TL;DR:
Using Uniphore’s Marketing AI CDP, Hearst UK turned major data and workflow bottlenecks into faster, smarter, self-service campaign execution. By unifying anonymous and known data, improving segmentation, and eliminating ESP limitations, the team can now launch complex, personalized campaigns that previously weren’t possible.
Digital subscriptions are more than just a revenue stream, they’re a platform for reader engagement, brand advocacy, and introducing your audience to new products and experiences. Few publishers know this better than Hearst UK, whose iconic titles, which include Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, ELLE, and Esquire, draw millions of readers across the globe daily. We recently caught up with Melinda Carter, Head of Customer Data and Engineering, who shared how digital engagement is changing and how Marketing AI is helping storied brands like Hearst UK drive real outcomes.
Making the case for Marketing AI
Hearst UK’s customer analytics and campaign delivery teams manage data and activate audiences across various products, including magazine subscriptions & memberships, an e-commerce marketplace and events. They cover all known customer data, from purchasers to prospects. It’s a lot to handle; and with the move to a new ESP and new data lake, it became clear that the two teams needed a way to manage all that data, without overwhelming their engineering team. They needed Marketing AI. This missing layer bridges complex data infrastructure with day-to-day campaign execution.
“At the time, we were reevaluating our whole tech stack for data and marketing,” shared Carter. The reason for this tech shift, she explained, was to enable everyone on the team to self-serve more of their own analytics, leveraging all data sources across the entire database. The addition of Uniphore’s Marketing AI CDP would help the team overcome two of its biggest challenges:
- Unburdening the engineering team
The old systems placed too much pressure on engineering and IT for creating simple data lists and analytics requests. This led to long lead times for turning around campaigns. - Overcoming its ESP data limitations
The new ESP used a record-level user profile system instead of a relational database. This made it difficult to segment audiences and join data from the company’s numerous businesses (e-commerce sites, apps, websites, etc.), threatening the team’s ability to maintain business as usual.
How Hearst UK gained an edge with Uniphore Marketing AI
For Hearst UK, deciding which Marketing AI platform to use was easy. The company’s US branch had been using Uniphore’s unified Marketing AI solution, CDP Agent with great success. By deploying the agentic customer data platform in its UK office, the team could maintain operational continuity and enjoy the same Marketing AI wins as its stateside counterpart:
Campaign execution time slashed by weeks
“One of the biggest benefits that we’ve seen from moving to Uniphore is that all teams can self-serve themselves and get the data that they need for their campaigns in the platform with a click of a button,” Carter explains. Now, teams can quickly execute campaign preparation independently, avoiding the two-week sprint wait time for an engineering ticket.
Sharper audience segmentation and personalization
“At Hearst UK, customer experience is a huge priority,” says Carter. “We focus a lot on making sure our data is really usable and actionable, so we reach our audiences with the right message, with the right products, with the content, and make sure they’re enjoying our products.” With Uniphore’s Marketing AI CDP solution, the team can now use now use the platform’s rich customer data (location, subscription details, etc.) to perform better targeting and more sophisticated segmentation.
New targeting opportunities unlocked
In addition to slashing campaign execution time and personalizing the customer experience, Uniphore Marketing AI enabled Hearst UK to unlock more complex email targeting opportunities that simply weren’t possible directly within their ESP. “We’ve been able to get campaigns live that we physically weren’t able to do before,” says Carter. “[For example], if they’re paying a certain price for their subscription, we’re now able to push different lists of those price bands into ESP so we can send really targeted emails.”
Anonymous and known data unified
In addition to slashing campaign execution time and personalizing the customer experience, Uniphore Marketing AI CDP enabled Hearst UK to unlock more complex email targeting opportunities that simply weren’t possible directly within their ESP. “We’ve been able to get campaigns live that we physically weren’t able to do before,” says Carter. “[For example], if they’re paying a certain price for their subscription, we’re now able to push different lists of those price bands into the ESP so we can send really targeted emails.”
What’s next for Hearst UK?
By partnering with Uniphore, Hearst UK has transformed its data operations from a technical bottleneck into a nimble, self-service engine. But that’s just the beginning of their journey. With an eye to the future, the publishing icon is now looking to leverage Uniphore’s upcoming AI features to further refine its engagement strategy. Their primary focus is on using intelligence within the platform to create highly optimized communication strategies, specifically:
- AI for audience sophistication, using integrated AI capabilities to build sophisticated models within Uniphore to identify their most/least engaged users based on additional data points.
- AI-based frequency capping, using AI models to intelligently limit the number of emails customers receive, choosing only the most relevant messages to maximize sales and engagement while preventing unsubscribes.
“AI will play a huge role in reshaping the business in the future,” says Carter. “As we go forward, we’re really excited for Uniphore’s AI capabilities.” To learn more about how Uniphore helps brands like Hearst UK achieve their business outcomes, contact us.