This week on The Publisher Podcast, as part of the product-oriented remit we’ve set ourselves for the series, we hear from Ludovica D’Angelo, Director of Publishing Operations for the Total Politics Group. As we discuss in the episode, that’s a very specialised publishing business – and a commensurately specialised role.
But for Ludovica, who has previously worked for publications as varied as news magazine The Week and luxury food and drink magazine Il luogo ideale, it has been another opportunity to discover best practice around managing product teams, launching timely new newsletters and titles, and finding new revenue opportunities.
Ultimately, her work – and that of all product teams within media businesses – is about rediscovering the primary of product in a shifting media landscape.
Here are just a few highlights, edited lightly for clarity:
Lean, speedy experimentation
We don’t publish the house magazine when Parliament is not sitting. So we had the six weeks leading to the election day where we were sat down and talked about what we could do, and we created a couple of new products. [These were] basically newsletters with short bursts, only during the election period.
One newsletter was aimed at prospective parliamentary candidates, and obviously some of them would maybe one day become MPs. We created this newsletter – six weeks of it – and we had around 2,000 recipients. We had virtually no unsubscribers and an open rate of over 33% which is definitely higher than what we usually have. So that was a huge success.
We discuss, then try to do a little bit of proof of concept. Also in order to go ahead, we establish what the what the revenues need to be, and then if we meet it, we go ahead.
Silos within publishers
In every single company I’ve been in, I’ve noticed that one of the biggest challenges in times is silos and how departments can be completely siloed. You have more involved, very specialized, laser-focused teams… but quite often they can not necessarily work like clockwork with other departments.
The way I [change things] has always been by focusing and fostering collaborations across departments. So I’m very interested in people. No matter what brand product you’re talking about, what company behind all of this, there’s people. My main focus is, has always been… people. I think originally I was brought into Total Politics to break the silos.
The role of product teams in revenue diversification
Because the landscape is so varied and and fast paced, I would say there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Having been in publishing basically all my life, there are challenging times, but there are interesting opportunities that opens up. So whether you are [politics-focused] publishers like us, or even consumer-focused publishing, more and more the solution is focusing on or offering niche areas where the the expertise is excellent.
There is a lot of choice out there. But also that gives the opportunity of creating a niche where you will always find that if you offer a great product, you will always find your niche.
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