Current Media Publishing Company Practices

• Vice and many other media publishing companies have built their own CRM platforms.
• Vox Media, Washington Post, New York Media, and Hearst have built their own publishing platforms and are now licensing them out to other media publishing companies.
• The platforms built by Vox Media, New York Media, and Hearst are all SaaS platforms.
• The Financial Times has a proprietary tool to manage customer relationships.
• The Economist uses Lytics, a machine learning tool, to manage user experience.
• In the US, 78% of newspapers charge for digital access, meaning that digital subscription management has become an important part of operations.

Main Uses of CRM Software

• CRM software companies advertise their products to media publishing companies by saying that their products increase revenue from digital ads, streamline operations across departments, automate orders flow, and more.
• A competitor to CRM software is customer data platforms (CDPs), which gather data from customers, identify key audience segments, and increase sales.

LineUp's Main Competitors

•  Owler notes their main competitors include CloudSense, Brainworks, Advendio, Newscycle, Vlocity, Invision Inc., Apttus, Callidus Cloud, Newzware, and ChikPea.
• Some top providers of CRM software for the newspaper and publishing industry include Gemstone Sales, MultiPub, AdPlugg, DigFabster, Joomag, The Newspaper/ Magazine Manager, and Smart Publisher.
•  Pico is a startup that aims to use first-party data to improve CRM for media publishing companies.