How to make money with audience data

Audience data is powerful. Publishers with audience data are the ones that thrive.

Audience data helps with monetization, retention, content, and growth.

Let’s dive into how B2B media companies make money with audience data.

Case studies

Industry Dive

I’ve never seen a company that uses audience data better than Industry Dive.

They are masters at using it to monetize their audiences. Nobody does it better.

And that paid off: Sean Griffey sold Industry Dive for $525 million.

That’s largely because they had really figured out monetization (using their audience data), making $110 million in annual revenue.

Mostly metrics

When CJ Gustafson of Mostly metrics got audience data, he doubled his ad prices.

And due to the data, advertisers were happy to pay up.

There is so much power in audience data.

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What is audience data?

In B2B media, you want to have data on 1) what each individual subscriber does for work and 2) who they are.

The most important fields are:

• Name
• Job title
• Company name

From those, you can derive other fields, such as:

• Seniority level
• Department
• Industry
• Revenue

You want to have this data on as many individual subscribers as possible.

Ad: If you don’t have this data yet, check out Megahit. CJ Gustafson and many others use Megahit to obtain audience data and monetize it.

Here is what a subscriber record could look like:

Monetization

The most important use case for audience data is monetization.

It is more important than all other use cases combined.

Closing advertising deals

Imagine you’re an advertiser. You want to reach CFOs. You have the choice between two newsletters. Which one would you rather work with?

1. Newsletter 1: “We make finance content. We are convinced there must be many CFOs in the audience, but we have no data to back it up.”
2. Newsletter 2: “We have detailed data on our audience. 56% work in finance. 22% are CFOs. You are guaranteed to reach your ICP here.”

Which would you rather work with? Which would you pay more?

Of course, it’s the newsletter where you know that you’ll reach your ICP.

Once CJ Gustafson could prove that he had the audience that advertisers wanted, advertisers paid twice as much. More advertisers wanted to work with him. His revenue went up.

Even if you think you’re selling just fine right now, once you have audience data, you’ll sell more and at higher prices.

Read more about using audience data to close ad deals.

Finding advertisers

Your subscribers are your best advertisers.

• They know your content, your audience, and why both are valuable.
• They know how to pitch to your audience.
• They see better results.
• They are happier with their results.

As a result, they are easier to sell to. And they renew more often.

SOFX, a defense media company, has made over $50,000 from using their subscriber list for prospecting and reaching out to subscribers who would be good advertisers.

I’ve written a guide on how to find and reach out to advertisers. It’s a strong use case for audience data.

Targeting dedicated emails

Advertisers are willing to pay a lot of money for targeted sponsored emails.

They’ll give you thousands of dollars to send a special promotional email only to their ICP, e.g., healthcare CEOs.

You use your audience data to find those CEOs and target the email.

This is a huge income stream for B2B media companies.

I’ll write more about it in the future. Sign up below to receive that article.

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Group subscriptions

If you sell paid subscriptions, you can use audience data to sell group subscriptions.

Many media businesses, such as A Media Operator and Extra Points, make thousands of dollars every year from group subscriptions.

Instead of selling to people individually, you sell to companies. Those companies buy subscriptions for multiple employees at once.

For your sales efforts, reach out to executives who are passionate readers. Your audience data helps you find them. Read more about selling group subscriptions.

Sponsored events

B2B media companies often make 5 figures in profit from small sponsored dinners.

A key challenge is finding the right attendees (who sponsors will pay so much for).

You can use your audience data to find readers who live nearby and match your ICP.

Learn more in the article about sponsored events.

Recruiting

Some media companies offer recruiting services on the side.

Knowing who your audience members are helps you find clients and applicants.

Check out the article on recruiting for details.

Selling products or services

Do you sell other products or services?

Use your audience data to find prospects who already know and trust you.

Then reach out to them (similar to how you’d reach out to advertisers).

Retention

As a company, you want to make money long term.

You have some way to bring subscribers into your ecosystem.

Then you need to retain them. You need to keep them active and engaged.

You can only monetize them for as long as they stay subscribed.

The way to retain readers is through great content. If you have great content, they’ll keep reading. If the quality drops or the content becomes irrelevant, they’ll churn.

You want to make sure you have a product worth reading.

Audience data can help with that.

Making the right content

You want to make relevant content for your audience. Look at your audience data to know who is reading.

Let’s say you write a newsletter about the automotive industry. Your audience data tells you that your audience is:

• 10% CEOs
• 25% Marketing
• 20% Sales
• 15% Engineering
• 30% Other

You want to make sure your content is relevant to all of these groups.

Know who is reading. Then make the right content for them.

If you thought your audience was all engineers and now you discover it isn’t, maybe dial back the engineering content and make content around other topics, too.

Also take a look at who’s churning. If you see that CEOs churn at higher rates than others, make your content more relevant to their jobs.

More thoughts on this in the article on monetizing underserved audience segments.

Sending different content to different people

This can be a strategy to boost engagement and thus retention.

The idea is to send more relevant content to each subscriber.

I’ve been working with a newsletter to help them send different content to different audience segments. More experienced people get different content than less experienced people. Thus, the content is more relevant to each subscriber.

I hope I’ll be able to share more about this in an Audience Doctor article soon.

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Finding editorial sources

Great content is often the result of interviewing the best in your field.

It emerges when you have insider information that nobody else has.

Use your subscriber list to find sources.

Your subscribers trust you. They’re more likely to give you insider information.

I’ve written at length about finding editorial sources among your subscribers.

Events

When done well, events keep your audience engaged. They help retain it.

You can use your audience data to:

• Find attendees
• Find the best city for your events
• Find speakers for your events

Running events is easier with audience data. Read my extensive article on events.

Growth

I talk to many media companies.

The ones that print money are the ones with great audiences.

Great audiences drive great results for sponsors. So sponsors keep coming back.

The media companies that struggle are the ones with low-quality audiences.

“Low quality” usually means “low quality to sponsors.” They have subscribers without purchasing power. They acquire subscribers outside of their ICPs. Or they go after niches that aren’t valuable to advertisers.

In B2B media, your audience quality determines your success!

You want to have readers who:

1. Match your ICP (and the ICPs of your advertisers)
2. Have purchasing power

If you’re a B2B automotive newsletter but acquire housewives at a $0.50 CAC, that’s bad for your business. Don’t do that!

Only acquire subscribers who are of high value!

(That is, who will buy the products of your advertisers.)

Making sure you acquire the right readers

Look at the subscribers that each acquisition channel brings in.

What do they do for work?

If you’re running paid ads, look at each individual ad.

If a channel or ad brings people who match your ICP, double down on it.
If a channel or ad brings low-value people outside of your ICP, turn it off.

In B2B, subscriber quality is more important than quantity.

Invest in channels that bring you the right people.
Avoid channels that dilute your audience.

Look at your subscriber data for the cold, hard facts about each channel.

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Growing small segments of your list

Your audience data tells you who’s currently getting value from your content.

If these people are valuable to sponsors, consider acquiring more of them.

Here’s an example: You see that healthcare executives make up 3% of your list. They must be getting value from your newsletter. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be reading. They’re also valuable to sponsors. So you run ads to acquire more of them. After a few months, they make up 10% of your list. You’ve grown your audience. You reach more decision makers. You can charge more.

To identify segments that you can grow, use a strategy similar to the one I described in Monetizing underserved audience segments.

Logo clouds

This is a simple trick to increase your landing page conversion rate.

Consider adding logos of companies that read your content.

Here’s an example from CRE Daily (the logos are below the subscribe button):

Here’s my guide for creating logo clouds using your audience data.

Audience data is powerful

It helps with monetization, retention, content, and growth.

The most successful media companies are the ones that obtain it and use it.

They make so much money.

Just remember Sean Griffey’s $525 million exit for Industry Dive.

If you don’t have audience data yet, get it! 👇

Ad: How to obtain audience data

Over the last two years, I’ve built Megahit, a data tool for B2B media companies.

Megahit finds your subscribers’ names, job titles, companies, locations, LinkedIn profiles, and more. All from their email addresses. (It even works for Gmails!)

Then it has filters and reports to help with everything mentioned in this article. For example, showing sponsors who is reading, finding advertisers, targeting emails, etc.

I’d love to show you how it can help you grow your revenue.

Book a demo call with me!