Head of Audience Strategy, Newspack at Automattic

Newspack is seeking an experienced digital news strategist to oversee the development of its audience engagement and revenue tools, manage related third-party partnerships, and work with customers to drive meaningful subscription and membership revenue.

Newspack is part of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WordPress VIP and more. Our mission is to help independent news organizations publish great stories, develop a loyal audience and find a path to financial sustainability at a moment when local journalism faces immense challenges.

We do that by deploying a publishing solution, developed in partnership with the Google News Initiative and WordPress.com, that is tailored to the needs of digital news publishers, incorporates industry best practices, and provides best-in-class support.

In just over three years, more than 180 publications have joined Newspack, ranging from venerable news organizations such as Washington Monthly and Center for Public Integrity to vibrant digital startups including  The Voice of SanDiego and MLK50. 

As Newspack’s audience strategist you will work with customers and our product engineering team to build out a suite of tools that help publishers manage readers through the funnel – from first encounter to newsletter signup to donation, to subscription and renewal. 

As a product leader, you will help shape Newspack as the preferred platform for creating innovative, habit-forming experiences centered on journalism and storytelling. You will drive economic value for publishers by deepening their connection and service to readers. 

As Newspack’s principal  thought leader on audience development, you’ll work directly with publishers to help deepen their understanding of effective audience acquisition, engagement and reader revenue strategies.

THE ROLE

As Newspack’s reader revenue strategist you will work with our engineering team to ensure that the products we build are closely aligned with the editorial and business needs of our customers and reflect best practices in digital publishing. That means staying abreast of  the wider news landscape as well as interacting with customers in Slack and other forums -- part of a lively feedback loop that lets us tailor our product to the customers.

Part of your role will be to work with selected “beta” customers to test and refine key features and measure their performance so they can be rolled out to the wider Newspack community with confidence that they’ll produce results -- whether it’s around audience development, engagement or revenue growth. Once a successful approach has been identified, you’ll help ensure that it’s incorporated into the tooling and champion its adoption by customers.

You will also work to develop new features that create new touchpoints with readers and build distribution opportunities to reach new audiences. As an advocate for publishers and readers, you will challenge the Newspack team to ensure ease of use, flexibility of deployment, and quality of experience throughout the product development process. 

You will also contribute to our weekly newsletter on topics related to audience and reader revenue development and organize regular forums in Slack where you will lead ongoing discussions about best practices in this space. 

You will be expected to be conversant in the various web metrics and periodically report on both the adoption and use of the tools and how those tools perform for specific customers.

You will evaluate and work with various third-party vendors whose tools and services complement the Newspack suite. 

Broadly, we are looking for candidates who are skilled at gathering and analyzing information, formulating and testing hypotheses, and developing and communicating recommendations. 

Specifically candidates should:

• Be well versed in fundamentals of the news business and quickly grasp the requirements of the digital publishing industry.
• Have experience with customer insight and data analysis.
• Be conversant in the use of various business intelligence and analytics systems.
• Be capable of leading reviews of business process and develop strategies for optimizing results.
• Be able to craft requirements and prioritize initiatives.
• Be capable of managing complex projects.
• Have strong conceptual and analytical skills.
• Be skilled at aligning multiple stakeholders. 
• Have excellent planning, time management and organizational skills.

Requirements:

• Experience in digital news operations and product development.
• Minimum five years in business analysis, business strategy or a related field.
• Demonstrated analytical and quantitative problem-solving skills.
• Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively – verbally and in writing. 

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