A Q&A with Vox Media’s Camilla Cho on the publisher’s commerce newsletter expansion

By Sara Guaglione

Vox Media is working on identifying the titles, newsletters and franchises that are primed for the addition of shopping content, either by adding that content to existing newsletters or creating separate e-commerce newsletters. It comes down to finding that right mix of a “healthy” subscriber base and engagement, said Camilla Cho, svp of e-commerce at Vox Media.

Cho’s team runs the flagship newsletter from The Strategist, New York Media’s product recommendation title, from “soup to nuts,” Cho said. The team shared its insights with the team from Vox Media’s technology news publication The Verge to help it launch a deals newsletter in 2020. Cho’s team is now working to advise more Vox Media titles on incorporating e-commerce into their newsletters as well as launch shopping-focused newsletters. A Vox Media spokesperson declined to say how many people subscribe to the company’s newsletters or how much revenue its newsletters generate.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Is your team looking to put more commerce content into existing newsletters with an established subscriber list, or does it make more sense in some cases to launch a separate newsletter so as not to bring shopping content to an audience that doesn’t necessarily want it?

We’re starting to take the stock of all of the brands now. What newsletters do they have going? Can they see a shopping-focused audience that we could serve them with shopping-related newsletters — whether it’s a dedicated shopping newsletter that we send once a week or whether it’s just incorporating more shopping elements into the existing newsletter?

Before The Verge launched a newsletter for deals, we weren’t sure if the regular Verge newsletter subscribers had any interest in seeing items on sale or roundups of products. But we do know from their deals content on their site that the people who do visit those pages are very, very engaged. So rather than trying to push e-commerce into existing [newsletters] — which may be more catered towards people who are coming to The Verge for general tech news — it made more sense to spin off a new brand for the newsletter itself under “Verge Deals.” So where else can that make sense across our portfolio? Those are the types of things we’re starting to look further into and not just be doing the day-to-day production work of The Strategist newsletter.

How do you identify which titles and newsletters could be a good fit for additional commerce content?

It helps if the brand has experience with e-commerce content. Ideally, we’d be looking for some data points: what are the right product categories that the users of these sites are interested in? What are the retailers they seem to convert well at? What are the different price ranges? Are they higher-end or is it more deal-seekers? Those are all good signals that we could get from e-commerce articles. Having that as a starting point to be able to create relevant newsletters will be important.

I am very much for the newsletters that have a …read more

Source:: Digiday