Are you acting as the general contractor of your content management system and all its digital publishing solutions, when it’s supposed to be managing itself?
One of our client members recently read a post, published by a well-known CRM system, on the many different digital publishing solutions you need to have and manage if you have an inbound content marketing system. She forwarded it to me with the addendum, “whoever wrote this needs to be slapped.”
She pointed out that publishers don’t want to interface with a dozen different vendors, they want a system that integrates them all. They want one dashboard, and one point of contact, and they want a general contractor. You can’t become a multiplatform publisher without one.
Not many people build a house and coordinate the efforts between the painter, the plumber, the electrician and the landscaper themselves; their contractor makes sure all the pieces are working in alignment. The same goes if you’re remodeling a house, you have an interior designer who makes sure you’re not ordering a gas oven when all you have are electric outlets.
So if you launched your website, and you inadvertently became a systems integrator when you didn’t go to school for it, and you think you can fix it as piecemeal, you really can’t.
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Our base for the Haven Nexus Content Management System is called Haven Core and it’s built from WordPress, a popular choice for many publishers. Most publishers will custom develop WordPress to suit their own needs, but custom builds are elaborately expensive because they’re always being built from scratch, become a money pit quickly, and are often mismanaged. With Haven Core, all of our clients are on the same codebase, and publishers choose to use, or not use, different modules. They’re not being built from scratch every time, and no time is being wasted on compatability trial and error. Haven Core includes content management, SEO management, RCLP management, registration and user management.
Below are the digital publishing solutions publishers need for an effective content marketing system:
Website Analytics System – To run a business that’s accountable for its actions, your team is constantly hovering over the reports in your analytics systems, in the dashboard of your email service provider, and in the sales reports of your payment processing system. Our module is called Haven Analytics and offers integrated website, email and ecommerce reporting which pulls in analytics from Google, WhatCounts and Paypal (the providers that we’ve built custom APIs for).
Customer Relationship Management System – In order to keep track of what your customers are doing, you might be using a system like SalesforceIQ (formerly RelateIQ) or WordPress plugin like UkuuPeople. We created Haven Relate as a module that would help create user/customer profiles that track their spending habits, register them for emails, and integrate them into marketing automation programs. It also supports offline (backend) order entry.
Marketing Automation Management – All publishers use some form of marketing automation, whether they’re drip campaigns or other type of autoresponder series. There are many different marketing automation platforms out there, but the immediate benefit of Haven’s module is that it is integrated with all your other publishing systems, right out of the gate. Our module is called Haven Engage and it includes managers for Floaters, Text Ads, OFIEs and puts 3C zone architecture into motion.
Email Management System – Whether you’re sending five thousand emails a day, or 500,000, you have a professional email marketing system that allows you to send daily newsletters and spotlights. We’ve partnered with WhatCounts, a tier 1 email management system and offer a completely integrated solution that we call Haven Mail. It even includes a newsletter automator that deploys newsletters automatically at set times daily, based on new content being posted to your portal.
Lead Management System – At Mequoda we consider new email subscribers to be your greatest leads. Some publishers use lead management software like Salesforce or Infusionsoft, but we created Haven Leads, which exports all leads for a product or given free download (new and existing subscribers) into a CSV file and emails them to a designated contact, on a daily basis.
Entitlement Management System – If you have a magazine website, or other type of subscription website where content is accessed behind a paywall, you may be looking into membership plugins like Wishlist Member or Member Press. We’ve created one that offers comprehensive premium subscription management called Haven Gate that allows you to create a paid subscription website with auto-renewal, including an online archive that’s sorted by issue and by topic category. It enables users to have a linear issue experience within an HTML magazine. And as you can imagine, so much more.
Digital Newsstand System – If you’re selling digital magazines, you may be on a newsstand like Apple or Google Play and may be using their system to sell issues, or one by your digital magazine publishing software provider. We created Haven Newsstand as a complete digital newsstand publishing and marketing system so that publishers can create and deploy their own magazines on the most popular newstands, manage subscribers, and offer web access to content with their subscription to take advantage of contrast pricing.
Directory Listings Management – If you manage or sell listings as a revenue source, you may be using something like Business Directory Plugin for WordPress. Our module is called Haven Directory and it offers integrated directory listings by topic category. It also allows you to successfully drive traffic from your portal posts to your resource directory listings. It provides the ability to display ‘related resources’ for each post you publish, where it pulls the top 3-5 premium directory listings from the category in which the post is published. The displayed links go directly to the sponsor’s page on your site. At the bottom of this ‘related resources’ section, a ‘see more / see all’ link will be displayed that takes the user directly to the resource directory category page.
Event Marketing System – If you’re selling seats at an event, you’re probably using an external event management system like Cvent that helps you collect funds, send confirmation emails, set different prices for early birds, and keep track of attendee information. Our Haven Live module integrates directly so that you don’t need any other program in order to manage your events. It establishes the categories and templates necessary to support an event schedule and associated event info (dates, location, pricing, event schedule/agenda).
Webinar Management System – If you conduct webinars, you might be using a provider like BeaconLive or any other webinar solution. We created Haven Webinar which supports free or paid registration for webinar events, allowing users to self-register and also integrates with popular webinar hosting providers such as Go To Webinar. It also allows publishers to bundle books and lessons into packages, offer discounts, manage registrants, integrate with Haven Classroom to issue certificates, and offer varying prices.
Learning Management System – If you offer online training, you might offer webinars through something like Teachery or even Udemy. We created Haven Classroom, which allows publishers to offer online courses, register and accept payment, offer quizzes within each webcast, offer group classes, transcriptions, product bundles, autorenewal subscriptions and more. Users can also sign in and take the quiz, create and print digital certificates for programs that have been completed, generate notices for certificate expirations, and send reminder emails.
Online Shopping System (Cart) – Publishers who sell many different digital or physical products might opt for a shopping cart like WooCommerce or Shopify. We’ve integrated a shopping cart and we call it Haven Shop, which works with Paypal Payments Pro and other payment processors. It’s fully integrated with the rest of the website, enabling users to have a single account, and incorporates Mequoda best practices such as opting users into email newsletters.
Online Shopping System (Single) – If you do not use a shopping cart system, you may be using Authorize.net or Google Checkout to process single sales from landing pages. We developed Haven Solo as a landing page tool that enables direct response single product marketing and payment processing.
Social Media Management System – Instead of using stand-alone social media systems like Hootsuite or TweetDeck, we use Haven Social, which allows editors to schedule and track social media on the same page as they write their posts so that links never break, and analytics are tracked on a post by post basis. In terms of content marketing, we think this is the best system out there.
Content Recycling Management – If you update or refresh older posts, you are waiting until the day it republishes to change the date. We haven’t found any good plugins for this, so we created Haven Blockbuster Manager and it will change the date automatically on the republish day you designate, keeping the same URL before and after.
Community Management System – Publishers who facilitate an online community through forums, will often use plugins like BBPress or BuddyPress. We created Haven Forum, a SEO friendly community management system that is fully integrated, allowing your users to have one account across the website.
Taxonomy Management System – Do you currently provide an easy way for your users to navigate your website? We created Haven Wayfinder as a taxonomy management system that allows your users to easily understand the scope of your website, and figure out where they want to navigate next.
Online Calendar Management System – In order to display an event calendar on your website, you may be using a plugin like All in One Event Calendar, or WP Calendar. We created Haven Calendar as an online calendar management system that allows you to set up and categorize event listings with all of the relevant date, time, and location information. Users can add the event to their Google calendar, or export to iCal, and easily search and share events. Event Organizers can submit events and venues for approval by operator. It also allows the operator to define associated SEO tags and expire listings that are no longer relevant.
Application Protocol Interfaces – And how do all of these work together? We created Haven API to integrate certain service providers directly into the system. It moves all premium subscription reporting, fulfillment, offer and renewal management functionality to select third-party fulfillment systems, including CDS Global, ESP, PSA, and SFG. It’s also a two-way API between the Haven Nexus System and a third party databases and email systems.
We’ve been building, inventing, and vetting since 2007. As we modify the system, we have clients ask us, “hey, do you have a model that integrates with XYZ?” And our answer might be, “no but we can.. the only question is, will we build, borrow or rent it?
Build: Will we build it from scratch?
Borrow: Will we find an open source solution that meets most needs of all our clients and modify?
Rent: Or will we find an existing 3rd party solution and fit in their API?
In all cases, it’s our job to make sure it’s fully integrated with Haven Core. When we build a module for one client, all clients get access to it. That’s why a Mequoda System is so beneficial to publishers – you’re part of an ecosystem that’s constantly evolving with best practices.
If you’d like to find out how you can hire Mequoda as your general contractor to integrate all of these digital publishing solutions, or just the ones you need, let’s schedule a time to chat.
Awesome blog. I enjoyed and Love what you’re doing here, Thank you.