April 8, 2020 • 37 mins
Chris Bonney, VP of Strategy
Zach Wilson, Partner
Amy Gavin, Director of Digital Strategy, American Society for Nutrition
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Amy Gavin (00:00):
[inaudible].
Chris Bonney (00:10):
Hi everybody and welcome to the web marketing
insights podcast.
Again, very special episode.
Zach Wilson and myself from GuloSolutions.
Here we are at the Pewcharitable trust building on
location in Washington, D C fora very special episode with Amy
Gavin from the American societyfor nutrition.
She is the director of digitalstrategy there.
(00:33):
Amy, welcome.
Thanks for having me.
Really excited, Zach, to haveAmy talk a little bit about what
they're doing over@nutrition.orgaround digital marketing,
content marketing, email, uh,data acquisition, all that good
stuff.
Uh, Amy, just to get started, doyou want to just tell us a
little bit about what, um, ASNdoes and sort of what the
organization is about?
Amy Gavin (00:54):
Sure.
American society for nutritionis a nonprofit scientific
society.
We represent people who areworking in the field of
nutrition science, so thosepeople might be academics or lab
scientists, a lot of governmentofficials and policymakers,
people out in the industry.
And also people who first cometo mind for consumers like us.
(01:17):
So dieticians and medicaldoctors too.
We have about 7,000 members allaround the world, members all
around the world and ASN servesas sort of the joining force or
the community for theseprofessionals.
We provide education, uh, anannual meeting, an annual
meeting, um, for peer reviewjournals, lots of other
(01:38):
professional networkingopportunities.
And we advocate for nutritionresearch funding and just for
the field in general.
So overall, our nonprofitmission is to, uh, make the
world a healthier place throughevidence-based nutrition.
Chris Bonney (01:54):
Awesome.
Great.
Thank you so much for that.
Oh, thanks Amy for that.
That's great.
I mean, you guys are doing a lotof great things at ASN.
I'm very excited.
Can you tell us what your jobdoes?
What's a day in the life looklike for you?
And then we can kind of get into, uh, exactly how you do what
you do, but tell us what you do.
Amy Gavin (02:13):
Sure.
So, um, there are no two daysthat are the same for, um, for
what I'm doing, I lead theoverall digital strategy of ASN.
So that includes digitalmarketing, our websites, um,
some of our digital systems,like the integration between our
association management systemand other systems like, um,
(02:35):
websites and social media andthings like that.
I lead the strategy for socialmedia.
Chris Bonney (02:42):
Okay.
And as part of that, what areyour, what are the initiatives
that you're most proud of andthat you've taken on in the last
year?
Amy Gavin (02:51):
Sure.
So we've done a lot in the lastyear.
There've been a lot of changesat ASN.
Uh, we launched our new annualmeeting two years ago, well in
2018 so we're going into ourthird, our third annual meeting.
So there's been a lot of changesto help support that and to help
grow that.
(03:11):
Um, and our membership isgrowing our, we have a new
journal, so that has spawned newdigital marketing activities too
.
Um, but over the last year, onebig thing we did is we updated
the blog portion of our websitenutrition network.
So we knew we had a high volumeof web traffic, but we weren't
(03:34):
using our website for much otherthan just resources for our
members.
So I guess that's to say ourwebsite didn't have much of a
marketing focus.
So we wanted to know who are allthese people who are coming to
our site.
We know we have a valuabledomain.
nutrition.org and nutrition is ahot topic.
So it's inevitable that a lot ofusers will come to our site from
search engines.
(03:55):
But what were they coming for?
What did they want from us andhow could we serve them?
And ultimately if it's ourtarget audience, how can we
convert them to become membersand come to our meeting and
subscribe to our journals?
Um, so our first thought was wehave all of this great
intellectual property that we'resitting on from our journals and
(04:18):
our meeting content.
How can we get that onnutrition.org to drive more
traffic and, and convert thesepeople into joining ASN?
Yeah.
So we worked with a partner andthey redesigned a section of our
site, our blog, and allowed usthe, the redesign allowed us to
(04:41):
incorporate new types ofcontent.
And it gave us a more modernlook and feel and, and more
functionality for us as staff tomarket different programs and
activities.
So that's been really useful.
Uh, but one directive we hadfrom this project is to gather
more first party data.
Who are these people who arecoming and, and a conversion for
(05:02):
us at this time was to get themto enter their email.
Um,
Chris Bonney (05:08):
yeah.
And so how did, uh, what did youdo exactly on the page?
Was it just simply like asubscribe or join our
newsletter?
What, how did you draw that man?
What was the copy and what wasthe thought process around that?
Amy Gavin (05:22):
Sure.
So on, I think every pagethere's an opportunity for the
user to enter his or her emailto subscribe to a newsletter or
just subscribe to monthlyupdates.
Or if it's content that's reallyhigh value, we might require an
email to get access to thecontent.
Chris Bonney (05:41):
So you're doing different things depending on
where on the site they are at.
Sometimes it's a newsletterpitch.
Sometimes it's a downloadsomething.
Sometimes it's, you know.
Okay.
Gotcha,
Amy Gavin (05:49):
gotcha.
And you weren't doing thatbefore?
Not really.
There were a couple of placesthroughout the site, but they
weren't super successful.
They weren't, um, easy to findit.
They weren't compelling to thetwo web visitors to enter their
email.
Whereas with this new designusers are reading valuable
(06:09):
content and then they'reprompted to enter their email to
get more.
So just nuts and bolts of it.
Um, you've got a blog post,great content, you know, people
are coming and you're getting alot of traffic and it's high
value.
And so is it fair to say whatyou've done then in the middle
of the post?
Is that the, is are you puttingthings promotional things and
(06:30):
email asks in the middle of theposts?
Are you doing all that at thebottom of where does it fall on
the page?
That seems to have been gettingattraction.
Um, really different places.
We, we didn't want any blogposts to look exactly like
another one.
We don't want people to get usedto what they're seeing.
Um, so on some blog posts wemight have a call to action in
(06:54):
the middle of the content thattells people why they should
join ASN.
On another one we might have acall to action to sign up for a
webinar.
So it kind of depends on thecontent and um, what makes most
sense in, in that post at thebottom of every single post, I
believe there is an anopportunity to subscribe to
(07:15):
newsletters.
Gotcha.
Zach Wilson (07:18):
This is a interesting conversation.
Just the way we're talking aboutit too, because this is
something we grapple with, withtalking to the greater public
and sometimes our clients too.
And what, what is, what is this,how do you describe this?
This is a for, for digitalmarketers, this is called
(07:40):
something called conversion rateoptimization, right?
Or conversion optimization.
But you talk to somebody aboutthis without giving all of the
anecdotal information thatyou've just giving their eyes,
their eyes glaze over and theyfall asleep on you.
Cause you just don't know.
But ultimately what you'redoing, what you're doing is, uh,
(08:01):
you've been doing conversionoptimization to your blog posts
and yeah.
Um, and, and engaging, findingopportunities to engage your
readers and collect valuableinformation, um, which, which
is, which is, which is amazing.
I mean, that's, yeah.
Is there any, is there any datathat you guys have on that or,
Amy Gavin (08:23):
yeah.
So, um, nine months after thelaunch, well, let me back up.
So we launched the redesign[inaudible] with our annual
meeting.
So that worked out really wellfor us because we were able to
use these new features and jumpin from our annual meeting.
We had all this content comingout of our annual meetings, so
(08:44):
we were able to jump in and puteverything to use right away.
Um, so that really propelled usforward because it showed an
increase in traffic right away.
We were excited, so we kept itup, um, and pull in a lot of
content from our journals andfrom our meeting and, and
elsewhere.
So nine months after the launchof the redesign, we showed an
(09:08):
increase in users by 35%
Chris Bonney (09:11):
so tell us about, um, you know, so you, you're,
you weren't putting in a bigeffort around gathering the
emails and first party data, butthen you were, and you made a
real conscious effort to notonly make sure that the blog
posts were unique in, in thebody area of them, but that you
were putting these various callsto action.
So from another data point, whatwas that acquisition of, uh, the
(09:36):
emails and the first party data?
How, what did those numbers looklike for you?
Amy Gavin (09:41):
Yeah, so nine months after the launch, we had 2,500
web visitors to sign up toreceive emails from us.
So yeah, and in the context ofour membership and our meeting
attendance, that's a pretty goodnumber.
I'm with, we have about 7,000members and about 3,500 people
attend our meeting each year.
So, uh, we have been reallypleased with that number.
(10:03):
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (10:04):
Did it, did it claim, did it, did it spike in
and go up and down and for anyparticular events or is that
just like a steady over ninemonths, there was X number
generally per month that waskind of the same or
Amy Gavin (10:18):
it's pretty steady.
Um, and I think that's due to uspublishing content on a steady
routine basis.
Zach Wilson (10:25):
Oh, that's a, that's 300, that's 300 unique,
uh, pieces of data every month.
Yeah, that's pretty, that'spretty crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think the now, well, I don'tknow that to explore it a little
bit more.
I mean, from what you're doingin terms of different channels,
how are you, have you doneanything different differently
(10:49):
over the last nine months to,um, garner new readership or is
it, is it organic?
Is it content marketing?
Is it social?
Is it the, the, the, the, someof the whole, um, yeah, I mean,
what are you doing in terms ofupping, upping that or is it
across all channels?
It's increased.
Amy Gavin (11:08):
Yeah.
Um, so there's obviously a lotof marketing that goes behind it
.
We didn't just throw everythingup there and the masses roll in.
Um, you built it and they cameback.
But behind the scenes we weredoing a lot to encourage traffic
to come to our site.
(11:28):
Um, their organic traffic didincrease by 21% during those
nine months.
So I guess that's the massesrolling in by themselves.
Um, but we also ramped up oursocial media, so for every blog
post that we, uh, that wepublished, we promote it on
social media as well with ateaser and a branded URL,
(11:52):
shortened URL to drive people tothe site.
Um, for really high valuecontent.
We did some ad retargetingthrough another tool where we
targeted people who had visitedour site before with an ad on
third party sites to try to drawthem back in and give us their
email address on this second go.
(12:15):
Um, email marketing, we rampedup a little bit, um, and we
changed a little bit, whereas inthe past we would provide full
text content and an email to themedia for example.
And we changed that where wewould give them just a snippet
and send, send them to our siteteaser.
(12:37):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's important.
Cause we also, yeah, we alsonoticed a lot of referral
traffic, a big increase inreferral traffic.
So I think that's due toproviding tools on the page for
people to share with.
I enjoyed seeing that, um,because it means people, you
know, if they're sharing ourcontent, then it's resonating
(12:57):
with them and, and they like it.
Yeah.
We know that our referraltraffic increased by 39%.
So that was a pretty goodnumber.
Wow.
Zach Wilson (13:05):
It's fun to, uh, it's fun to just seem, I mean,
you know, we're talking about anew nutrition, nutrition science
and this isn't a, this isn'tlike a, I don't know, really
masses fodder, but you know, toget to get some social, uh,
social traffics and some socialchair shares and referral
(13:26):
traffic, that's, that's, that'sgotta be really gratifying.
I would,
Amy Gavin (13:30):
yeah.
Yeah.
You'd be surprised though.
Nutrition scientists talk aboutthe content a lot.
There's a lot to argue.
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (13:38):
I'm sure that's true.
Hey, can you talk about, um, youuse feather, right, for the
remarketing stuff.
Can you talk about how longyou've been using them, what it
takes to ramp up with somethinglike that?
You know, what is it for thosethat don't really am familiar
with that term or familiar withthe product?
Just talk about what it is, whyyou chose it and how it's
working.
Amy Gavin (13:57):
Yeah, so we've been onboard with feather and that's
FEA, T H R feather, um, for orjust over a year.
Um, and what they provide is aplatform that enables us to
track our, our web visitors buya cookie on our site.
So if a, if a visitor hascookies enabled, we can track
(14:20):
them and then display ads tothose people on third party
sites.
So if they go to the weatherchannel after they visit our
site, they could see an ad popup from us.
Chris Bonney (14:30):
Can you control who, what sites the edge show up
on?
How do you figure that out?
Amy Gavin (14:35):
Um, you can't exclude sites, so if there's something
you want to avoid, then
Chris Bonney (14:41):
that might be counter to your content or not
in line with your organizationalvalues or something like that.
Amy Gavin (14:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
We haven't run into that yet,but it is, um, feathers, super
easy to use.
It's very DIY.
Um, takes no time to getstarted.
There are lots of options withinthe platform.
It's been successful for us.
We've been able to track a lotof conversions for, uh,
(15:08):
registrations for our meetingand for webinar signups and
different things like that.
Chris Bonney (15:13):
What's the pull to get them back?
In other words, what's the adabout?
Is it an annual meeting ad?
Can you control what ads show upwhere or when or, or what is it?
How do you get them to see thatad on Yahoo or wherever and send
them back over?
What is, what do you guys put onthat ad?
Amy Gavin (15:31):
Yeah, so an example campaign for us would be, um, we
would design an ad, let's sayabout content from our meeting.
Okay.
So if we had sessions aboutpediatric nutrition, we could
design an ad that focuses onthat.
And then we go into the featherplatform and say, Hey, target
(15:54):
everyone who's visited ourprogram page on our meetings
site in the past six months anddisplay this ad to them about
pediatric nutrition.
And then the ad would link backto maybe our registration page
or maybe a landing page justabout pediatric nutrition.
It depends on the call to actionthere, but, um, you can get
(16:16):
really granular and who you'retargeting
Zach Wilson (16:18):
[inaudible].
Amy Gavin (16:20):
Um, you can also geotarget.
Hmm.
So we've had some success withthat where there had been
competing meetings andconventions and things and we
kind of draw a circle aroundthat convention and throw ads at
people within that target areaand drive them to our site.
Chris Bonney (16:41):
Okay.
Smart.
Yeah, this morning.
It's great.
Zach Wilson (16:46):
So what other, we've talked about, we've talked
about a lot in terms of uh, um,email marketing and content
marketing, uh, re-targeting.
What do you, what do you feeltactically from the organization
as an, as the director ofdigital strategy?
What do you, what do you guys,what's your best channel?
(17:06):
What are you guys reallysucceeding and what's, uh,
where, where, where can youimprove?
Um, just just curious.
Amy Gavin (17:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I feel like we've succeededin the past year with, with
ramping up our content strategy,uh, before we had all of this
great IP that we weren't reallyusing on w in channels outside
of the original channel, if thatmakes sense.
(17:37):
So for example, journal content,it just lived in our journals,
but we didn't do much with itoutside of the journals.
We didn't translate it for amore lay audience to drive more
people our websites.
So that has been a bigimprovement for us over the past
year and I think has led to alot of success and a lot of new
(17:57):
traffic.
Zach Wilson (18:00):
Let's actually, I want to, let's just dig into
that a little bit because justcoincidentally the, in the last
month we've had a quite a fewconversations about this and
this general notion and fear ofpeople.
We're giving away our IP.
This is protected.
We don't want to put out morecontent.
(18:21):
We want to protect it.
We want to make people pay.
I mean, can you talk about thatshift from um, just
bureaucratically or from theboard or how you actually sold
that or anything along thoselines?
Amy Gavin (18:36):
Yeah, I hear that a lot too.
And we feel that way.
Um, but in order to get newsubscribers and in order to get
the media to report on ourcontent, you got give them
something, right?
So when we share content fromour journals, um, it's very
(18:57):
brief.
Um, it has high level data andthe purpose is really to draw
them back to the journal, thejournal article and either
subscribe or do pay per view onthat article itself.
Or the goal could be to attracta new author to submit his or
(19:18):
her research to the journal.
So there's that angle as well.
Zach Wilson (19:22):
So are you doing, I mean, in terms of this process
strategically, are you, you doa, you're doing just like direct
pull from an abstract or youhave one of the writers say, you
know, here's this journalarticle.
Let's consumer Phi.
This just made up word.
(19:45):
Um, you know, let's, let's makethis appeal to the masses and
tease out some content.
And then, uh, as you talkedabout earlier, you, um, making
direct, uh, calls or[inaudible]to try people say, you know, for
more in depth version of this orwhat do you, what are you doing
and are you seeing a direct tieto those, uh, those journals?
Amy Gavin (20:07):
Yeah.
So, um, it is hard.
It's hard to choose content fromjournals because it can be so
scientific and so high level andit's hard to know what's going
to resonate with the public.
Are our editors choose articleswhen they're accepted and
identify them as possibly beingnewsworthy or noteworthy.
(20:29):
And then we have writers whoreview and write copy based on
the article.
Um, and some writers are, have amore scientific slant and then
some have a more marketingmedia, newsy slant.
Um, so I think that's somethingwe need to work is our voice and
how we're communicating theresearch to the public.
(20:53):
But we've made great progress inthe meantime of using the
content really to advance ourmission.
Zach Wilson (21:01):
Yeah, clearly, I mean with those, some of those
numbers that you shared
Amy Gavin (21:05):
and, and it's really interesting to see on social
media and on the web trafficreports on what content really
resonates.
I mean some of it people just gowild over and then other times
something that I think is reallyinteresting as a consumer and
flops flops.
Yeah.
(21:25):
Yeah.
That's interesting.
So it's hard.
Yeah.
Is, is there a topic, I meanjust for those of us that are
interested in nutrition and youknow, is there one in particular
that kind of, you remember thatwas really popular or something
that you thought, what's goingon here?
Um, yeah.
Eggs.
Oh really?
Okay.
People like to talk about eggs.
(21:46):
Isn't that something?
Okay.
I think the article about egg,
Zach Wilson (21:49):
this is huge.
Is that on, is that operating?
I thought I went to the site
Amy Gavin (21:53):
well yesterday.
There too before.
Yeah.
I think there isn't.
Yeah, that's like you're goingto do, are you going to do like
a SQL to it just to keep theblockbuster hits CQL and this
eggs too.
Yeah.
Eggs.
Eggs are always a hot topic.
Okay.
Zach Wilson (22:08):
Alright.
There was a, speaking of eggs,the place we went for lunch
yesterday, I didn't get it, butthere was a a, it was like a
vegan burger place, you know, so, um, uh, the meat, like
meatless burger place,impossible burger and some
varieties of that.
And one of them was like an egg.
Like the burger was made.
The Patty was like made out oflike egg.
(22:29):
That's not big enough.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That one wasn't vegan, but itwas just straight.
It's strong.
It struck me as like, Oh, I'venever seen this before.
That before we then, yeah,either at, I'd so, I don't know.
Amy Gavin (22:41):
Are eggs good or not?
We need to know, Oh, I can't getan answer.
I want to know.
You can't go on.
The record is telling you, Ohno, half of ASN were declaring
that eggs are, I can send you toa great website.
[inaudible] dot org you can do asearch.
Okay, we'll search eggs andwe'll do read all the arguments.
(23:02):
Okay, we'll do it.
I'll do it.
Zach Wilson (23:04):
So if you were, if you were stepping away from
this, looking back and you couldhave a conversation with
yourself after this and say, youknow, this is, Hey Amy, this is
what we need to prove.
Oh, this is one thing we need toreally work on and improve over
the next six months.
Yeah.
What would you, what would yousay to your self after this and
(23:25):
say focus, focus, focus.
Let's improve on X,
Amy Gavin (23:30):
um, audience segmentation.
[inaudible] another big one.
So we did a great job over thepast year and will and continue
to do a great job of acquiringdata, acquiring first party data
in a safe and quality way.
Um, we're not breaking any laws.
We all know there are so manylaws right now and going into
(23:51):
effect soon about data privacy.
So I think we've done reallywell with acquiring qualified
leads.
It's in a good way because they,they're offering up their data
on their own.
Where we have sort of fallenshort is the second part of that
plan where we figure out how toprovide content to the different
(24:14):
segments of those audiences.
Um, we did have, we have thingsin the works.
We had a marketing consultantcome in and lead our whole staff
through a two day workshop wherewe talked about our current
audience and our targetaudiences and we narrowed it
down to seven personas.
(24:34):
So we will now be using thoseseven personas to really drive
everything we do.
Those personas will beintegrated into marketing plans,
into new product development,into how we use our website and
how we use email marketing sothat, okay.
A year ago I would, uh, if Icould talk back, I would say get
(24:58):
a better plan and for audiencesegmentation.
Zach Wilson (25:00):
Interesting.
Yeah.
And there's, I think there'ssomething there too with M and a
, and you may not even have ananswer for this, but it's just
something that I thought aboutas you've collected whatever you
said, 2,500, uh, 2,500, 3000pieces of first party data.
And if you're just collectingemail address, got to figure
(25:22):
out, you've got to put those,each one of those people in new
a bucket.
So is there a, uh, is there a,do you have a solution in our
plan to do that?
Amy Gavin (25:30):
We do.
We do have a plan.
It'll be harder going backwardswith data we've already
acquired, but there are tools onthe market that we have our eyes
on that we're hoping toimplement later this year.
There's a lot of stuff we needto do upfront to, to prepare to
do that.
Um, but starting in the fall,most likely we will be using a
(25:53):
new email platform where when auser comes to our site and signs
up to receive our emails, itdepends on what page they
visited and what page theysigned up on and that will lead
them into a, to a marketingfunnel based on their PR, the
persona that they, that we kindof apply to them based on our
(26:16):
seven personas.
Zach Wilson (26:17):
So just talk me through that step-by-step.
So I go to an article on eggs.
As Chris said, I've mid page, Isee, you know, sign up for more
monthly updates on our articlesor whatever.
I enter my email address, hitsubmit, then it dumps into this
(26:38):
new workflow.
Amy Gavin (26:40):
Yup.
Yup.
So then you're identified, solet's say that article had a
real medical focus and the focuswas cardiology because of eggs,
heart health.
So we've now identified you assomeone who[inaudible] Mike
practice medicine and who mightbe interested in heart health.
(27:02):
So we can now target you withmore articles in that topic
area.
Zach Wilson (27:08):
Interesting.
And so is there anything me asthe reader slash subscriber
we'll have to do in addition tohit subscribe or is this just
automatically done based on themeta data and the article and
this email software?
Amy Gavin (27:25):
Um, there are multiple ways to do it.
We can do it where the, the userdoesn't know.
Yeah.
Or we could have the user selectsomething.
Gotcha.
But we do want to limitbarriers.
Zach Wilson (27:39):
Yeah.
Friction is a big, yeah.
User experience and friction isa big thing, but um, yeah, yeah,
yeah.
So that, that's, that's going tobe really interesting.
Amy Gavin (27:48):
Yeah.
And then after a user signs upfor emails, we want to give the
opportunity for them to go to acentral landing page and select
what, what type of emails theywant to receive from us.
Zach Wilson (28:02):
Oh, okay.
Gotcha, gotcha.
Interesting.
Yeah.
That will, yeah.
That will help.
That will help that audiencesegmentation a lot.
Yeah.
And driving, I mean, this issomething we hear a lot two is
we were, a couple months ago, wewere talking to somebody about
this problem.
They've got tons of subscribersand they send the same, same
(28:26):
email to, you know, 10,000subscribers.
It's like, well, you know, thatthat sort of audience and that
messaging is, is not gonnaresonate with the people.
And then ultimately you just getas a, as a, as a receiver of
those or recipient of thoseemails, it just becomes noise
because you're not talking mylanguage, then unsubscribe.
(28:48):
Follows and so on and so forth.
Yeah.
It's a vicious cycle, so, yeah.
Amy Gavin (28:54):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's tough.
Zach Wilson (28:55):
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
Are you guys, uh, Chris lovesthis topic in terms of a
conversational web and emailmarketing.
Are you guys gonna make a, aplan to make any sort of shifts
in style and your email?
Are you guys doing the, um, thesort of like HTML high, high
(29:16):
gloss or high high fashionedemails or you're going to move
to more of a, um, sort of apersonalized conversational
style?
Or is that
Amy Gavin (29:26):
we haven't really gotten that far.
Um, I think it depends on thecontent.
We market our meetingdifferently than how we market
it, our journal content anddifferently from how we market
things to the media.
So I think it'll just depend onthe content.
(29:46):
Yeah.
Zach Wilson (29:47):
Yesterday Chris put a screenshot up of a, um,
conversational email to a groupof people and they, they all,
they all about jumped out oftheir seat.
Like, we can't do this.
This is like, what is this?
This looks like an email from my[inaudible].
Amy Gavin (30:04):
[inaudible] yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And that might be useful formembership related emails for
renewing membership and thingslike that.
Um, but other things maybe notso much.
Zach Wilson (30:17):
Yeah.
Yeah, you have to.
I mean, it's just like anything.
And um, and I think in digitalmarketing and in general,
whatever, whatever channelyou're working on, it's, yeah.
Develop a hypothesis, run sometests and see what produces the
best results, right?
I mean, it's, uh, and it, Ithink a lot of people, a lot of
(30:41):
people in general getoverwhelmed by just the idea of
that.
Like, I can't, you know, I don'tknow what to do.
And it's just like, just if youdon't know what to do, just your
first step is just do, trysomething that you yourself
would want to receive and, orsee.
Right?
It's not that none of this is, Imean, it's very data-driven and
(31:05):
somewhat scientific, but there'snot an exact science behind a
lot of this.
Especially, you know, if you'rein the nutrition world, if
you're an agency like us, I mean, uh, there's a lot of it.
A lot of this is just peoplejust experimenting with some
different ideas and somedifferent hypotheses and seeing
what sticks.
But, you know, rinse and repeatis, it's a sort of suggestion
(31:27):
that I give to people and don'tbe afraid to, don't be afraid to
try something.
You know?
I mean, you guys, you guys are agreat example.
You know, taking a leap of faithand try something on your blog.
It's exactly right.
You know,
Chris Bonney (31:39):
that's a recurring theme for us.
It's a recurring theme on thespot on this podcast.
Um, yeah, that, you know, wecontinue to talk about and
mention and, and recommend.
Just, just get in there and doit.
Start looking at some numbers,tweaking and before, you know
what that year's gone by andyou're a pro,
Amy Gavin (31:55):
right?
Yeah.
I mean really that's kind of howwe feel about the data
acquisition on the blog.
I didn't even realize it was sosuccessful until months down the
road.
Sure.
Right.
Chris Bonney (32:06):
Okay.
That wasn't a good idea.
I'm glad we did it.
Amy Gavin (32:08):
Yeah.
So I definitely advocate forjust jumping in and trying
things and like you say, there'sno science to it because it
changes every day.
There's a new tool.
There's some new techniques Ihave read.
Great
Chris Bonney (32:22):
segue.
I mean, I think, you know, um,uh, as we're, as we're getting
ready to wrap up today'spodcast, want to ask you, um,
what is it on the horizon?
Like you just said, there'sother things out there and
you've mentioned a few thingsthat you're looking to do in the
future, but what are, you know,what's the big vision?
Are there tools that you'relooking to get into someday or
you know, this is sort of thevision for where you want to
(32:42):
take things.
Anything you can share in thatregard?
Amy Gavin (32:45):
Sure.
Um, I think our work in audiencedevelopment is gonna drive a
lot.
I w there will be some marketresearch done soon in relation
to that.
So that'll drive a lot of what[inaudible] is doing in terms of
tools and techniques.
(33:06):
A new email marketing platformis on the horizon for us.
Um, also some new engagementtools for our members, which we
hope will also encourageincrease in web traffic and
increase in engagement on oursites.
So things like things like, um,apps that sort of mimics social
(33:27):
media that our members can useto network with each other and
share our content, an externalcontent to really, um, so that's
on the horizon,
Zach Wilson (33:37):
right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Those are, yeah.
That's cool.
You guys are doing great stuff.
[inaudible] something we shouldput a pin in and have a follow
up.
But I, I, that just occurred tome cause it's also recurring, uh
, conversation, which isinteresting that you have
talked, you've talked a lotabout, a lot about different
(33:59):
toolsets, uh, feather and thewebsite as a tool.
Your CMS as a tool.
Yeah.
The new um, email platform.
What you haven't talked a lotabout, which is kind of
fascinating to me is your, yourAMS and how, how that's actually
used behind, I mean youmentioned it talk for 40 minutes
(34:19):
and no one said AMS.
She said it once, it justoccurred.
Well she said it once.
She said it once, but you know,this is like Ed's very
interesting.
Yeah.
And I mean maybe we can have afollow up on, on, on just that
and you know where the AMSstands in this whole, um,
digital,
Amy Gavin (34:37):
well, I can give you a, yeah, I can give you a quick
tidbit about that.
We treat our AMS as the versionof record, so we don't do a lot
of writing back to our AMS.
We want to keep the data in theAMS as clean as possible and we
preserve it so that we can useit for membership communications
(34:59):
so that new users don't get inthere and then unsubscribed from
things.
So yeah, it's, it's, it's not somuch used as a marketing tool at
ASN.
Chris Bonney (35:12):
Yup.
That makes sense.
Yeah, makes sense.
Um, Zach, you wanna have anyclosing words as we get ready to
wrap up for today?
Anything you want to ask Amy,anything you want to talk about
and share with the listeners?
Zach Wilson (35:24):
Um, no.
I, one just thanks for havingus.
This is a great conversation and, uh, again, uh, just don't be
afraid to try new things.
Um, try to avoid death bybureaucracy, uh, in decision
making.
Um, if you, if you have thefreedom to do so.
It sounds like Amy has a lot offreedom to, uh, as a, as a, as a
(35:49):
digital strategist, um, to dothese things and, and try
different things.
She's clearly, uh, earned a lotof trust from, uh, her, her
executive director and the board, uh, to jump off and
experiment.
So, um, if you have the freedomto do that, run off and do it
and have some fun.
Chris Bonney (36:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
Amy Gavin from the Americansociety for nutrition,
nutrition.org.
Check it out.
She's doing great.
Great work out there.
Amy, thanks for joining ustoday.
Thanks for having me.
I hope our story inspires someof your other listeners.
Yeah, awesome.
I'm sure it will is great stuff.
Web marketing insights podcast,closing another edition.
(36:29):
Thanks everyone for listening.
Please subscribe.
If you're watching this onYouTube, check us out on iTunes
and Spotify and all the othergreat channels as well.
Feel free to leave comments onany of those.
We'd love to hear from you.
Uh, thanks for joining us guys.
I will catch you next time.
Hi everybody.
Thanks for checking out thepodcast today.
Go to Gulo Solutions.com tolearn more about us.
(36:51):
Subscribe to our newsletter.
Uh, also if you can hitsubscribe on our channel here on
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[inaudible].
Chris Bonney (00:10):
Hi everybody and welcome to the web marketing
insights podcast.
Again, very special episode.
Zach Wilson and myself from GuloSolutions.
Here we are at the Pewcharitable trust building on
location in Washington, D C fora very special episode with Amy
Gavin from the American societyfor nutrition.
She is the director of digitalstrategy there.
(00:33):
Amy, welcome.
Thanks for having me.
Really excited, Zach, to haveAmy talk a little bit about what
they're doing over@nutrition.orgaround digital marketing,
content marketing, email, uh,data acquisition, all that good
stuff.
Uh, Amy, just to get started, doyou want to just tell us a
little bit about what, um, ASNdoes and sort of what the
organization is about?
Amy Gavin (00:54):
Sure.
American society for nutritionis a nonprofit scientific
society.
We represent people who areworking in the field of
nutrition science, so thosepeople might be academics or lab
scientists, a lot of governmentofficials and policymakers,
people out in the industry.
And also people who first cometo mind for consumers like us.
(01:17):
So dieticians and medicaldoctors too.
We have about 7,000 members allaround the world, members all
around the world and ASN servesas sort of the joining force or
the community for theseprofessionals.
We provide education, uh, anannual meeting, an annual
meeting, um, for peer reviewjournals, lots of other
(01:38):
professional networkingopportunities.
And we advocate for nutritionresearch funding and just for
the field in general.
So overall, our nonprofitmission is to, uh, make the
world a healthier place throughevidence-based nutrition.
Chris Bonney (01:54):
Awesome.
Great.
Thank you so much for that.
Oh, thanks Amy for that.
That's great.
I mean, you guys are doing a lotof great things at ASN.
I'm very excited.
Can you tell us what your jobdoes?
What's a day in the life looklike for you?
And then we can kind of get into, uh, exactly how you do what
you do, but tell us what you do.
Amy Gavin (02:13):
Sure.
So, um, there are no two daysthat are the same for, um, for
what I'm doing, I lead theoverall digital strategy of ASN.
So that includes digitalmarketing, our websites, um,
some of our digital systems,like the integration between our
association management systemand other systems like, um,
(02:35):
websites and social media andthings like that.
I lead the strategy for socialmedia.
Chris Bonney (02:42):
Okay.
And as part of that, what areyour, what are the initiatives
that you're most proud of andthat you've taken on in the last
year?
Amy Gavin (02:51):
Sure.
So we've done a lot in the lastyear.
There've been a lot of changesat ASN.
Uh, we launched our new annualmeeting two years ago, well in
2018 so we're going into ourthird, our third annual meeting.
So there's been a lot of changesto help support that and to help
grow that.
(03:11):
Um, and our membership isgrowing our, we have a new
journal, so that has spawned newdigital marketing activities too
.
Um, but over the last year, onebig thing we did is we updated
the blog portion of our websitenutrition network.
So we knew we had a high volumeof web traffic, but we weren't
(03:34):
using our website for much otherthan just resources for our
members.
So I guess that's to say ourwebsite didn't have much of a
marketing focus.
So we wanted to know who are allthese people who are coming to
our site.
We know we have a valuabledomain.
nutrition.org and nutrition is ahot topic.
So it's inevitable that a lot ofusers will come to our site from
search engines.
(03:55):
But what were they coming for?
What did they want from us andhow could we serve them?
And ultimately if it's ourtarget audience, how can we
convert them to become membersand come to our meeting and
subscribe to our journals?
Um, so our first thought was wehave all of this great
intellectual property that we'resitting on from our journals and
(04:18):
our meeting content.
How can we get that onnutrition.org to drive more
traffic and, and convert thesepeople into joining ASN?
Yeah.
So we worked with a partner andthey redesigned a section of our
site, our blog, and allowed usthe, the redesign allowed us to
(04:41):
incorporate new types ofcontent.
And it gave us a more modernlook and feel and, and more
functionality for us as staff tomarket different programs and
activities.
So that's been really useful.
Uh, but one directive we hadfrom this project is to gather
more first party data.
Who are these people who arecoming and, and a conversion for
(05:02):
us at this time was to get themto enter their email.
Um,
Chris Bonney (05:08):
yeah.
And so how did, uh, what did youdo exactly on the page?
Was it just simply like asubscribe or join our
newsletter?
What, how did you draw that man?
What was the copy and what wasthe thought process around that?
Amy Gavin (05:22):
Sure.
So on, I think every pagethere's an opportunity for the
user to enter his or her emailto subscribe to a newsletter or
just subscribe to monthlyupdates.
Or if it's content that's reallyhigh value, we might require an
email to get access to thecontent.
Chris Bonney (05:41):
So you're doing different things depending on
where on the site they are at.
Sometimes it's a newsletterpitch.
Sometimes it's a downloadsomething.
Sometimes it's, you know.
Okay.
Gotcha,
Amy Gavin (05:49):
gotcha.
And you weren't doing thatbefore?
Not really.
There were a couple of placesthroughout the site, but they
weren't super successful.
They weren't, um, easy to findit.
They weren't compelling to thetwo web visitors to enter their
email.
Whereas with this new designusers are reading valuable
(06:09):
content and then they'reprompted to enter their email to
get more.
So just nuts and bolts of it.
Um, you've got a blog post,great content, you know, people
are coming and you're getting alot of traffic and it's high
value.
And so is it fair to say whatyou've done then in the middle
of the post?
Is that the, is are you puttingthings promotional things and
(06:30):
email asks in the middle of theposts?
Are you doing all that at thebottom of where does it fall on
the page?
That seems to have been gettingattraction.
Um, really different places.
We, we didn't want any blogposts to look exactly like
another one.
We don't want people to get usedto what they're seeing.
Um, so on some blog posts wemight have a call to action in
(06:54):
the middle of the content thattells people why they should
join ASN.
On another one we might have acall to action to sign up for a
webinar.
So it kind of depends on thecontent and um, what makes most
sense in, in that post at thebottom of every single post, I
believe there is an anopportunity to subscribe to
(07:15):
newsletters.
Gotcha.
Zach Wilson (07:18):
This is a interesting conversation.
Just the way we're talking aboutit too, because this is
something we grapple with, withtalking to the greater public
and sometimes our clients too.
And what, what is, what is this,how do you describe this?
This is a for, for digitalmarketers, this is called
(07:40):
something called conversion rateoptimization, right?
Or conversion optimization.
But you talk to somebody aboutthis without giving all of the
anecdotal information thatyou've just giving their eyes,
their eyes glaze over and theyfall asleep on you.
Cause you just don't know.
But ultimately what you'redoing, what you're doing is, uh,
(08:01):
you've been doing conversionoptimization to your blog posts
and yeah.
Um, and, and engaging, findingopportunities to engage your
readers and collect valuableinformation, um, which, which
is, which is, which is amazing.
I mean, that's, yeah.
Is there any, is there any datathat you guys have on that or,
Amy Gavin (08:23):
yeah.
So, um, nine months after thelaunch, well, let me back up.
So we launched the redesign[inaudible] with our annual
meeting.
So that worked out really wellfor us because we were able to
use these new features and jumpin from our annual meeting.
We had all this content comingout of our annual meetings, so
(08:44):
we were able to jump in and puteverything to use right away.
Um, so that really propelled usforward because it showed an
increase in traffic right away.
We were excited, so we kept itup, um, and pull in a lot of
content from our journals andfrom our meeting and, and
elsewhere.
So nine months after the launchof the redesign, we showed an
(09:08):
increase in users by 35%
Chris Bonney (09:11):
so tell us about, um, you know, so you, you're,
you weren't putting in a bigeffort around gathering the
emails and first party data, butthen you were, and you made a
real conscious effort to notonly make sure that the blog
posts were unique in, in thebody area of them, but that you
were putting these various callsto action.
So from another data point, whatwas that acquisition of, uh, the
(09:36):
emails and the first party data?
How, what did those numbers looklike for you?
Amy Gavin (09:41):
Yeah, so nine months after the launch, we had 2,500
web visitors to sign up toreceive emails from us.
So yeah, and in the context ofour membership and our meeting
attendance, that's a pretty goodnumber.
I'm with, we have about 7,000members and about 3,500 people
attend our meeting each year.
So, uh, we have been reallypleased with that number.
(10:03):
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (10:04):
Did it, did it claim, did it, did it spike in
and go up and down and for anyparticular events or is that
just like a steady over ninemonths, there was X number
generally per month that waskind of the same or
Amy Gavin (10:18):
it's pretty steady.
Um, and I think that's due to uspublishing content on a steady
routine basis.
Zach Wilson (10:25):
Oh, that's a, that's 300, that's 300 unique,
uh, pieces of data every month.
Yeah, that's pretty, that'spretty crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think the now, well, I don'tknow that to explore it a little
bit more.
I mean, from what you're doingin terms of different channels,
how are you, have you doneanything different differently
(10:49):
over the last nine months to,um, garner new readership or is
it, is it organic?
Is it content marketing?
Is it social?
Is it the, the, the, the, someof the whole, um, yeah, I mean,
what are you doing in terms ofupping, upping that or is it
across all channels?
It's increased.
Amy Gavin (11:08):
Yeah.
Um, so there's obviously a lotof marketing that goes behind it
.
We didn't just throw everythingup there and the masses roll in.
Um, you built it and they cameback.
But behind the scenes we weredoing a lot to encourage traffic
to come to our site.
(11:28):
Um, their organic traffic didincrease by 21% during those
nine months.
So I guess that's the massesrolling in by themselves.
Um, but we also ramped up oursocial media, so for every blog
post that we, uh, that wepublished, we promote it on
social media as well with ateaser and a branded URL,
(11:52):
shortened URL to drive people tothe site.
Um, for really high valuecontent.
We did some ad retargetingthrough another tool where we
targeted people who had visitedour site before with an ad on
third party sites to try to drawthem back in and give us their
email address on this second go.
(12:15):
Um, email marketing, we rampedup a little bit, um, and we
changed a little bit, whereas inthe past we would provide full
text content and an email to themedia for example.
And we changed that where wewould give them just a snippet
and send, send them to our siteteaser.
(12:37):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's important.
Cause we also, yeah, we alsonoticed a lot of referral
traffic, a big increase inreferral traffic.
So I think that's due toproviding tools on the page for
people to share with.
I enjoyed seeing that, um,because it means people, you
know, if they're sharing ourcontent, then it's resonating
(12:57):
with them and, and they like it.
Yeah.
We know that our referraltraffic increased by 39%.
So that was a pretty goodnumber.
Wow.
Zach Wilson (13:05):
It's fun to, uh, it's fun to just seem, I mean,
you know, we're talking about anew nutrition, nutrition science
and this isn't a, this isn'tlike a, I don't know, really
masses fodder, but you know, toget to get some social, uh,
social traffics and some socialchair shares and referral
(13:26):
traffic, that's, that's, that'sgotta be really gratifying.
I would,
Amy Gavin (13:30):
yeah.
Yeah.
You'd be surprised though.
Nutrition scientists talk aboutthe content a lot.
There's a lot to argue.
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (13:38):
I'm sure that's true.
Hey, can you talk about, um, youuse feather, right, for the
remarketing stuff.
Can you talk about how longyou've been using them, what it
takes to ramp up with somethinglike that?
You know, what is it for thosethat don't really am familiar
with that term or familiar withthe product?
Just talk about what it is, whyyou chose it and how it's
working.
Amy Gavin (13:57):
Yeah, so we've been onboard with feather and that's
FEA, T H R feather, um, for orjust over a year.
Um, and what they provide is aplatform that enables us to
track our, our web visitors buya cookie on our site.
So if a, if a visitor hascookies enabled, we can track
(14:20):
them and then display ads tothose people on third party
sites.
So if they go to the weatherchannel after they visit our
site, they could see an ad popup from us.
Chris Bonney (14:30):
Can you control who, what sites the edge show up
on?
How do you figure that out?
Amy Gavin (14:35):
Um, you can't exclude sites, so if there's something
you want to avoid, then
Chris Bonney (14:41):
that might be counter to your content or not
in line with your organizationalvalues or something like that.
Amy Gavin (14:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
We haven't run into that yet,but it is, um, feathers, super
easy to use.
It's very DIY.
Um, takes no time to getstarted.
There are lots of options withinthe platform.
It's been successful for us.
We've been able to track a lotof conversions for, uh,
(15:08):
registrations for our meetingand for webinar signups and
different things like that.
Chris Bonney (15:13):
What's the pull to get them back?
In other words, what's the adabout?
Is it an annual meeting ad?
Can you control what ads show upwhere or when or, or what is it?
How do you get them to see thatad on Yahoo or wherever and send
them back over?
What is, what do you guys put onthat ad?
Amy Gavin (15:31):
Yeah, so an example campaign for us would be, um, we
would design an ad, let's sayabout content from our meeting.
Okay.
So if we had sessions aboutpediatric nutrition, we could
design an ad that focuses onthat.
And then we go into the featherplatform and say, Hey, target
(15:54):
everyone who's visited ourprogram page on our meetings
site in the past six months anddisplay this ad to them about
pediatric nutrition.
And then the ad would link backto maybe our registration page
or maybe a landing page justabout pediatric nutrition.
It depends on the call to actionthere, but, um, you can get
(16:16):
really granular and who you'retargeting
Zach Wilson (16:18):
[inaudible].
Amy Gavin (16:20):
Um, you can also geotarget.
Hmm.
So we've had some success withthat where there had been
competing meetings andconventions and things and we
kind of draw a circle aroundthat convention and throw ads at
people within that target areaand drive them to our site.
Chris Bonney (16:41):
Okay.
Smart.
Yeah, this morning.
It's great.
Zach Wilson (16:46):
So what other, we've talked about, we've talked
about a lot in terms of uh, um,email marketing and content
marketing, uh, re-targeting.
What do you, what do you feeltactically from the organization
as an, as the director ofdigital strategy?
What do you, what do you guys,what's your best channel?
(17:06):
What are you guys reallysucceeding and what's, uh,
where, where, where can youimprove?
Um, just just curious.
Amy Gavin (17:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I feel like we've succeededin the past year with, with
ramping up our content strategy,uh, before we had all of this
great IP that we weren't reallyusing on w in channels outside
of the original channel, if thatmakes sense.
(17:37):
So for example, journal content,it just lived in our journals,
but we didn't do much with itoutside of the journals.
We didn't translate it for amore lay audience to drive more
people our websites.
So that has been a bigimprovement for us over the past
year and I think has led to alot of success and a lot of new
(17:57):
traffic.
Zach Wilson (18:00):
Let's actually, I want to, let's just dig into
that a little bit because justcoincidentally the, in the last
month we've had a quite a fewconversations about this and
this general notion and fear ofpeople.
We're giving away our IP.
This is protected.
We don't want to put out morecontent.
(18:21):
We want to protect it.
We want to make people pay.
I mean, can you talk about thatshift from um, just
bureaucratically or from theboard or how you actually sold
that or anything along thoselines?
Amy Gavin (18:36):
Yeah, I hear that a lot too.
And we feel that way.
Um, but in order to get newsubscribers and in order to get
the media to report on ourcontent, you got give them
something, right?
So when we share content fromour journals, um, it's very
(18:57):
brief.
Um, it has high level data andthe purpose is really to draw
them back to the journal, thejournal article and either
subscribe or do pay per view onthat article itself.
Or the goal could be to attracta new author to submit his or
(19:18):
her research to the journal.
So there's that angle as well.
Zach Wilson (19:22):
So are you doing, I mean, in terms of this process
strategically, are you, you doa, you're doing just like direct
pull from an abstract or youhave one of the writers say, you
know, here's this journalarticle.
Let's consumer Phi.
This just made up word.
(19:45):
Um, you know, let's, let's makethis appeal to the masses and
tease out some content.
And then, uh, as you talkedabout earlier, you, um, making
direct, uh, calls or[inaudible]to try people say, you know, for
more in depth version of this orwhat do you, what are you doing
and are you seeing a direct tieto those, uh, those journals?
Amy Gavin (20:07):
Yeah.
So, um, it is hard.
It's hard to choose content fromjournals because it can be so
scientific and so high level andit's hard to know what's going
to resonate with the public.
Are our editors choose articleswhen they're accepted and
identify them as possibly beingnewsworthy or noteworthy.
(20:29):
And then we have writers whoreview and write copy based on
the article.
Um, and some writers are, have amore scientific slant and then
some have a more marketingmedia, newsy slant.
Um, so I think that's somethingwe need to work is our voice and
how we're communicating theresearch to the public.
(20:53):
But we've made great progress inthe meantime of using the
content really to advance ourmission.
Zach Wilson (21:01):
Yeah, clearly, I mean with those, some of those
numbers that you shared
Amy Gavin (21:05):
and, and it's really interesting to see on social
media and on the web trafficreports on what content really
resonates.
I mean some of it people just gowild over and then other times
something that I think is reallyinteresting as a consumer and
flops flops.
Yeah.
(21:25):
Yeah.
That's interesting.
So it's hard.
Yeah.
Is, is there a topic, I meanjust for those of us that are
interested in nutrition and youknow, is there one in particular
that kind of, you remember thatwas really popular or something
that you thought, what's goingon here?
Um, yeah.
Eggs.
Oh really?
Okay.
People like to talk about eggs.
(21:46):
Isn't that something?
Okay.
I think the article about egg,
Zach Wilson (21:49):
this is huge.
Is that on, is that operating?
I thought I went to the site
Amy Gavin (21:53):
well yesterday.
There too before.
Yeah.
I think there isn't.
Yeah, that's like you're goingto do, are you going to do like
a SQL to it just to keep theblockbuster hits CQL and this
eggs too.
Yeah.
Eggs.
Eggs are always a hot topic.
Okay.
Zach Wilson (22:08):
Alright.
There was a, speaking of eggs,the place we went for lunch
yesterday, I didn't get it, butthere was a a, it was like a
vegan burger place, you know, so, um, uh, the meat, like
meatless burger place,impossible burger and some
varieties of that.
And one of them was like an egg.
Like the burger was made.
The Patty was like made out oflike egg.
(22:29):
That's not big enough.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That one wasn't vegan, but itwas just straight.
It's strong.
It struck me as like, Oh, I'venever seen this before.
That before we then, yeah,either at, I'd so, I don't know.
Amy Gavin (22:41):
Are eggs good or not?
We need to know, Oh, I can't getan answer.
I want to know.
You can't go on.
The record is telling you, Ohno, half of ASN were declaring
that eggs are, I can send you toa great website.
[inaudible] dot org you can do asearch.
Okay, we'll search eggs andwe'll do read all the arguments.
(23:02):
Okay, we'll do it.
I'll do it.
Zach Wilson (23:04):
So if you were, if you were stepping away from
this, looking back and you couldhave a conversation with
yourself after this and say, youknow, this is, Hey Amy, this is
what we need to prove.
Oh, this is one thing we need toreally work on and improve over
the next six months.
Yeah.
What would you, what would yousay to your self after this and
(23:25):
say focus, focus, focus.
Let's improve on X,
Amy Gavin (23:30):
um, audience segmentation.
[inaudible] another big one.
So we did a great job over thepast year and will and continue
to do a great job of acquiringdata, acquiring first party data
in a safe and quality way.
Um, we're not breaking any laws.
We all know there are so manylaws right now and going into
(23:51):
effect soon about data privacy.
So I think we've done reallywell with acquiring qualified
leads.
It's in a good way because they,they're offering up their data
on their own.
Where we have sort of fallenshort is the second part of that
plan where we figure out how toprovide content to the different
(24:14):
segments of those audiences.
Um, we did have, we have thingsin the works.
We had a marketing consultantcome in and lead our whole staff
through a two day workshop wherewe talked about our current
audience and our targetaudiences and we narrowed it
down to seven personas.
(24:34):
So we will now be using thoseseven personas to really drive
everything we do.
Those personas will beintegrated into marketing plans,
into new product development,into how we use our website and
how we use email marketing sothat, okay.
A year ago I would, uh, if Icould talk back, I would say get
(24:58):
a better plan and for audiencesegmentation.
Zach Wilson (25:00):
Interesting.
Yeah.
And there's, I think there'ssomething there too with M and a
, and you may not even have ananswer for this, but it's just
something that I thought aboutas you've collected whatever you
said, 2,500, uh, 2,500, 3000pieces of first party data.
And if you're just collectingemail address, got to figure
(25:22):
out, you've got to put those,each one of those people in new
a bucket.
So is there a, uh, is there a,do you have a solution in our
plan to do that?
Amy Gavin (25:30):
We do.
We do have a plan.
It'll be harder going backwardswith data we've already
acquired, but there are tools onthe market that we have our eyes
on that we're hoping toimplement later this year.
There's a lot of stuff we needto do upfront to, to prepare to
do that.
Um, but starting in the fall,most likely we will be using a
(25:53):
new email platform where when auser comes to our site and signs
up to receive our emails, itdepends on what page they
visited and what page theysigned up on and that will lead
them into a, to a marketingfunnel based on their PR, the
persona that they, that we kindof apply to them based on our
(26:16):
seven personas.
Zach Wilson (26:17):
So just talk me through that step-by-step.
So I go to an article on eggs.
As Chris said, I've mid page, Isee, you know, sign up for more
monthly updates on our articlesor whatever.
I enter my email address, hitsubmit, then it dumps into this
(26:38):
new workflow.
Amy Gavin (26:40):
Yup.
Yup.
So then you're identified, solet's say that article had a
real medical focus and the focuswas cardiology because of eggs,
heart health.
So we've now identified you assomeone who[inaudible] Mike
practice medicine and who mightbe interested in heart health.
(27:02):
So we can now target you withmore articles in that topic
area.
Zach Wilson (27:08):
Interesting.
And so is there anything me asthe reader slash subscriber
we'll have to do in addition tohit subscribe or is this just
automatically done based on themeta data and the article and
this email software?
Amy Gavin (27:25):
Um, there are multiple ways to do it.
We can do it where the, the userdoesn't know.
Yeah.
Or we could have the user selectsomething.
Gotcha.
But we do want to limitbarriers.
Zach Wilson (27:39):
Yeah.
Friction is a big, yeah.
User experience and friction isa big thing, but um, yeah, yeah,
yeah.
So that, that's, that's going tobe really interesting.
Amy Gavin (27:48):
Yeah.
And then after a user signs upfor emails, we want to give the
opportunity for them to go to acentral landing page and select
what, what type of emails theywant to receive from us.
Zach Wilson (28:02):
Oh, okay.
Gotcha, gotcha.
Interesting.
Yeah.
That will, yeah.
That will help.
That will help that audiencesegmentation a lot.
Yeah.
And driving, I mean, this issomething we hear a lot two is
we were, a couple months ago, wewere talking to somebody about
this problem.
They've got tons of subscribersand they send the same, same
(28:26):
email to, you know, 10,000subscribers.
It's like, well, you know, thatthat sort of audience and that
messaging is, is not gonnaresonate with the people.
And then ultimately you just getas a, as a, as a receiver of
those or recipient of thoseemails, it just becomes noise
because you're not talking mylanguage, then unsubscribe.
(28:48):
Follows and so on and so forth.
Yeah.
It's a vicious cycle, so, yeah.
Amy Gavin (28:54):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's tough.
Zach Wilson (28:55):
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
Are you guys, uh, Chris lovesthis topic in terms of a
conversational web and emailmarketing.
Are you guys gonna make a, aplan to make any sort of shifts
in style and your email?
Are you guys doing the, um, thesort of like HTML high, high
(29:16):
gloss or high high fashionedemails or you're going to move
to more of a, um, sort of apersonalized conversational
style?
Or is that
Amy Gavin (29:26):
we haven't really gotten that far.
Um, I think it depends on thecontent.
We market our meetingdifferently than how we market
it, our journal content anddifferently from how we market
things to the media.
So I think it'll just depend onthe content.
(29:46):
Yeah.
Zach Wilson (29:47):
Yesterday Chris put a screenshot up of a, um,
conversational email to a groupof people and they, they all,
they all about jumped out oftheir seat.
Like, we can't do this.
This is like, what is this?
This looks like an email from my[inaudible].
Amy Gavin (30:04):
[inaudible] yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And that might be useful formembership related emails for
renewing membership and thingslike that.
Um, but other things maybe notso much.
Zach Wilson (30:17):
Yeah.
Yeah, you have to.
I mean, it's just like anything.
And um, and I think in digitalmarketing and in general,
whatever, whatever channelyou're working on, it's, yeah.
Develop a hypothesis, run sometests and see what produces the
best results, right?
I mean, it's, uh, and it, Ithink a lot of people, a lot of
(30:41):
people in general getoverwhelmed by just the idea of
that.
Like, I can't, you know, I don'tknow what to do.
And it's just like, just if youdon't know what to do, just your
first step is just do, trysomething that you yourself
would want to receive and, orsee.
Right?
It's not that none of this is, Imean, it's very data-driven and
(31:05):
somewhat scientific, but there'snot an exact science behind a
lot of this.
Especially, you know, if you'rein the nutrition world, if
you're an agency like us, I mean, uh, there's a lot of it.
A lot of this is just peoplejust experimenting with some
different ideas and somedifferent hypotheses and seeing
what sticks.
But, you know, rinse and repeatis, it's a sort of suggestion
(31:27):
that I give to people and don'tbe afraid to, don't be afraid to
try something.
You know?
I mean, you guys, you guys are agreat example.
You know, taking a leap of faithand try something on your blog.
It's exactly right.
You know,
Chris Bonney (31:39):
that's a recurring theme for us.
It's a recurring theme on thespot on this podcast.
Um, yeah, that, you know, wecontinue to talk about and
mention and, and recommend.
Just, just get in there and doit.
Start looking at some numbers,tweaking and before, you know
what that year's gone by andyou're a pro,
Amy Gavin (31:55):
right?
Yeah.
I mean really that's kind of howwe feel about the data
acquisition on the blog.
I didn't even realize it was sosuccessful until months down the
road.
Sure.
Right.
Chris Bonney (32:06):
Okay.
That wasn't a good idea.
I'm glad we did it.
Amy Gavin (32:08):
Yeah.
So I definitely advocate forjust jumping in and trying
things and like you say, there'sno science to it because it
changes every day.
There's a new tool.
There's some new techniques Ihave read.
Great
Chris Bonney (32:22):
segue.
I mean, I think, you know, um,uh, as we're, as we're getting
ready to wrap up today'spodcast, want to ask you, um,
what is it on the horizon?
Like you just said, there'sother things out there and
you've mentioned a few thingsthat you're looking to do in the
future, but what are, you know,what's the big vision?
Are there tools that you'relooking to get into someday or
you know, this is sort of thevision for where you want to
(32:42):
take things.
Anything you can share in thatregard?
Amy Gavin (32:45):
Sure.
Um, I think our work in audiencedevelopment is gonna drive a
lot.
I w there will be some marketresearch done soon in relation
to that.
So that'll drive a lot of what[inaudible] is doing in terms of
tools and techniques.
(33:06):
A new email marketing platformis on the horizon for us.
Um, also some new engagementtools for our members, which we
hope will also encourageincrease in web traffic and
increase in engagement on oursites.
So things like things like, um,apps that sort of mimics social
(33:27):
media that our members can useto network with each other and
share our content, an externalcontent to really, um, so that's
on the horizon,
Zach Wilson (33:37):
right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Those are, yeah.
That's cool.
You guys are doing great stuff.
[inaudible] something we shouldput a pin in and have a follow
up.
But I, I, that just occurred tome cause it's also recurring, uh
, conversation, which isinteresting that you have
talked, you've talked a lotabout, a lot about different
(33:59):
toolsets, uh, feather and thewebsite as a tool.
Your CMS as a tool.
Yeah.
The new um, email platform.
What you haven't talked a lotabout, which is kind of
fascinating to me is your, yourAMS and how, how that's actually
used behind, I mean youmentioned it talk for 40 minutes
(34:19):
and no one said AMS.
She said it once, it justoccurred.
Well she said it once.
She said it once, but you know,this is like Ed's very
interesting.
Yeah.
And I mean maybe we can have afollow up on, on, on just that
and you know where the AMSstands in this whole, um,
digital,
Amy Gavin (34:37):
well, I can give you a, yeah, I can give you a quick
tidbit about that.
We treat our AMS as the versionof record, so we don't do a lot
of writing back to our AMS.
We want to keep the data in theAMS as clean as possible and we
preserve it so that we can useit for membership communications
(34:59):
so that new users don't get inthere and then unsubscribed from
things.
So yeah, it's, it's, it's not somuch used as a marketing tool at
ASN.
Chris Bonney (35:12):
Yup.
That makes sense.
Yeah, makes sense.
Um, Zach, you wanna have anyclosing words as we get ready to
wrap up for today?
Anything you want to ask Amy,anything you want to talk about
and share with the listeners?
Zach Wilson (35:24):
Um, no.
I, one just thanks for havingus.
This is a great conversation and, uh, again, uh, just don't be
afraid to try new things.
Um, try to avoid death bybureaucracy, uh, in decision
making.
Um, if you, if you have thefreedom to do so.
It sounds like Amy has a lot offreedom to, uh, as a, as a, as a
(35:49):
digital strategist, um, to dothese things and, and try
different things.
She's clearly, uh, earned a lotof trust from, uh, her, her
executive director and the board, uh, to jump off and
experiment.
So, um, if you have the freedomto do that, run off and do it
and have some fun.
Chris Bonney (36:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
Amy Gavin from the Americansociety for nutrition,
nutrition.org.
Check it out.
She's doing great.
Great work out there.
Amy, thanks for joining ustoday.
Thanks for having me.
I hope our story inspires someof your other listeners.
Yeah, awesome.
I'm sure it will is great stuff.
Web marketing insights podcast,closing another edition.
(36:29):
Thanks everyone for listening.
Please subscribe.
If you're watching this onYouTube, check us out on iTunes
and Spotify and all the othergreat channels as well.
Feel free to leave comments onany of those.
We'd love to hear from you.
Uh, thanks for joining us guys.
I will catch you next time.
Hi everybody.
Thanks for checking out thepodcast today.
Go to Gulo Solutions.com tolearn more about us.
(36:51):
Subscribe to our newsletter.
Uh, also if you can hitsubscribe on our channel here on
YouTube, uh, that would be greatas well.
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