Get ready for an all new way for your audience to search and manage their saved content with Grow.

Now, they can see your most popular content, dive into your archives, and when they find what they’re looking for, easily add it to their Bookmarks with just one click.

Bridging the gap between you and your readers

As a content creator, one of your top goals is to create an amazing experience for your site visitors. But your readers are currently lost in the shuffle of all your amazing content and getting frustrated when trying to find something.

We’re here to help!

Grow’s enhanced Search will:

✓ Bring you more traffic, pageviews and time on site with relevant searches at the top of your results

✓ Make it easier for readers to discover what they’re looking for by bundling related topics and showing them in the context of your content

✓ Encourage Bookmarks by making it easy for readers to save a post in one place and find it later on any device they choose to use

✓ Increase CTR — Grow is optimized to work with the latest technology on the web, which will make sure your article loads fast anywhere your readers are coming from

Our newly enhanced search experience is lightning fast and incorporates modern features with improved accuracy so you can more easily find what you’re looking for across all your posts and pages, even on sites with thousands of posts.

Ready for next steps? Let’s keep going. ⬇️

A refreshed Search Experience

You’ve asked and we’ve delivered NEW Search Experience enhancements just in time for the holidays. We’ve added some additional features to make searching for the perfect gift, recipe or project a little easier. But the absolute best part (quite frankly my favorite) of our enhancements? Well, let’s just say we will get to that fairly soon. 😉

The new Search user interface gives you and your readers one-stop access to:

• Bookmark from the Search homepage and search results (a double whammy!)
• Explore content from the Search homepage that breaks out your posts into most popular, latest and recommended as well as highlights their Bookmarks and recently viewed pages.
• Include the reader’s Bookmarks in search results

And the best part?

Publishers can also have a featured category pinned on their homepage!

I’d say its a win-win for everyone — as the publisher you have full control to display your top rated category (e.g. highlight your seasonal content) to increase engagement on your site while your readers can discover new content from their favorite publishers and save it to a list for easy access later.

And that’s just the start! 🤯

Ready to get started?

For anyone who knows me, they know I love a good recap, so let’s get into it!

We’re kicking off the holiday season with a major HIGH: an enhanced Search experience for you and your readers. Your readers now have the ability to locate their favorite articles within your site more quickly, and they’ll have even more fun exploring new articles on your site.

Plus, we’ve made it easier to search, save, and review all of your Bookmarks in one fell swoop, without ever leaving their browser tab. Just another way we are working to always improve your Grow experience.

Our team’s mission for Grow has always been to make audience engagement easier for our content creators, and that starts with you! Head to your Grow Publisher Portal to check out these new capabilities, and as always, let us know what you think so we can continue to make them even better. One day at a time, 365 days a year!

If you’re looking for a bit more guidance before you get started, I have just the thing for you. Our amazing Support team never misses a beat when it comes to guiding our publishers. Use the Help Center links below to explore more details on how to enable the enhanced search experience for your site(s).

What is the New Search Experience

New Search Results Display Settings

If you’re new here and are interested in learning more about how Grow is reimagining audience engagement for content creators, feel free to drop by one of our earlier articles ➡️  Getting Started with Grow: A Resource Guide for more details.

Thanks for stopping by and happy holidays from the Grow Team at Mediavine. Until next time — your friendly neighborhood Product Marketing Manager 🕷

The post Grow’s New and Improved Search Experience appeared first on Mediavine.

But, before I jump in to deliver some exciting news, I just have one thing to say: If you haven’t taken Grow for a spin — what are you waiting for?! While you’re contemplating the answer to this question, we’re continuing to make Grow even better!

A little over a month ago, we raved about our integration with ConvertKit. However, many of you were also curious to see if any additional email service providers (ESPs) were on our future roadmap. We get it. One size doesn’t always fit all.

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve added not one, but TWO additional ESP integrations to our Grow library: MailerLite and Mailchimp. I hope you’re sitting down because I can’t contain my excitement much longer. Let’s get into it. 🤜 🤛

Let’s break this down…

If we’re keeping score, I mean track, Grow has a total of THREE direct integrations with top requested ESP’s.

Grow’s MailerLite and Mailchimp integrations allow you to do more than just chat with your audience. With our MailerLite integration, you can add subscribers to your list and optionally add that same subscriber to a specific group. On the flip side with Mailchimp, you can add subscribers to an audience and also set subscribers to be added to a specific tag.

By supporting multiple actions per each individual Subscribe and Exclusive Content widget, the possibilities with your email list are endless. Ready for next steps? Let’s keep going. ⬇️

Enabling your ESP Integration

Now that I’ve gotten all of the juicy details out of the way, let’s jump to the moment you’ve been waiting for, enabling your ESP integration.

I’ve provided links to our Help Center below that’s packed with more details on how to enable the MailerLite and Mailchimp integrations.

Mailchimp Integration Basics

How Do I Connect My Mailchimp Account

MailerLite Integration Basics

Where Can I Find My MailerLite Integration Key

As third party cookies are scheduled to disappear, it is becoming more and more imperative to collect first party data to improve personalization of your email campaigns with your audience. Integrating your ESP with Grow is a great way to kick start this process. So, what’s next?

I’ll tell you! Use Grow’s power packed features such as Spotlight Subscribe, Exclusive Content, and Pop Ups to drive your engagement and collect first party data. These three options are not only fantastic to have active on your site but they are even more useful when you’re creating content that your audience craves. Don’t rent, own your audience!

Join our Grow community

Let’s recap! Grow now has THREE major ESP integrations with ConvertKit, MailerLite and Mailchimp. If we haven’t gotten to your flavor of ESP yet, we’ve got Zapier! What’s even more exciting is that we’ve consistently seen growth since our platform launched and it’s all thanks to our phenomenal Grow super fans!

I don’t know about you, but I’m always amazed by the work our Product and Engineering teams roll out each month. It literally has me on the edge of my seat with my hands over my mouth so that I don’t spill the details too soon. If you’re anything like me and share the same sentiments around new feature releases for Grow, stay tuned!

We have a few more major releases heading out the door before the end of the year. So, stick around, continue to share your feedback and let us know what you want to see next from Grow.

Thanks for stopping by! Until next time — your friendly neighborhood Product Marketing Manager 🕷

The post New from Grow: MailerLite & Mailchimp Integration appeared first on Mediavine.

Imagine this: Your business has picked up, and suddenly you realize you don’t have a system in place to collect emails from your readers. You immediately scramble to set up a lead capture form and turn to the internet for help.

You come across terms like ESP, workflows, CRM and automation. You spend days and maybe weeks researching ways to simplify and organize the process but instead get overwhelmed by the many options.

Dropping the ball in building a verified email list can have dire consequences not only for your business but also your readers. Here is where Grow makes a big impact.

As we’ve mentioned countless times, we are passionate about supporting you, the publisher, at every stage of your journey. With our continuous roll out of Subscribe features, Grow provides the perfect avenue for you to stay connected with your audience at every turn.

What’s New?

First up, Subscribe has a new location! The Subscribe homepage is now located below the Grow Settings in the left navigation bar of the Grow Dashboard. With this move we are able to take advantage of the full width of your settings page to allow you more space to focus on building your form.

The latest user experience provides a new way to edit, clone and view individual subscribe forms. You can also disable seasonal forms — instead of deleting them — to save for later use.

Subscribe Wizard

During the form creation process, you’ll also notice our newly enhanced Subscribe Wizard.

Don’t know where to kick-start the form creation process? Our Subscribe Wizard will guide you step by step through setting up each form. Please note: Your wizard experience will change based on your form selection.

And tossing in a little extra goodness, we’ve included an area for you to preview the form as you complete changes before it goes live on your site.

Pop Ups

Next up, calling all pro Pop Up users. We heard you loud and clear about optional pop-ups to grow your list and … WISH GRANTED.

Our Google-friendly Pop Ups go hand in hand with the next feature I will introduce. But before I get ahead of myself, let’s spend more time talking about the advantages of using Pop Ups and what “Google-friendly” truly means.

Pop Ups offer a few distinct advantages that explain why they’re associated with a higher conversion rate:

• They’re highly visible.
• Their design usually captures the visitor’s attention and prolongs the time spent on your website (thus increasing your conversion rate).

In order for a pop-up to be classified as Google-friendly, it cannot display on mobile if the reader is coming from Google on the first pageview.

Grow handles this mobile-specific Google policy for you! If a reader comes to your site from Google search, the mobile pop-up will not display to the reader on their first pageview. If they happen to visit a second page on mobile, Grow is allowed to serve the pop-up at that time and will take care of that too.

Interested in getting started with Pop Ups? Click the link here and head to the Help Center.

Category Targeting

This next feature packs a big punch. Introducing, Category Targeting!

Category Targeting allows content creators to set subscribe forms to specific categories on their site. Choose your next adventure with a total of four subscribe forms: Pop Ups, Manual Placement, Click to Subscribe and Spotlight Subscribe.

Note: Click to Subscribe and Manual Placement form types are not available with Category Targeting as they can be placed anywhere on a publisher’s website.

As a Grow user, you can configure as many widgets with the same form types as you want and target the same categories. In return, Grow will auto select one of the forms to render using AI.

In order to effectively run Category Targeting, your site needs to be on WordPress and running Grow Social to pull your site categories.

And before you ask, YES, our Google-friendly Pop Ups and Category Targeting features go hand in hand. Think of them as your two new best friends for Grow!

What’s Next for Grow?

Our Grow team has been teasing a few features across conferences, and as always, I’m ready to unload. Here’s a sneak peek of a few of my favorite features coming down the pipeline before the close of 2022.

• Downloadables – offers a more cohesive way to add your opt-in incentives and digital downloads to your subscribe forms.
• Auto Mailer – Don’t have a newsletter? That’s okay – this new feature allows you to build your subscriber list without the hassle of managing an email service provider. Automailer allows you to utilize Recommended Content as a path to get your readers funneled directly to your site – similar to an RSS feed.

Get Started With Grow Today!

Let’s recap! There are tons of new features coming your way before the close of 2022. If you’re like me and need a quick visual to recap all the great features we discussed today, no worries! I’ve provided links to our Help Center below that are packed with additional details on where to go and how to enable the various subscribe form types.

• Subscribe Homepage Overview
• Subscribe Form Types
• How to Edit an Existing Subscribe Form

If you’ve gotten this far and are amazed by the awesome work our Product team continues to roll out with Grow but haven’t created your FREE account, what are you waiting for? Click the link here to sign up today.

We’re shaping the content creation industry one feature at a time, and we hope you stick around for the journey.

Thanks for stopping by! Until next time — your friendly neighborhood Product Marketing Manager 🕷

The post Subscribe Enhancements for Grow: Category Targeting and Pop Ups appeared first on Mediavine.

At Mediavine, we’re passionate about supporting publishers at every stage of their journey and being completely transparent along the way. We love letting you know what is coming, and it makes us happy to see you excited for all the awesome features on the way.

And of course, we enjoy throwing some surprises in there too! 😉 Before I share an exciting sneak peek of what we’ve been up to on the Grow team, I want to introduce myself!

Hi! I’m Amethyst Duke, Product Marketing Manager for Grow, lover of all things Marvel (sorry DC fans).

For the next few minutes, I’ll discuss what Grow truly means for the publisher community and how our full service engagement suite is making unique strides in the content creation industry.

I hope you’re sitting because … it’s about to be, legend — wait for it — dary! LEGENDARY.

What is Grow and who is it for?

Grow is Mediavine’s full service engagement suite designed to streamline the process for publishers to connect with their target audiences.

With ever-changing consumer behavior, it is even more imperative that publishers build relationships with their audience and stay connected to their ideal readers today.

Grow allows publishers to understand their audience, create content they crave and form deeper connections with their readers.

Grow is not just perfect for publishers but for their readers as well. Once your readers create a Grow account, they can unlock exclusive content, share and bookmark their favorite posts and — my absolute favorite — subscribe to a publisher’s email newsletter.

There are so many action packed features to discover once you join the Grow community — it’s everything your business needs to do MORE of what you love.

But let me not get too ahead of myself. Let’s stay in the now!

What are the current Grow features?

Our FREE plan is perfect for Mediavine publishers, first-time publishers and anyone who has never used an engagement suite before. We know getting started with a new system can be overwhelming, and Grow has tons of features that make life easier for our publishers and readers — isn’t that the goal after all?

Below are a list of features (in no particular order) that are currently live in the market and ready for use as soon as you enable Grow in your Publisher Portal.

• Spotlight Subscribe – lets you build your mailing list while encouraging readers to sign up for Grow and consent to personalized ads. Our latest integration with ConvertKit gives you the option to connect to your ESP so that new subscribers go directly to your email list. Since Spotlight rolled out, we’ve had 3.2M new newsletter signups across the board for those using the feature.
• Exclusive Content – use this feature to lock full recipes, printables, digital downloads and more. Once the content is locked, a call-to-action will prompt a reader to sign up for a free Grow account, along with requesting their permission to add them to your email subscriber list and serve them personalized ads. After setting up Exclusive Content, our own internal sites began seeing over half of their subscribers come from Exclusive Content CTA’s! One of our employees here at Mediavine enabled this feature and experienced a 500% increase in subscribers. Amazing!
• Search – Readers can easily search for specific articles pertaining to their interest without the stress of falling through a rabbit hole.
• Recommended Content – displayed to the reader based specifically on their browsing activity and is intended to match their interests to encourage further exploration on the site rather than just show more content on the same subject.
• Recipe Card Integration – a prominently placed button in the recipe card will help encourage readers to save a recipe or how-to in their bookmarks list, which will also encourage them to sign up, authenticate and consent to personalized advertisements.
• Co-Branded Sign Up – allows you to upload your site’s logo so that it appears on the sign-up page a visitor sees when they create a Grow account through your site. This will signal to your readers that you are a part of the Grow community and can access their favorite articles and recipes with their personal Grow account.

What features are coming soon?

We are always listening to your feedback and are so appreciative of you taking the time to share it with us via in-person chats or email.

Every bit of feedback is reviewed by our product team and is used to help us plan improvements and updates for the future. Truly.

We love letting you know what is coming, and it makes us happy to see you excited for all the awesome features on the way.

We have tons of new features headed your way before the end of the year. Are you up for a sneak peek? 👀

📍 Quick tip … the more details you can provide on how a certain feature will help you in your business, the better our product team can use that feedback when planning future updates!

• New integrations to allow publishers to automatically add users to ESPs without the need for downloading and uploading a list or using an intermediary service such as Zapier.
• The ability to set specific subscribe forms to appear on certain pages and categories to better integrate with your email automations.
• Potentially expanding Subscribe to publishers without existing newsletters.
• Continuing to add integrations into our other products, such as Create.
• Entirely new products and experiences inside Grow that will further encourage subscriptions.
• Learn more about the growth of your audience and more with Grow Publisher Portal Analytics.
• And even more that we probably don’t know yet! As always, we build things based on your feedback, so tell us what you want by emailing grow.me@mediavine.com!

Is it really free to join the Grow community?

Yep! Grow is 100% FREE. No hidden costs, subscriptions or charges. Grow is marked to lessen the everyday hassle of being an independent publisher so that you can save time, stand out and provide top notch content to your readers.

Can Grow make me more money now?

YES! A hundred times, YES! Grow removes the guesswork, maximizing ad spend on your blog so you can spend more time engaging with your audience and building on your strategy. As soon as Grow is enabled, you should start earning more revenue immediately.

With every user that signs in to your website and gives you consent to serve personalized ads, you’ll automatically make more money with Grow.

What are the differences between Grow and Slickstream:

I know, I know — there are other platforms out in the market that provide a variety of features, but you’re probably wondering how they compare to Grow. If you’re more of a visual person, we’ve put together an easy-to-read table that breaks out the many reasons why Grow is the perfect solution for your publisher and readers’ needs. Let’s take a look.

We’re continuing to reimagine Grow with the goal of making it more powerful and easier to use for our publishers and their readers!

Getting Started with Grow

Now that I’ve laid all my cards on the table, what are you waiting for?! If you’ve read through the list of Grow features and thought “I need that!” then Grow has your name written all over it!

To get started, there are two different paths to enabling Grow as a publisher.

#1 Mediavine Publishers: Head to your Dashboard and enable Grow with one toggle. Go to Grow from the main navigation, Enable Grow at the top of the page and then click the Save settings button.

After you enable the setting, Grow is automatically loaded through the Script Wrapper and all configuration can be done directly in the Mediavine Dashboard. There’s nothing to install and you’re ready to get started discovering the latest features immediately!

#2: Non-Mediavine Publishers: We’re expanding Grow in more ways than one! Think BIGGER AND BETTER. If you’ve launched or are even thinking about launching a new site, Grow is your solution! Don’t wait to build traffic or spend countless hours researching how to engage with your audience. Use Grow as your engagement solution to capture your readers with exclusive content and provide personalized ads. We’re always excited when new users join our Grow community — sign up here

Once you’ve enabled Grow in your account, have some fun — customize your branding, collect subscribers, build exclusive content for your readers and add in a few of your favorite integrations (e.g. ConvertKit).

Found a favorite feature? Well we’re dying to hear about it! Tell us how important that feature is to you, and add some additional context by emailing us at grow.me@mediavine.com! The more we know about how you want to use a feature and what’s important to you, the better we can make it!

If you’re still not ready to take the leap just yet, that’s okay! Head to the Related Posts section below to discover more details on Grow on how our innovative platform is changing lives within the Publisher community.

Thanks for stopping by! Until next time — your friendly neighborhood Product Marketing Manager 🕷

The post Getting Started with Grow: A Resource Guide appeared first on Mediavine.

Please let me introduce you to the Subscribe Action Pack, a new way for you to collect subscribers using Grow.

The Subscribe Action Pack is a collection of calls to action that prompt a user to subscribe to your newsletter list. These prompts display when a reader on your site performs a specific action that creates a natural opportunity to invite them to subscribe.

Each action has slightly different messaging, depending on the reader’s activity, with a suggestion that the reader subscribe to get new content sent straight to their inbox.

The Subscribe Action Pack is simple to turn on: It’s a toggle found under Subscribe in your Grow settings in the Dashboard. If you’re new to Grow, this will be enabled for you by default.

How’s that for an easy button!

Here are the various Subscribe calls-to-action that readers will see as they interact with Grow on your site:

Favoriting a Post

When a logged-in reader clicks the heart button on the main Grow widget, they will be prompted to subscribe to that site’s newsletter.

There are three ways to generate this Subscribe call to action (CTA) to display while a reader is logged into Grow.

• The heart button on the main Grow Widget.
• The Save button in your Recipe Card (we support Create, WPRM, and Tasty).
• The Save button in Grow Social (available in all Social Share Toolkits).

Logging Into Grow

A reader will see a Subscribe CTA after a reader logs into Grow from your site.

Signing Up For Grow

This CTA displays when a logged-out reader or new user signs up for Grow on your site via the Grow widget.

Does it work with Zapier or Direct ESP Integrations?

Of course, it does! You’re able to connect the Subscribe Action Pack by source and select your application of choice to be the action. Check out this help article for all the how-to goodness.

Once we launch our first direct integration — spoiler alert: if you haven’t heard already, ConvertKit is coming and will be our first ESP integration! — you’ll also be able to add a subscriber directly into your tags, forms, and sequences.

Turn it on today!

If you’ve been using Grow for a while and you want to get more subscribers, head to your Mediavine Dashboard settings to turn Subscribe Action Pack on and continue to build your email list!

The post Subscribe Action Pack for Grow appeared first on Mediavine.

I’m your host, Product Manager Sam Seeley, here with some awesome news.

Today we’re launching our Exclusive Content feature for Grow!

Exclusive Content is an exciting addition because we’re paving the way for the latest internet experience, one that we’re already seeing quite a bit of in online publications.

How Does Exclusive Content Work?

As a creator, you want your most valuable content to work for you!

With Exclusive Content, you can set a section of your post’s content — e.g., a Gutenberg block, a Create card or specific paragraphs of text — as “locked” behind a call-to-action that prompts a reader to sign up for a free Grow account, along with their permission to add them to your email subscriber list.

How Should I Use Exclusive Content?

I personally have used it to lock a full resource library on my site. Once a reader signs up and consents to being added to my email list, they get access to a handful of PDFs that I’ve created for members.

During testing, we’ve seen creators use Exclusive Content to lock full recipes, printables, digital downloads and how-to instructions!

What About Email Subscribers?

Not only does Exclusive Content encourage your readers to sign up for a Grow account, but it also obtains permission to add them to your subscriber list.

Our beta testers have seen impressive subscriber growth after implementing it on their sites.

After setting up Exclusive Content, our own internal sites began seeing over half of their subscribers come from Exclusive Content CTA’s!

What About SEO?

We’re Mediavine so you know that we make sure that all of our features follow best practices.

While building out this feature, we utilized Google’s freewall/paywall schema. You can sleep soundly while locking content, knowing it can still be found by search engines.

Does Exclusive Content Work With Zapier?

Exclusive Content does indeed work with Zapier! Your subscribers will zap straight to the ESP of your choice.

There is tiny bit of set up but once you have that all done, you’re good to go!

To learn more about how to set up Exclusive Content with Zapier, visit our help center!

Pair It With the Co-Branded Sign-Up Page

We recently launched the Co-Branded Sign-Up feature, and during our initial tests we noticed a lift in sign-up success when our testers paired their co-branded logo on the sign-up page with marking pieces of their content as exclusive.

For more details on how to set up the Co-Branded Sign-Up feature, navigate to our help center!

What’s Next for Exclusive Content?

This launch opens the door for other really amazing Grow features to come, such as setting an entire category as Exclusive Content and adding article limits that you see on popular sites.

These article limits tease that the reader is only able to view one more article on that specific site. The calls-to-action encourage a reader to sign in for the best experience possible while browsing the site.

We’re excited to release this new feature to help you leverage your excellent content into more Grow members and email subscribers. Learn more about Exclusive Content in our help center.

The post Introducing Exclusive Content with Grow appeared first on Mediavine.

We’re here to announce another Grow enhancement that can bring you just that: our Co-Branded Sign-Up feature! We hope (after reading this post) that you’re just as excited as we are and you go straight to your Grow settings to enable it right now! (Hint: It’s at the top under “General Settings.”)

The Co-Branded Sign-Up setting allows you to upload a logo that will appear on the sign-up page that a visitor sees when they sign up for a Grow account through your site.

When they click the sign-in button on the widget, they’ll see the co-branded page.

Why are we so excited about this new feature? It allows you to signal to your readers that you are part of the Grow community, and that it is directly connected to your site. It lets them know that with a Grow account, they get access to features they’ll love including search and recommended content, plus the ability to save their favorite articles and recipes.

The co-branding available in this feature will make the connection between Grow and your site that much stronger.

Plus, across all publishers who are beta testing the Co-Branded Sign-up, we saw an increase in Grow signups overall.

Once you enable this setting and upload your logo, it will appear on the signup and login pages that your readers see when they create a Grow account on your site.

The Co-Branded Sign-Up page is a great way to use Grow to continue building your community and enhancing your relationship with your readers. WIth the new signup page, your readers will see that Grow is part of your site and not some random third-party tool they don’t understand.

Coming Soon

This feature is extra exciting because it paves the way for another upcoming Grow feature that we’ve been beta testing behind the scenes: Exclusive Content! With Exclusive Content, you’ll select a portion of your blog post that is “exclusive” and requires a Grow account or a subscription (if they’re already logged into Grow) to view. This feature is going to be a huge lift for your subscriber lists!

This Co-Branded Sign-Up page will be incredibly helpful to tie Grow to your site, specifically for Exclusive Content. We saw an increase of sign ups on sites that were beta testing both features.

Grow will work seamlessly with your site to build your authenticated traffic and excite readers to continue the sign-up process via this Co-Branded Sign Up experience.

How Do I Start?

It’s really easy to get started with this new feature. Grab your logo file and head over to your Mediavine Dashboard. For more specifics, check out our handy-dandy Co-Branded Sign-Up help doc.

So what are you waiting for? Go forth, add your logo and increase your sign-ups!

The post Co-Branded Sign-Up For Grow appeared first on Mediavine.

Newsletters are growing, websites are faster and (hopefully) pop-ups are being removed.

With our recent Zapier integration, we answered a common publisher request for automation, connecting Grow Subscribe to hundreds of different Email Service Providers (ESPs).

Mediavine is proud of how far Subscribe has come in a few short months, but we’ve been addressing more of your requests and have an exciting update for you today.

We’re rolling out a bunch of your requested features in a new pack — a pack so rad we’re throwing it all the way back to the ’80s for its name: The Power Pack.

Like the old Zelda maps and Contra cheat codes in your Nintendo Power magazine, the Power Pack’s features will help you take Grow Subscribe to the next level.

Here’s a look at all the abilities we’ve just unlocked.

1. Multiple Widgets

Let’s start with the most common request we’ve received from our publishers: The ability to create multiple different Subscribe Widgets.

Power Pack enables you to create more than one Subscribe Widget on the back end, resulting in a customized Subscribe geared toward the type of content a user is reading.

At this time, we have one default widget that is automatically placed for you. In the future, we’ll be adding the ability for WordPress publishers to target by category.

With the Allow Default Widget setting enabled, you can have additional widgets inside your post, along with the default widget.

For now, you can take advantage of …

2. Manual Widget Embed

Beneath each widget, you’ll now find embed code, which you can use to manually place a Subscribe Widget wherever you’d like.

For now, it’s a piece of HTML you can paste inside any CMS, WordPress or otherwise.

In the future, WordPress publishers running the Grow Social plugin will be able to use Gutenberg blocks to place them as well.

Whatever your method, this allows you to customize placements within your content if you don’t love where default widget is placed (although it’s optimized for highest conversion, so in theory at least, you should love it).

More importantly, manual widget placement makes it possible for publishers to deploy multiple widgets in creative ways and use them outside the content area.

Want to create a new widget and add it to your homepage? What about one specifically for your popular landing or category pages? Or a widget just below your content?

Now that Subscribe supports multiple widgets with the ability to place them wherever you like, the possibilities are endless.

But if that doesn’t get the creative juices flowing enough, how about …

3. Click to Subscribe

As content creators, we’ve all come across unique situations in which there’s insufficient room for a full sign-up, but you still want to give users a chance to subscribe.

Think about places like your header, sidebar and other navigation spots, or even just a quick button or call to action inside your text.

Previously, clicking those Subscribe-type links or buttons would take you to an entirely different page. Not with the Power Pack!

Now you can make that button, link, image or anything else trigger a Subscribe modal on that same screen with Click to Subscribe.

To see what the heck I just said in visual form, take it away Mediavine Design Team:

4. Name Fields

Hey there [First Name], we heard your request for this one, too!

As we’ve learned, many publishers use readers’ names in newsletters and automated emails in order to add a bit of personalization and boost those open and click rates.

It’s a nice touch, and thanks to the Power Pack, you can add a Name field to any of your Subscribe Widgets and mark it as optional or required.

Once you add a Name field and begin collecting readers’ names, they’ll be available in both Zapier and the CSV download for inclusion in your subscriber list for more friendly and personalized greetings.

5. Conversion URL and Widget in Export

We’ve learned that many newsletter ninjas will trigger custom automation emails depending on which Subscribe Widget they signed up for, or even from which page.

You’re now able to do this with Grow’s Subscribe features, thanks to the Power Pack.

Both the widget and URL that readers subscribed from have been added to the Zapier API and CSV download, ensuring that you can create advanced rules inside your ESP to target or segment your audience.

Even just informationally, it’s helpful to measure how each of your widgets and pages convert. This will provide those stats and help you make decisions accordingly.

Whatever you use it for, we’re excited to have this one in publishers’ hands.

6. Multi-Language Support Per Widget

While I refuse to concede that there is more than one time zone in this world (Eastern Time forever!), I do acknowledge that there are a great many languages spoken on our planet today.

We’re continuously working to improve the multi-language support of Grow to make sure that Subscribe and other features are accessible to as many global citizens as possible.

As part of the Power Pack, you’ll be able to translate each of your widgets into multiple languages.

Many More Power-Ups Still to Come

That’s all for this Power Pack, but our development of Subscribe is nowhere near finished. Honestly, we’re still just getting started.

We’re as obsessed with Subscribe as you are. Already, it’s performing amazingly well for our celebrity gossip and food sites, The Hollywood Gossip and Food Fanatic, respectively.

Overall, Subscribe is playing a crucial role in making Grow the first-party data solution we’ll all need when cookies are extinct in the coming years.

We have so much more in the works as teased above, with many new individual Power Pack features, and our long-term roadmap continues to … well, Grow.

Help us shape this product and chart a course for a more transparent, free and open web by continuing to send your feedback to grow.me@mediavine.com.

If you can’t tell from this Power Pack and everything else on our blog, Grow is driven by your input. We’re building it for you – and we can’t do it without you.

The post Grow Power Pack: The Subscribe Feature Levels Up appeared first on Mediavine.

One of our most popular Recommended Content features, the Mobile Carousel, is getting a facelift – and a performance boost along with it.

I hope you’re sitting down for this, because we’re about to blow your mind with What’s Next.

Introducing What’s Next

What’s Next is Grow’s latest content recommendation widget, and does what its name implies, suggesting to readers what content they should check out next.

Using the same machine learning that powers our other content recommendation widgets, What’s Next presents articles that readers are most likely to click on.

Better recommendations mean audiences engaging with more of your content per session, earning you valuable additional pageviews and extra ad impressions.

What’s Next differs from the carousel, sidebar and inline units in that it presents a clean, single recommendation rather than offering a selection to choose from.

You might think that presenting fewer choices would hurt the performance of this widget, but it actually does the opposite (which is why we’re rolling this out).

By presenting a single post, and doing so at the bottom of the screen where readers are looking for more content, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in clicks.

How dramatic? On average, readers were 70% more likely to click on articles from What’s Next compared to the multiple options presented in the Mobile Carousel.

Incredibly, What’s Next does all this by taking up 70% fewer pixels on screen, making for a streamlined, less cluttered user experience to boot.

Moreover, it’s optimized to run perfectly alongside Mediavine’s new Universal Player, creating an experience that’s both optimized and unobtrusive:

But, if you’re still running the Mediavine Video Player, we still love you too! Here’s a preview of What’s Next running in compact mode next to the Video Player:

When is This Coming? What Do I Need to Do?

Given its significantly better performance, not to mention improved look and feel, What’s Next will officially replace the Mobile Carousel on September 29, 2021.

If you’re currently running the carousel on mobile, we will enable What’s Next automatically for you.

If you don’t wish to run What’s Next, you should opt out of the carousel.

Please keep in mind that this is why Grow is in beta. You’re watching the evolution of Grow in real time as we strive to optimize it and help you … well, grow.

On a side note, stay tuned for Grow Labs (coming soon!) where publishers can participate in even more tests to help us improve Grow and your websites.

What About Desktop?

The carousel still performs well on desktop traffic, given the larger screen real estate available, so the carousel will remain for desktop users at this time.

What’s Next is a mobile solution only for now.

That said, we strongly encourage you to enable Inline Content Recommendation. This produces the highest CTR by a wide margin, and will have the largest impact on your traffic.

If you haven’t enabled inline content recommendation, switch tabs to your dashboard immediately and do so. We’ll wait. When you come back, you can read about:

What’s Next for the Mobile Carousel

See what we did there? Pretty proud of that one. Anyway, as you probably guessed, this is the end of the Mobile Carousel as you know it right now.

Most mobile users look to the top of the screen for website navigation, but not for the next piece of content they might be interested in.

That’s why What’s Next lives at the bottom right.

That top-of-screen real estate remains important and valuable, but content recommendation on mobile devices performs better elsewhere. Simple as that.

We’re exploring better ways to optimize that section, whether it’s with Grow or Trellis or both. We promise something good is coming!

In an ideal world, future innovations along these lines will come to desktop users, as well, for a better carousel experience all around.

It’s not goodbye; it’s just see you later, Mobile Carousel.

The post What’s Next for Grow: New Look, High Performance Mobile Recommendations appeared first on Mediavine.

Even for those of us who live and breathe Mediavine, it’s challenging to digest all the things Grow can do for publishers, let alone why readers should embrace it.

The short answer is it’s a lot. Like a lot a lot. The slightly longer but more helpful answer is this:

Grow is a set of tools built to help you collect first-party data but also grow your audience.

The reason these tools are ever-expanding is because every website is different and every reader interacts with content differently. You all have different goals.

But the very first hurdle any of us have to leap over is getting readers to use Grow. And in order to want to use it, they need to understand it a little bit better.

To help with that, allow us to introduce the Grow Product Tour.

What is the Grow Product Tour?

From this day forward, when a reader creates a Grow account for the first time, they’re taken back to your site for a Grow Product Tour.

The Product Tour will walk readers through the basic features of Grow, helping them understand exactly what they signed up for and how it works.

Readers will be introduced to the Grow widget in the corner of your site and shown how to favorite, retrieve existing bookmarks and update their account.

Want to see it for yourself? You’re in luck. Once again, we’ve prepared a few visuals using Mediavine’s preferred method of communication, the GIF!

Check out the Product Tour in action:

Pretty cool! But better yet, the Product Tour is just the start.

Ultimately, the goal of Grow is creating the best user experience, which helps publishers generate the first-party data advertisers need to drive the most value.

With 400,000 registered users and climbing, we know that helping people better understand and use Grow is paramount to its success.

Moreover, Grow is always changing, not only with the addition of new features but in an effort to become as reader-friendly as possible.

It’s a lot, as we said earlier. But we’re here to help.

Coming Soon: More Reader Education

At its core, Grow isn’t about the publisher.

To be sure, it helps the publisher by harnessing first-party data and authenticated traffic. But without offering real, tangible value to readers, it’s a moot point.

First and foremost, Grow has to provide the kind of user experience that makes visitors want to log in or there won’t be subscriptions or first-party data to be had.

So how can we improve the reader experience? We’re taking it from the top, with a more educational approach from the onset of the sign-up process.

New Sign-up Page

We’re currently testing a new, improved and user-friendly log in flow. When readers sign up, they’ll get a better explanation of Grow via its redesigned sign-in page.

This enhanced preview of Grow will be customized based on what drove the reader to sign up, whether it’s via Spotlight Subscribe, the upcoming Exclusive Content feature (where content is available only to subscribers), etc.

Better still, we’re working on ways for publishers to be able to “co-brand” the sign-up page — including your site’s logo along with Grow to further streamline the process.

Please, continue giving us feedback so that we can address every point where readers are stumbling. We’re proud of where Grow is today — the only first-party data solution of its kind — but it remains a work in progress, and together, we can make it vastly superior by the time third-party cookies vanish for good.

The post Grow Product Tour: Teaching Readers Why They Need This appeared first on Mediavine.