publishers to concentrate their attention on behavioral data. This is because publishers are interested in what people actually do, not just what they say they do.
Behavioral data includes things like what topics people are interested in, what formats they prefer, and what events they attend. By collecting this data, publishers can serve customers more effectively by providing them with relevant information and suggestions at points in their natural workflow.
How Can Publishers Access This Data?
The goal of a customer data platform (CDP) is to create a golden record, which is a 360-degree view of a customer that includes everything a publisher knows about a reader all in one place.
CDPs bring all customer data together, liberating it from the data silos where it tends to be scattered throughout an organization.
“They allow you to – as a publisher, for example – build a very nuanced segment of people who have visited one of your digital properties in the last 60 days, which is a behavioral attribute; who live in China, which is a demographic attribute; who are interested in thoracic surgery, which is another behavioral attribute or a topical affinity; and who have a title of associate professor or higher,” John explains.
“All of that can be done in a CDP instantly, and that resulting segment can be pushed out into your marketing system, for example, allowing you to email those people, perhaps send them a special newsletter or information about an upcoming webinar, a special issue, or author recruitment.”
Just getting started with data?
Check out the full Velocity of Content podcast episode, or grab a copy of Hum’s complete guide to data for scholarly publishers. This free whitepaper walks through the foundations of data that should or shouldn’t be collected, strategies to maintain data privacy, and the strengths and limitations of tech solutions available today.