Arun Rahim, Manorama Online’s Head of Business Development, joined last week’s virtual Digital Media India event to share their learnings and the results of the big project they undertook as part of the programme.

The goal of the programme was to encourage and coach participants on their journey towards digital reader revenues, said Ola Henriksson, WAN IFRA Expert Advisor, Independent Media Consultant, who moderated the session and led the bootcamp along with Gregor Waller, Principal Consultant, WAN-IFRA Consulting.
Changing the mindset from reach to engagement
The main objectives of the programme, which involved six individual modules with coachings in between, were to help the publishers with ways to drive engagement and grow digital subscriptions.

“It’s very much about the changing mindset from reach to engagement,” Hendriksson said. “We also talked about the importance and relevance of data, the different revenue and paywall models, and we were also talking a lot about the user journey, conversion and retention.”

Manorama Online is part of a legacy media operation with a 130-plus year history. It is the online division of Malayala Manorama, a daily morning newspaper in the Malayalam language based in Kottayam, Kerala, at the southwestern tip of India. The company also has numerous other publications.

Rahim said they took part in the bootcamp as part of their efforts to build the subscription product for Manorama Online, which they are planning to launch in t…