The Challenge

Because it covers such a wide range of topics with thousands of articles, keeping audiences engaged is an ongoing challenge—it’s hard to target such a broad array of subscribers with personalized content. And, as an independent publisher, generating enough revenue to continue offering the quality journalism subscribers expect is also a formidable task, especially with a small staff and increased competition for ad dollars.

Digital marketing manager Frank Pagano recognized that offering a personalized experience was critical as digital consumers’ expectations have grown. So, he started looking at ways to engage users with personalized content.

The Solution

“We started working with Jeeng, first to monetize our emails, but when they added the personalized push notifications, we decided to give that a try too,” Pagano said. “We looked at some other providers, but the cost factor was a problem. There was no way to monetize the other solutions to offset the cost and it would have been around $5,000 a month. With Jeeng, we got the personalized push capabilities we wanted, along with additional revenue. It’s a win-win.”

Now, Farmers’ Almanac sends one monetized push and one organic push notification per day to bring in more traffic and revenue. And they’ve begun experimenting with the personalized email capabilities as well. With a subscriber list that’s grown from 100k to 160k in just a year, Farmers’ Almanac sends three emails a week, which means manually curating the content and messages would be an overwhelming and impossible task.

Pagano says the Jeeng automated solution is ideal for their strategy, and it fills a gap in their business. Since they can rely on Jeeng’s algorithms to track and analyze user behavior and preferences, they don’t have to bring on extra manpower, which saves money. In fact, it’s turned their email program from a cost center into a profit driver.

“Because we’re able to send content that caters to a readers’ particular interests, instead of generic batch-and-blast emails, our click-thru rates and traffic on our website have both increased,” said Frank Pagano, digital marketing manager at Farmers’ Almanac. “Plus, we can track what each user engages with, and what they don’t, to continuously refine our content recommendations and timing. No other service provider offers this capability, and it’s become one of our most stable revenue streams, boosting revenue from email and push alone by 110% a month.”

One of the added benefits of using Jeeng is that Farmers’ Almanac is able to leverage evergreen content for engagement, which means they can drive new traffic without investing in new content. With over 4,000 articles, there’s plenty to offer, but Pagano says delivering relevant, seasonally appropriate content is a top priority.

“We have content going back 15 years, and some of it is stagnated. Jeeng’s push notifications have allowed us to rejuvenate that,” he said. “We’re working now to index, categorize and cull some of the content to make sure it’s appropriate, but the fact that Jeeng allows us to revive and leverage some of that older but still very useful content, is a big advantage.”

The Results

“We started working with Jeeng, first to monetize our emails, but when they added the personalized push notifications, we decided to give that a try too,” Pagano said. “We looked at some other providers, but the cost factor was a problem. There was no way to monetize the other solutions to offset the cost and it would have been around $5,000 a month. With Jeeng, we got the personalized push capabilities we wanted, along with additional revenue. It’s a win-win.”

Now, Farmers’ Almanac sends one monetized push and one organic push notification per day to bring in more traffic and revenue. And they’ve begun experimenting with the personalized email capabilities as well. With a subscriber list that’s grown from 100k to 160k in just a year, Farmers’ Almanac sends three emails a week, which means manually curating the content and messages would be an overwhelming and impossible task.

Pagano says the Jeeng automated solution is ideal for their strategy, and it fills a gap in their business. Since they can rely on Jeeng’s algorithms to track and analyze user behavior and preferences, they don’t have to bring on extra manpower, which saves money. In fact, it’s turned their email program from a cost center into a profit driver.

“Because we’re able to send content that caters to a readers’ particular interests, instead of generic batch-and-blast emails, our click-thru rates and traffic on our website have both increased,” said Frank Pagano, digital marketing manager at Farmers’ Almanac. “Plus, we can track what each user engages with, and what they don’t, to continuously refine our content recommendations and timing. No other service provider offers this capability, and it’s become one of our most stable revenue streams, boosting revenue from email and push alone by 110% a month.”

One of the added benefits of using Jeeng is that Farmers’ Almanac is able to leverage evergreen content for engagement, which means they can drive new traffic without investing in new content. With over 4,000 articles, there’s plenty to offer, but Pagano says delivering relevant, seasonally appropriate content is a top priority.

“We have content going back 15 years, and some of it is stagnated. Jeeng’s push notifications have allowed us to rejuvenate that,” he said. “We’re working now to index, categorize and cull some of the content to make sure it’s appropriate, but the fact that Jeeng allows us to revive and leverage some of that older but still very useful content, is a big advantage.”

Jeeng Saves Time & Delivers Exceptional Service

Pagano says the benefits they’ve seen with Jeeng’s ability to drive engagement, revenue and overall subscriber response—including a well-below-average spam complaint through their ESP and only a few bits of negative feedback from over 500k push subscribers—have been overwhelmingly positive. Even better, the system is so easy to use, it takes just minutes each day and saves him and his team a tremendous amount of time.

“Jeeng’s automation saves us at least 30 minutes to an hour every day. Otherwise, we’d have to hand-pick content to push out daily and go through that manual process to send it out to multiple segmented audiences,” he said. “It would just be too much of a time sink—only a multibillion-dollar company with dedicated resources could do that. With Jeeng, it’ simple, fast and easy for our very small team.”

As an added bonus, Pagano says the Jeeng support team is top-notch, and in the rare instance when he has encountered an issue, the response and resolution have been swift. 

“I’d absolutely put the staff near the top for service, and I wish all agencies were like this,” he said. “I definitely appreciate the very timely response, and they’re very communicative and willing to work with me on any issues, to try new approaches and experiment. That innovation is extremely valuable and helps position Farmers’ Almanac a forerunner in digital media.”