Openr aims to revolutionise how content is shared for the benefit of brands, publishers and consumers

As cofounder of Openr, what encouraged you to create this content marketing startup?

Openr is the product of our own frustrations with content marketing for our first business together – once we recognised it was a widespread problem we knew we would be able to build something to fix it.

Like most businesses a large proportion of time and resource is spent creating and curating great content to be shared on social media and in email marketing, all with a view to engaging potential new customers and ultimately driving sales. Our team plugged away and got great levels of engagement on these channels – but what we really wanted was direct action from this sharing – sign-ups, not chit-chat. Yet you can only push this in your newsfeeds so much until fans unfollow. 

What we wanted was a way to promote signing up to those already engaging with our content – that’s how the idea for Openr started. 

What is the main aim of Openr?

The Openr mission is to revolutionise how content is shared for the benefit of brands, publishers and consumers.

The Openr SaaS platform enables marketers to add relevant, promotional messages onto all the content that is already being shared, making that content sharing get the action that is really needed – whether it’s driving traffic, boosting email sign-ups, gathering insight or capturing leads. 

Integration is simple – rather than sharing an article or image with a normal URL on social or email, use an Openr link instead. Then when fans and followers click the link they’ll see the content in all its glory but with the message and call-to-action too – encouraging further engagement and delivering tangible ROI on the content sharing.

By closing the gap between content sharing and direct action Openr has already been selected by the Global Festival of Media for their 2015 start-up showcase in Rome; named a Must-Have Marketing Tool for 2015 by Entrepreneur Magazine, and is being used by global brands and agency giants alike – despite only launching publicly in January 2015. See an Openr link in action at Openr.co/6CB and see how it works here.

Above: Christina Richardson of Openr

What makes Openr unique from similar companies on the market?

We all know how many tools are in a marketers social and content tool box – from Buffer, to Hootsuite, to Bitly – and they all do a great job. This is why we’ve really focused on Openr doing its core job really well – letting you add a message and call-to-action to all that content that you share – whilst integrating seamlessly with these social management tools.

We did that by working extensively with marketers from businesses of all shapes and sizes to create a platform that is truly built for marketers, by marketers. This means it has a depth of features aligned to a marketers need and there is no painful transition period, simply the addition of a complementary tool that really delivers the ROI to content sharing.

Why would magazine media publishers benefit from using Openr?

With all the wealth of rich content produced every day by publishers they are in the best position to benefit the most from using Openr. Every article or news story shared could be generating further engagement with readers – it would be collecting newsletter sign ups one day, or running a quick poll on reader reaction to a news story the next. The ability to change the message by geo-location, device, time and date gives publishers the optimum flexibility, and of course all the results are tracked within the Openr dashboard too.

But that’s just the start: We are now launching a Publisher-specific version of Openr that enables monetisation of a publisher’s extensive social reach. We all know we can’t fill newsfeeds with advertiser messages, but once a reader has clicked to read an article they’re interested in – how about showing them a relevant brand message, such as a ‘Book a test drive’ message with a relevant car review, or a ‘search flights’ message with a city travel guide? Well that is what Openr for Publishers offers. With every article shared, publishers now have the opportunity to add a relevant advertiser Openr message. It offers a premium and highly targeted placement for advertisers, and finally a solution to monetising social reach without impacting social media integrity for publishers.

This publisher solution is being rolled out with selected publishers now – if you’re interested to join them, get in touch with by emailing Alex on alex@openr.co.

How important is it to get for publishers to get their content marketing strategy right?

Great content is the life blood of publishing, but it is content marketing that expands the readership and engagement with that content. Furthermore, as readers utilise a further proliferation of devices to access content is becomes increasingly important to reach them across different channels, and this is only set to further diversify in the years to come.

To evolve and plan for this there will become an increasing focus on relevance of message, in order to engage with different and more diverse groups of target audience. Ultimately a test-and-learn approach to trying different marketing routes will be key to finding the best routes for each target audience and hence each publication. 

Anything else you would like to add?

If anyone would like to try out Openr don’t hesitate to get in touch with us on team@openr.co and we will set you up with a free trial of our enterprise-level platform.

About Christina Richardson

Christina is the CMO and co-founder of Openr, an innovative new digital marketing tool, used by global brands and publishers alike, to drive action from all the the content that they share online. Christina spent much of her career managing and growing FMCG brands at Nestle and Robinsons, and then turned her hand to young start-up brands, and has never looked back since. As well as this she teaches Entrepreneurial Marketing for University College London, and is a mentor at UCL and Bathtub2Boardroom. She is a regular speaker at industry events including those at The British Library and writes regularly for the likes of Marketing Donut, as well as the business publications of HSBC, BT and Vodafone.

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