This is how Alma Media engages three million users registered with an Alma account

Three million people already have an Alma account, which allows them to access services across Alma’s various brands. Alma engages registered users by offering personalised content and additional features, such as saving housing listings and entertainment games in news media.

Alma reached the milestone of three million registered users, but how does it keep these users engaged?

–  Above all, by offering services that are genuinely useful in everyday life. The Alma account works across 28 services, and engagement is built when a service learns to recognise a registered user’s interests and offers them relevant content. This way, the user feels that the service truly knows them, says Head of Business Program Riikka Ranta.

Thanks to collaboration between Alma’s brands, a registered user can access multiple services with a single Alma account. At the same time, they gain access to additional features, some of which are available only to logged-in users.

–  In news media, these include quizzes, entertainment games, commenting and saving articles. We have also offered registered users exclusive content, such as sports broadcasts, says Iltalehti’s Managing editor Joonas Partanen.

Registered users can also save personal settings, such as subscribing to notifications on topics that interest them.

– On housing marketplaces, a registered user can track listings and searches with alert features, save favourites and use tools such as monitoring their own home’s value, lists Henrik Laakkonen, Head of the Etuovi.com and Vuokraovi.com marketplaces.

The Alma account is part of the strategy

The Alma account is a strategic way to build a direct, long-term customer relationship and collect consent-based data. Through it, Alma develops better services for users and strengthens its business.

–  The goal is simple: to better identify what creates value for the user, and on that basis offer content, services and commercial messages, always responsibly and within the user’s consent, Ranta says.

This also improves the effectiveness of advertising within the Alma environment. Registered data enables more precise targeting, drawing on diverse signals about users’ interests and, for example, when they are in the process of making purchasing decisions.

– This translates directly into better advertising performance: campaigns reach the right audiences in the right context, while the experience is clearly more relevant and engaging for the user, says Johanna Vartiainen, Development Director at Alma Media Solutions.

User data also enhances product development, including the building of data products aimed at businesses.

AI as a tool for engagement

AI makes the user experience more personalised and timely: content recommendations are based not only on past behaviour, but also on what interests the user at that very moment.

–  When a user is interested in a particular topic in one service, we can naturally guide them to another Alma service with content that interests them. This improves the user experience and strengthens engagement across the entire Alma network, says Riikka Ranta.

According to Vartiainen, AI also refines audience targeting and campaign timing in advertising. It helps identify users’ interests more comprehensively, allowing brands to deliver more relevant commercial messages. This means that advertising is no longer based solely on individual signals, but on a broader understanding of audience behaviour. For advertisers, this results in improved campaign effectiveness.

In the future, the role of AI will grow further. Henrik Laakkonen says that the possibilities of AI in building customer-tailored service experiences are being explored during the year.

AI can be used to identify user needs more accurately, time content better and build increasingly seamless service journeys.

– The goal isn’t personalisation for its own sake but ensuring that in every interaction the user gets more value: more relevant content, a smoother experience and less unnecessary searching, Ranta concludes.

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