Data & Analytics Wednesday - Analytics in Publishing

Seven Portals, No North Star: Running Analytics for a Newsroom That Has to Pay the Rent

Every morning I open seven affiliate portals, Google Analytics, our beehiiv dashboard, and whatever social media is saying about us today. Then I try to answer one question: what do we do now? In other words: how do I drive more revenue, while preserving the integrity of the brand?

At Daily Drop, a daily travel rewards newsletter, the content team runs on newsroom time while the business runs on revenue time. Those two clocks are often in conflict. There’s no single KPI to hide behind; we have to grow the list and turn readers into revenue without becoming the newsletter nobody opens anymore. Many days those goals fight each other. This session is an view into the analytic strategy behind a newsletter-first business.

I’ll cover which numbers I check first, which ones lie to me, how to tell a good new subscriber from a hollow one, and why depending on other people’s affiliate programs feels a lot like sharecropping. I’ll also share how to turn findings into direction I can give a team of writers and content creators. You’ll leave with a practical way to decide what matters when everything does.

About Our Speakers

April Wilson is Director of Content and Conversion at Daily Drop, where she leads the team behind a daily travel rewards newsletter and spends an unreasonable part of every morning inside affiliate portals. She has 24 years of executive leadership experience across analytics, content strategy, and healthcare revenue cycle software. She is the author of seven books on healthcare revenue cycle management and the consumer guide Your Hospital Bill Survival Guide, and she writes the only weekly RCM 2030 newsletter on LinkedIn.

April holds a master’s in sociology and has taught at Otterbein University, Southern Methodist University, and Stanford. Long before any of that, she was the first official band photographer for the Dave Matthews Band, back when they were the crappy local act. She is also totally Tim’s cousin, no matter what he tells you.

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