Quality journalism delivered digitally.
Telegraph Media Group partners with Adobe to reach one million subscriptions.
Established
1855
Subscriptions: Over 1 million
London, United Kingdom
Telegraph Media Group (TMG) is the publisher of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, The Telegraph Magazine, Telegraph.co.uk, and the Telegraph app. TMG is a subscriber-first business, with quality journalism at its heart, and a goal to build deeper connections with subscribers at scale.
1M
Subscriptions reached months ahead of goal
Objectives
Increase subscriptions with more engagement on digital channels
Collaborate with a partner that understands unique needs in the news media industry
Eliminate website downtime with a future-proof cloud environment
Deliver personalised emails based on real-time customer behaviours
Support a 24/7 high performance digital content creation infrastructure
Results
Reached 1 million subscriptions with strong performance on high-profile events
Supported 3x sustained traffic peaks with no performance issues and 100% marketing execution
Achieved zero downtime for authors, keeping news up to date 24/7
Increased click-through rates, open rates, and engagement by consented targeting of audiences
Delivering 24/7 news — anytime, on demand
Toby Wright works just metres from one of the most exciting places in the world: the newsroom of The Daily Telegraph, the storied newspaper with an over 165-year history of award-winning journalism.
“There’s such a buzz here every morning when you walk in,” says Wright, Group Chief Technology Officer at Telegraph Media Group. “There is a genuine sense of purpose across the company and a very real feeling of being in the front seat of many historical events.”
When Wright joined TMG in 2008, the organisation primarily delivered print versions of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph. Leadership challenged Wright’s team to kickstart a digital transformation that would turn the brand into a digital source for news and entertainment.
Today, half of the newspaper’s subscribers read, watch, or listen to stories through the brand’s award-winning website, app, newsletters, or podcasts. Wright oversees a team that supports these digital properties with a cloud environment designed to keep news online and available 24/7.
“I believe that to get the digital scale, speed, and reliability to deliver 24-hour news coverage, partnering with the right technology providers is essential,” says Wright. “We need to work with vendors who understand what we do and what demands we have from our journalists and millions of readers around the world. Our publishing system is our factory, and the keystone of our digital business. Adobe offers us the right mix of technology and industry expertise.”
Over the past several years, TMG has worked closely with Adobe to create a leading digital news platform using Adobe Experience Cloud products, including Adobe Experience Manager Sites, Analytics, Campaign, Target, Real-Time Customer Data Platform, and Journey Optimizer. With the strong partnership and skilled guidance of the Adobe Ultimate Success, Engineering, and Professional Services teams, TMG successfully upgraded its Adobe footprint while covering some of the biggest news events in recent memory. It also achieved its goal of reaching one million subscriptions months ahead of schedule.
“Some stakeholders were nervous when I said we were going to switch to a new platform ahead of the biggest media event in decades, but because of the work the TMG Engineering teams did with Adobe Ultimate Success and Engineering, I could point to our data and prove we were going to be able to scale under pressure. We operate under a ‘know vs. believe’ principle.’”
Toby Wright
Group Chief Technology Officer, Telegraph Media Group
Covering major events during cloud migration
The Telegraph website (telegraph.co.uk) features 24-hour coverage viewed by audiences worldwide. After years of running the site on public cloud with in-house operations, Wright worked to offload non-differentiating support and maintenance by migrating to a Managed Services implementation of Experience Manager Sites. This allowed internal technical staff to focus on developing digital offerings, from components that help the company’s 550 journalists publish stories faster, to interactive puzzles that readers enjoy solving every day.
When Adobe announced a Cloud Service version, Wright jumped at the chance to upgrade again.
“Experience Manager Sites keeps us on the latest product using a cloud-native architecture that matches the rest of our cloud environment,” he says. “Most importantly, we have zero downtime for software deployment. We used to need to take authoring offline for 20 minutes twice a week. That’s not an issue in many environments, but in a 24/7 newsroom, that’s a major problem.”
TMG collaborated with its Ultimate Success team to make sure that the migration went as smoothly as possible. The team, working with a named Technical Account Manager, orchestrated the parallel live running of the Managed Services and Cloud Service implementations of the website, allowing the engineering and support teams to monitor performance in the Cloud Service environment for a completely smooth migration.
The new environment was put to the test during the Coronation of King Charles III. The Telegraph produced authoritative reporting, analysis, and commentary, marking King Charles III’s Coronation with a wide range of editorial initiatives including features, supplements, live coverage, puzzles, and podcasts. At peak periods the system handled up to three times the amount of traffic that is usually experienced on a daily basis.
“We planned to go live on the Cloud Service environment ahead of the Coronation,” says Wright. “Some stakeholders were nervous when I said we were going to switch to a new platform ahead of the biggest media event in decades, but because of the work the TMG Engineering teams did with Adobe Ultimate Success and Engineering, I could point to our data and prove we were going to be able to scale under pressure. We operate under a ‘know vs. believe’ principle.”
The Adobe team delivered proactive support by orchestrating additional load tests, prepping publishing elements, and providing real-time monitoring. During the programme to migrate from Experience Manager Managed Services, the TMG team executed dual runs on both platforms sustained for months, proving that both the author and publisher side would cope with real, live traffic at the scale needed.
The website saw a 33% increase in page views over three days, with zero downtime and 100% execution of planned marketing and personalisation campaigns. The website saw a significant increase in subscriptions thanks to the authoritative reporting, product experience, and performance with zero downtime.
TMG capitalised on this high-profile event to show visitors detailed coverage, smooth technical performance, and personalised newsletters or subscription recommendations delivered by Target. The event helped TMG reach its goal of one million subscriptions, months ahead of schedule.
“Because we’re more targeted, we get better results with fewer emails. We’re seeing higher click-through rates, higher open rates, and more engagement with targeted audiences.”
Tom Kelleher
Director of Technology – Marketing, Telegraph Media Group
Top content delivered straight to the inbox
The Telegraph views newsletters as a key product offering that delivers headlines, insights, and puzzles directly to readers’ email inboxes. With editors pushing the limits of the Adobe environment for both marketing and newsletter emails, the company upgraded to Campaign v8 Managed Cloud Services for better scale and top performance. The Ultimate Success team met weekly with the marketing technology group to support integrations with Real-Time CDP and Journey Optimizer. While the marketing team could always send targeted newsletters and marketing emails based on customer data or online interactions measured by Analytics, these integrations enable messaging based on real-time behaviours.
“Real-Time CDP spreads audiences from our data around our marketing ecosystem,” explains Tom Kelleher, Director of Technology – Marketing at Telegraph Media Group. “It allows us to go beyond renewal emails based on classic CRM data. We can connect with audiences by sending them emails that highlight their favourite content for more effective communications. Because we’re more targeted, we get better results with fewer emails. We’re seeing higher click-through rates, higher open rates, and more engagement with targeted audiences.”
“Adobe deeply understands media. And more importantly, I believe they genuinely understand us. They are interested in what we’re doing and take our needs for speed and scale into account to make their products better for everyone; it's a real, reciprocal partnership.”
Toby Wright
Group Chief Technology Officer, Telegraph Media Group
A long-term partnership
TMG continues to work closely with Adobe as it aims for more subscribers than ever in its history. To support email marketing, the support team built automated A/B testing to find best subject lines, headers, or other content. Meanwhile, proactive testing and monitoring on the website drive ongoing performance improvements.
“Working with Adobe feels like a proper partnership — we are all in this together,” says Wright. “Adobe deeply understands media. And more importantly, I believe they genuinely understand us. They are interested in what we’re doing and take our needs for speed and scale into account to make their products better for everyone; it’s a real, reciprocal partnership.”
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