Case Study
McClatchy Shares Experience Integrating Pushly Platform Across Newsrooms
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Overview

McClatchy operates in 30 markets across fourteen states, with an average weekday circulation of 1.6 million, and a Sunday circulation of 2.4 million. The publisher wanted to broaden their appeal to both loyal and new readers to keep them coming back to their sites. That’s when they decided to launch web push notifications in June of 2019. McClatchy West Region Growth Editor, Jennifer Robillard, helped to lead the integration effort. 

“We were doing email and mobile alerts but knew the ways in which people are reading news and receiving notifications continues to change,” said Robillard. “We saw push notifications as an opportunity to reach more people with our content.”

Implementation & Outcomes

On average, the McClatchy audience growth teams already logged in to six platforms each day to run their programs. The idea of bringing yet another one into the mix could have been a burden, but the ease-of-use of the Pushly platform and the intuitiveness of its user interface shortened the learning curve and made it possible for McClatchy to smoothly onboard and launch push notifications. The publisher’s goal was to go live, region by region, on a weekly basis. After eight weeks, they were fully up and running with push notifications across 30 news properties.

McClatchy started by testing the Pushly platform in their Modesto Bee newsroom for breaking news alerts, initially sending notifications to all subscribers as they watched for performance indicators like clicks and subscriptions. With encouraging results, the test quickly expanded beyond breaking news to include segmented alerts containing content based on user engagement. The onboarding process was simple enough that the Charlotte Observer newsroom was also included in the three-week testing phase. Within the first few days, the teams were actively hands-on in operating the platform, building segments, custom action button creation and sending notifications. 

“Just the pure send of a notification is easy, so bringing a wide range of people into that process has been great,” said Robillard.

Part of the testing phase included training growth and audience producers and editors for the newsrooms that included regular meetings to share “touch-and-learn” experiences. Pushly helped lead the initial training that evolved into a formalized rollout including peer-to-peer training and best practice sharing in weekly meetings.  

In July 2020, the Modesto Bee saw five percent CTRs on breaking news notifications to their entire audience. When leveraging Pushly’s Segmentation to deploy targeted pushes based on user interest, their CTR jumped to 12 percent the following month.

By the Numbers
40M+
Push notification clicks (page views) since implementing Pushly
41%
Increase in CTR when using segmentation vs all-subscriber sends
6%+
Subscription rate

2.2
Average page views per visit
2
Notification impressions per day
67%
Of audience is mobile

McClatchy started by testing the Pushly platform in their Modesto Bee newsroom for breaking news alerts, initially sending notifications to all subscribers as they watched for performance indicators like clicks and subscriptions. With encouraging results, the test quickly expanded beyond breaking news to include segmented alerts containing content based on user engagement. The onboarding process was simple enough that the Charlotte Observer newsroom was also included in the three-week testing phase. Within the first few days, the teams were actively hands-on in operating the platform, building segments, custom action button creation and sending notifications. 

“Just the pure send of a notification is easy, so bringing a wide range of people into that process has been great,” said Robillard.

Part of the testing phase included training growth and audience producers and editors for the newsrooms that included regular meetings to share “touch-and-learn” experiences. Pushly helped lead the initial training that evolved into a formalized rollout including peer-to-peer training and best practice sharing in weekly meetings.  

In July 2020, the Modesto Bee saw five percent CTRs on breaking news notifications to their entire audience. When leveraging Pushly’s Segmentation to deploy targeted pushes based on user interest, their CTR jumped to 12 percent the following month.

Experimentation with Smart Segmentation
modesto bee

The worldwide coronavirus pandemic and subsequent breaking news coverage provided a unique opportunity for McClatchy to further leverage notifications, including testing and learning audience segmentation based on user engagement with breaking news alerts. What started with sending breaking news alerts to all push subscribers, quickly dovetailed into segment building based on criteria such as readers who clicked on economic stimulus stories related to the pandemic. For Robillard, push offers “a more targeted way to bring people back down the chain of a story.”

Starting with breaking news alerts provided McClatchy a diving board into smart segmentation that now includes alerts based on reader interests, such as where they clicked or browsed on the site, and custom action button creation to conduct reader surveys or announce live events.

The quick reader response and actions are not only measurable but remain consistent with web push notifications.

“I wasn’t sure when there would be a plateau point with Pushly. It could be the newsworthiness of coronavirus or just the channel itself as to how people want to receive their alerts, but we continue to grow in subscribers,” said Robillard.

Continued Usage Results in Long-Term Success

Maximizing ROI from Push

 

What has worked for McClatchy is to have a cross-newsroom user like Robillard, who logs into the Pushly platform each day to review clicks, CTRs and also opt-outs, applying the analytic data to learn what worked and didn’t for the past day.

 

The McClatchy audience and growth teams maximize their use of the platform with daily communication through Slack sharing best practices.The teams discuss what’s worked, what didn’t and ideas for improvement. To be effective, these teams maintain management of all push notification sends to ensure markets don’t receive the same alert twice. Newsroom editors have the ability to use the platform themselves to send breaking news in a timely manner.

 

Since integrating web push notifications in June 2019, the publisher has seen over 40 million notification clicks.

Key Takeaways


Dedicate a Single Resource to Start

With on-demand account support and a truly user-friendly UI, Pushly makes it simple for a single user to get familiar with the platform, enabling them to onboard additional users quickly.


Start with All Subscriber Send to Learn

Whether it’s breaking news alerts or a new product announcement, publishers can take a leap into push by sending a blanket notification to all subscribers and learn from the results. Residual notification volume can then be deployed to segmented audiences based on multiple engagement factors.


Don’t Shy Away from Experimentation 

The Pushly dashboard and smart segmentation options make it easy for publishers to run A/B tests to get familiar with audience preferences and engagement. Machine learning capabilities in the platform help lay the path for scalable notification segmentation.


Lean on Pushly to Ramp Up

A dedicated push expert is assigned to every Pushly partner account and available via a direct line and email to reach whenever needed for onboarding and training. This includes unlimited, thorough training webinars for users in need at no additional cost.