NPR Digital Services Blog

We’re thrilled to be able to reduce your Pulse and Streaming costs starting October 1st. By pooling our bandwidth purchases with NPR, adding a second content delivery vendor and holding out the prospect of additional network buys, we’ve been able to negotiate lower pricing – savings we can pass on to you. Pricing will be 10-40% lower, depending  your usage level.

We look forward to announcing additional cost-saving master services agreements in the months to come.

We’re busy getting read for the PMDMC next week. Come meet the NPR Digital Services team next week at the 2011 PMDMC in Pittsburgh, PA. We’ll be available throughout the conference to provide you with information about the evolving strategy of the NPR Digital Services group.

Come and say hi to Bob Kempf, Suzanne Brendle, Doug Gaff, Joe Orlando, Sarianne Palmesano and Janeen Williamson at our booth, in hallways, and at the welcome party.

Interested in some undivided attention? Schedule an info or training session with us.

Sponsor Showcase-NPR Showcase: NPR Digital Services – Your Partner
Thursday, July 14 2:30-3:45
Learn more at Thursday afternoon’s breakout session, where Bob Kempf and team lead a discussion about our new services, including Core Publisher, will help stations produce better local online content, deepen audience relationships, and grow revenue. Learn about partnering with NPR DS to get to the ‘core’ of your digital strategies.

People have been talking about us. Here’s a quick run down of some recent coverage:

NPR Promotes Digital Initiative
The Wall Street Journal
MEDIA & MARKETING
NPR has kicked off a 10-week, 18-city “road show” to sell its affiliates on a new digital plan it hopes will help secure public radio’s long-term health at a time when some of its chief sources of revenue have come under threat.

The newsonomics of the next-gen NPR network
Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard
NPR Digital Services is trying, against some odds, to set a new model. …As we look at the newsonomics of NPR Digital Services, we can see big potential.

Today is the last session of the NPR Digital Services Road Show.  For those member stations that weren’t able to make it to one in person, there will be an NPR Digital Services Webinar 7/8/11 noon-3pm EDT. All types of station staff welcome.

Please join us,  it’s an opportunity to engage with us and hear what the NPR Digital Services vision and value proposition is really about. Sign up info found on AREPS list and Station Connect.

Here’s a glimpse of the Boston Road Show (thanks Mark!)  http://flic.kr/s/aHsjvaSseA

Non-member stations – never fear, we haven’t forgotten about you. We’ll have a call with you after PMDMC.

I get questions often about writing good subject lines for your email newsletters. What is the ideal length?  How can I decrease the odds of my email getting stuck in the recipient’s spam filters?

Here are some recommendations for subject lines:

• Keep it short: less than 50 characters.  Also keep in mind the increasing number of mobile users who’s inbox display may be even shorter.
• Subject line and ‘From‘ address should work hand-in-hand to ensure that the recipient recognizes the sender as a trusted source and therefore won’t delete it, or worse, mark it as spam.
• Avoid too much capitalization and refrain from using exclamation points!
• Avoid words known to increase spam score, such as ‘Buy‘ and ‘Free‘. If you must use them, at least don’t make it the first word in the subject line and definitely don’t use an exclamation point after it.

I was at the Digital Services Road Show in Rochester yesterday, and Jerry Urban from WNED asked me a good question about the streaming encoders. When can he touch them, and when shouldn’t he, and why not?

The encoders are our property and solely for streaming usage. It’s not that they’re particularly fancy in any way, we just need consistency across them all so we can support them.  Here are some guidelines.

Totally fine: Encouraged, actually.

• Reboot the encoder.
• Browse the web to make sure that the encoder has internet access.
• Browser updates.
• Checking Winamp to make sure the ‘Output‘ tab is selected.
• Checking to make sure LogMeIn is active.

Gray Area: Usually fine, but if something goes wrong, please let us know that you recently updated some software.

• Run Windows Updates.
• Other software updates.

No-Nos: We’ve learned the following the hard way.

A friendly reminder about best practices for your online passwords. I know, we all have too many of them to remember, but it’s important that you set strong passwords for your own safety and security.

Ideally:

• At least 8 characters, and longer is better.
• They should include both letters and numbers.
• You can use special characters and punctuation.
• Our system is case sensitive, so use both upper and lowercase letters.
• Try to avoid repetition, dictionary words, letter or number sequences, usernames, your pet’s names, or biographical information (e.g., your birthday).
• Don’t reuse the same password (i.e. your Facebook password).
• You should change them periodically.
• No, you should not save them in your browser.

If the password you use to access your NPR Digital Services tools looks something like the following, it’s time to reset and strengthen it:

• password
• fido

Segmenting your email list and sending targeted messages to groups of people based on their interests, behavior or demographics is a proven tactic to increase the effectiveness of email campaigns and open rates. People want to receive information that is relevant to them, and sending an e-blast to everyone on your list will not necessarily accomplish that.

Segments can be based on particular characteristics or interests of the person or how they have interacted with your organization or emails in the past. If you do not have the necessary data already in your database, collecting interest information on the sign up form is a great place to start collecting data that you can then use to create segments easily.

For your e-renewal efforts, you could build segments based on donation history. For example:

• Exclude people who have made a gift in the past three months, are currently in renewal cycle, or have specifically requested not to receive e-solicitations via email.

Composer Pro Webinar June 28th

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/358453937

This webinar will be an overview of Composer Pro.  If you are new to this service or would like a refresher, then this webinar would be perfect for you! If you have specific questions, please share them with us ahead of time. And yes, it’s free to our clients.

• Date: Tuesday, June 28, 2011
• Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Due to some staffing changes and summer vacations, turn around time for design and HTML update requests is going to be slower than usual for the next few weeks.

For best results, please give us 5 days notice when possible, and also include your ideal due dates as well. We’ll do our very best to minimize the impact on your schedules.

As always, contact us if you have more questions or anticipate high level needs over the next few weeks.