New Hope Natural Media, a media resource and information provider for the natural, organic and healthy products industry, has partnered with SPINS (an organization that provides sales data for the natural products industry) to offer SPINS' industry-specific sales data to New Hope customers.

The results of the partnership will take shape quickly. New Hope's magazine, The Natural Foods Merchandiser, will feature a "Trendspotting" page beginning with its March issue that will include analysis from SPINS. SPINS will also provide other content in the magazine going forward and SPINS experts will be featured speakers for the magazine's webinar series.

This partnership will help New Hope form a stronger connection with its magazine readers. As we have all known for years, readers want more than plain content. They want the value-added features. They want the analysis that helps them more effectively use that content -- and they expect publishers to deliver. They realize that data is useless if they don't know what it means. And if publishers don't have the analytics capabilities in-house, they have to seek partners that have proven expertise in their given industry.

Convincing potential partners to collaborate shouldn't be very difficult. The benefits are powerful for them as well. For instance, in the New Hope deal, SPINS will gain a connection to the NFM readers who might not be aware of the firm's capabilities; and it is possible NFM subscribers will seek out the firm's services for a more customized analysis.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if publishers have their own analytics team or if they outsource this function. In order to be a full-service information provider, the only source of data customers choose, publishers must make analytics a must-have part of the business.

Labels: analytics, data, Infocommerce, new hope natural media, SPINS