Digital Media Company Restructures to Further Develop Direct-to-Consumer Efforts
(New York, NY — March 31, 2017) Open Road Integrated Media (OR/M) announced today the expansion and restructuring of its technology and marketing teams. These changes underscore the company’s focus on innovation as the driving force behind its direct-to-consumer marketing initiatives, which have contributed to a 36% year-over-year increase in revenue in the first two months of 2017.
With a proprietary web platform and a proprietary newsletter tool the technology and marketing teams are working to identify and monetize the more than 22,000,000 users who visit its sites and subscribe to its newsletters annually.
“We laid significant groundwork for a direct-to-consumer business in 2016,” said Paul Slavin, CEO. “While we still have much to build in 2017, we have the foundation we need to continue our strategic priority of knowing and owning our consumer.”
“Being able to both identify our consumers and understand where they are in their path to purchase, allows us to deliver relevant messages at critical points in their journeys,” said Mary McAveney, Executive Vice President of Marketing. “Our ability to collect and employ user data is key to conveying the right message at the right time to the right consumer.”
To that end, the marketing team has been realigned: Gregg Fleischman has been promoted to Executive Director, Consumer Newsletters, and is responsible for OR/M’s newsletter acquisition and customer relationship management. OR/M currently reaches more than 650,000 book-buying customers through its newsletters and is on track to increase that reach to more than 1.2 million by the end of 2017. Sarah Janet has been promoted to Director, Marketing Analytics, and is responsible for leading, developing and managing all aspects of marketing analytics and decision modeling. Rachel Krupitsky and Colleen Lindsay have each been promoted to Director of Marketing and are responsible for direct-to-consumer marketing initiatives for OR/M’s full catalog of more than 9000 ebooks.
Additionally, the technology team has tripled in size over the past three months. “OR/M continues to leverage exciting front-end technologies in conjunction with big data-powered systems,” said Brian Haley, Vice President Technology. The most recent hire, Tamal Roy, Senior Data Engineer, has been charged with bolstering the company’s ability to track and leverage consumers’ digital footprints as well as improving the company’s overall customer analytics capabilities while Wolfgang Criollo, Web Engineer, will focus on the consumer-facing properties and branded funnels that drive the direct-to-consumer engine at OR/M. Eddie Lopez has been promoted to Senior Web Engineer. Other recent hires include Joe Zarro, Web Engineer, and Garon Benner, Senior Product Manager.
“OR/M’s adaptive, agile user-centric process will only ensure continued growth throughout 2017,” Haley said.
About Open Road Integrated Media
Open Road Integrated Media is a prestige content brand delivering digital experiences that entertain and inform readers around the world; their network of digital properties produces compelling stories that keep audiences engaged—across devices and around the world. The Open Road brands include Early Bird Books, a daily eBook deals newsletter and website; The Lineup, for fans of true crime, horror, the mysterious, and the paranormal; The Portalist, for fans of science fiction, fantasy; Murder & Mayhem, for fans of mystery and thriller; The Archive, for fans of history and non-fiction; and A Love So True, for fans of romance; and Open Road Media, a global eBook publisher whose catalog includes legendary authors such as William Styron, Alice Walker, Pat Conroy, Gloria Steinem, Octavia Butler, John Jakes, Pearl S. Buck, Walker Percy, Ruth Rendell, and Sherman Alexie.