Inman News
Chief Product & Marketing Officer, 2017-2019
Inman News is the real estate industry's largest trade news organization. As Chief Product and Marketing Officer, I led a large team of designers, developers, events and subscription marketers, social specialists and analysts. I was responsible for all aspects of Inman's subscriber, journalism and event attendance experience, and focused on driving strong subscriber acquisition, retention and engagement in parallel with promoting large-scale conference attendance over 6 annual events.
Working closely with the editorial and sales teams, I have driven significant increases and improvements in the subscriber offering and adoption, churn reduction, large process and product improvements in event creative, on-site experience and ticket sales, as well as established robust audience development process, traffic growth, and built new forms of storytelling, both for Inman’s core journalism and branded content offerings.
Problems worked on:
How might we grow the subscription business through focusing on user needs?
How might we develop new forms of real estate journalism, reach new audiences, and blend the website and events initiatives?
How might we solve problems for advertisers by leveraging our editorial and product teams?
Achievements:
Developed new suite of storytelling and article-based formats including photo essays, video collections, data journalism and visualization, mapping formats, community integrations, archival collections and live coverage timeline experiences, in parallel with technical and audience development efforts around SEO, discovery and distribution.
Complete technical re-write of Inman’s cross-platform backend and workflow, including significant reductions in technical debt, data consolidation, cost reduction through third party vendor auditing and removal, as well as workflow optimizations through CMS improvements and transition to formalized Agile sprint workflow and Atlassian suite (JIRA and Confluence).
Grew the registration effort for Inman’s events by building new creative systems and executing on large-scale promotion, video, email, web, content marketing, mobile, livestream, printed collateral and onsite production across 6 Inman events.
Built new subscriber bundle products around opinion, video and thematic editorial coverage, in addition to reframing subscriber marketing to focus on helpfulness and user needs, reducing churn and solidifying acquisition efforts.
Developed new audience development workflows, in addition to building new editorial functionality around photography, video, maps, timelines, thematic coverage, archival coverage, SEO and recirculation.
Developed and built new branded content opportunities with sponsored sections for real estate coaching and luxury real estate.
Inman.com Subscriber Gate & Subscription Bundle Development
In support of Inman’s digital subscriber business, I oversaw optimizations and enhancements to the cross-platform gated article experience, in parallel with improvements to the subscription bundle offering. These improvements included new custom video experiences from Inman’s events, the launch of a dedicated weekly opinion newsletter taking readers behind the stories of the week, and an overhauled service journalism and guides experience.
Inman.com: Recirculation Initiatives (2018)
We identified that many users were simply unaware of the breadth and depth of Inman’s coverage of key topics over time, and how the editorial team had been following a large number of thematic threads over many years within the real estate industry. In solving for this, we developed a large suite of cross-platform recirculation and archival initiatives, driving at helping users understand the wider context of a story, over time, and articulating how that story had developed.
As part of a substantial technical debt reduction effort, in parallel with improved user experience around brand and messaging consistency, our team overhauled Inman’s suite of email newsletters, which serve as a primary driver of daily audience growth. These included new consistent brand elements and typography, updated advertising integrations, clearer story framing, optimized headline testing and implementation, and more impactful visual presentation.
Subscriber Benefit Bundling: Essential Guides (2018)
Inman’s Essential Guides are a subscriber-only monthly event geared towards a timely deep dive on a real estate topic. Previously framed as ‘Special Reports’, these were repositioned, redesigned and rebuilt to be easier to navigate, work more effectively cross-platform, explain the core concepts in clearer ways, and become more valuable for Inman’s subscribers. Supported by new advertising units and a substantial audience development process, the guides are a key part of Inman’s subscriber benefit bundle.
Thematic Service Journalism: Spring Cleaning (2018)
Often framed as service journalism and content marketing in advance of an event, we developed and built a range of timed, thematic groups of coverage, profiling realtors and brokers around the country on a range of meaningful topics. The included how to Supercharge Your Summer, Spring Cleaning, and Next-Level Luxury.
Inman.com: New York Connect Conference Livestream & Chat Integration (2019)
Wildly popular during the Inman Connect conference events, our team built and grew the core offering for a livestream set of programming, catering to the audience who couldn’t be at the event itself. Growing the experience to include live chat, a schedule of upcoming events, and working closely with the onsite production team to ensure overall brand consistency between the broadcast and inman.com, these were a key aspect of building and growing Inman’s subscriber audience.
Inman Connect San Francisco 2018: Event Identity & Visual System
Overall creative direction and production for Inman Connect San Francisco. Spanning over 250 global speakers across 200 sessions, 5 days and 4,000 attendees, we developed a dynamic system that catered to all aspects of the event’s production. From web, mobile and email marketing, through to onsite production, signage and livestream video, our ‘Kit of Parts’ design approach allowed us the flexibility to quickly develop the thousands of pieces required to support the event, while maintaining consistency and overall brand integrity.
Inman Connect San Francisco 2018: Onsite Identity, Photography & Video Production
The ‘Kit of Parts’ system carried through to the subscriber bundle as a post-event subscription incentive, allowing users to replay sessions they’d missed, and building a substantial archive of previous speakers.
Inman Connect San Francisco 2018: Onsite Signage & Collateral
In addition to successfully creating, building and implementing all the visual and technical aspects of the event, our team also improved the photography of each event, resulting in our ability to swiftly create beautiful photo essays immediately after the sessions had ended.
Luxury Connect 2018 (Los Angeles): Event Identity & Visual System
Luxury Connect 2018: Onsite Identity, Photography & Video Production
In parallel with the two main flagship Connect events each year in New York and San Francisco, we also supported smaller, more focused events around the luxury market and leadership retreats. Each event developed its own creative system, which ran through every element of the event’s promotion, onsite production, and post-production.
Luxury Connect 2018: Content Marketing Suite (Speakers, Sessions, Activities)
Held in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Luxury Connect is the premier event for luxury agents and brokers. It features immersive discussions, networking, and offsite activities and entertainment, all engineered to help agents and brokers build their business.
Content Marketing: What To Expect When You’re Connecting (Local Conference Food)
As part of our content marketing efforts for each event, we often went beyond the walls of the conference schedule itself, and tapped into the overall experience of attending, meeting new friends and old, and what it meant to make the most out of your time together. As such, we built a large set of localized dining recommendations to help attendees navigate what happens when the sessions break for the day.
Disconnect: Conference Identity, Production & Promotion
Custom Branded Content Integration: Sotheby’s International Realty (2018)
Built in close collaboration with Inman’s sales team, we introduced a large number of new advertising opportunities, the biggest of which was a new suite of custom branded content sections, leveraging Inman’s new technical infrastructure and visual recirculation system.
Custom Branded Content: Inman Luxury Referral Network (2018)
Developed in parallel with the Luxury Connect conference, attendees had the opportunity to become members of the Luxury Referral Network, an interactive directory was designed to connect top-producing agents across the country. As part of the Inman Luxury Referral Network, agent pictures, locations, and contact details are discoverable through the interactive map at the top of the page, as well a filterable list organized by state.
Interview for Dutch real estate industry publication Vastgoed, discussing the current state of the real estate industry, iBuyers, emerging real estate technology, and the role of being relentlessly helpful. You can read the full transcript here.
“Matthew is the kind of manager and leader you consider a career change in order to work with. He has experience and passion in a whole range of areas — news, product, design, marketing, events — and those experiences show through in how he leads and empowers his teams. He knows enough about any given area of work to give meaningful, specific direction and feedback, but cares deeply about opening space for as many voices as possible. He speaks often about building towards happy, effective teams and follows through in his actions, placing himself between sticky situations or distractions and his folks who are heads down in the work. This all results in a team atmosphere that is collaborative and inclusive. It's rare to find someone who makes both the way you do the work and the outcomes something to be proud of, but Matthew's definitely one of them.”
Michael Case
Former Project Manager at Inman News
”From the moment that Matthew joined the Inman team, his energy, passion, and love for the product was seen and heard by all. He lives by his motto to be super helpful, always looking to help and give a hand in any project. He had the uncanny ability to motivate and encourage without forcing. Besides his ability to deliver a world class product, he has a world class emotional intelligence that makes him a truly great leader. It was an honor to work with him day by day. He puts the customer and his team first. Any organization is lucky to have such a world class leader on their team. If you ever have a chance to work with him, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
Sander Zaydman
Director, Email + Marketing Automation at Inman News
