Rooted in tradition, Otheo chooses the future
Otheo is the new name for Kerknet, the weekly magazine Church & Life and book publisher Halewijn. With a history of more than 80 years of publishing and a firm foothold in Flemish parish life, the tradition is well represented. In addition to its traditional supporters, the publisher is also increasingly reaching new target groups. For example, people who are looking for spirituality and meaning or are interested in silence or reflection, or people with an interest in church buildings. In order to also permanently involve these people in the publishing industry, she has chosen to deepen and broaden them. It also means that she had to make a change in the way she works and modernize automation in order to (continue to) serve those new and old customers.
Frederik Van Wynsberghe, Director of Marketing & Transformation at Otheo, explains. “We are the only publisher in Flanders that specializes in information for and about the Catholic Church. Historically, people mainly know us from the weekly Kerk & Leven in print. In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in our digital reach via kerkenleven.be, Kerknet.be and Halewijn.info. We have seen that growth accelerate since the launch of Otheo.be. Growing digitally in reach is one thing, translating this into income by letting people also pay for our content online is a challenge. We also see and hear that with other media players, so we have the same challenge in that area. We are taking on that challenge by both deepening and broadening the content.”
Parish volunteers
Church & Life is deeply rooted in Flemish Catholic life. In addition to twelve (inter) national pages, each issue also contains four pages of content from the local parish. This means that every week there are 320 different editions of Church & Life appear. “Those four pages are filled by volunteers from the parishes. They literally bring the news from under the church tower to our readers. There is also a challenge here. Ecclesiastical regions are expanding, there are more channels for consulting local news and the number of parishioners is declining. As a result, the group of volunteers is shrinking. So we also need to do things differently so as not to burden people too much and still reach all interested parties.”
One new brand
The first change was that the three brands were merged under one brand that reaches the different target groups via different channels: Kerknet, Church & Life and Halewijn became Otheo together. “A new name means a new site, with a new design and approach,” says Van Wynsberghe. “Fortunately, we can build on the inspiring content that we have brought to various target groups in the past. Today, there are more than 15,000 articles on Otheo.be. Partly behind the paywall, partly in front of it. Every day, we are further expanding our offer for various target groups. We want to be a platform for everyone who is looking for meaning and spirituality. Within the Catholic faith and beyond.”
Personalize
“We make sure the content we bring is as close as possible to the interests of our subscribers. Both in print and digitally. To do so, we had to transfer the personal data of around one hundred thousand subscribers to Zeno. In addition, we had very good support from Socho: we always got a quick answer to our questions and we were always really well helped. It should also be easy to register and access the site. Fortunately, that was easy to adjust in Zeno.”
“We can now also create personalized products based on what we have about someone in the database. Because we have the parish pages Church & Life digital printing, in principle, we can record a personalized message for each reader. In the software we used before, this was not a standard option, it had to be developed as a customized solution. Now all we have to do is get it sorted out.”
No more Excel sheets
Zeno is also used by book publishers Halewijn. “There, too, a professionalization effort is now being made. The registration based on the ISBN and the link to stocks, costs, sales and author contracts means that there is now much more overview of how well the various titles are running. All of this used to be in different Excel sheets, but in Zeno, everything is organized in a clear way. We are working to make automatic reports with all relevant data over the course of the year. Thanks to, among other things, the link with the CB, we also have a quick overview of the stocks in Zeno from there. A lot was still done manually; now we see, for example, that by further automating the labeling of the packages, the processing of orders is faster. In the future, we also want to further automate this process by establishing a link with the webshop here.”
Future
Automation and modernization don't stop here. “So far, we had one subscription form, the annual subscription. If someone became a subscriber in the middle of the year, it cost half, but they had to renew at the end of the calendar year, i.e. after six months. This is of course completely inconvenient for someone who signs up in November: a message twice within a month that they have to pay. So we want to change that, we now also offer the option to pay per month (and not just per year). We will also automatically monitor people who purchase a trial subscription. We also offer the option to take out a fully digital subscription, with unlimited access to otheo.be in combination with a digital version of the weekly magazine Church & Life.”
