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Operations

How to leverage customer data to identify & act on drivers of churn
This article is from Tom Burrell’s, Retention Blueprint Newsletter. Transform your retention impact in just five minutes per week. Written specifically for Subscription businesses, 'The Retention Blueprint' is a free,…
Audience Research: identifying Key Engagement Drivers at DER SPIEGEL
This article was co-authored by Alexander Held, Senior Data Scientist, and Angelika Zajac, qualitative researcher in the audience research department, at DER SPIEGEL. In the subscription industry, keeping customers…
How to analyze your subscription data
Today it's all about data. I probably don't need to explain to you how important it is for subscription success, but data is often still a specialist topic that many people…
Meta’s news ban on Canada – a chance to strengthen Radio-Canada
Written by Christophe Cluzel and Catherine Léger from Radio-Canada. Christophe, Radio-Canada's Senior Director of Marketing Strategies, guides the teams in acquiring and retaining audiences, while Catherine, Senior Head of Digital…
What is a dynamic paywall?
If you're in the media business, likelihood is you already know what a paywall is. It blocks content and asks a reader to pay to subscribe in order to gain…
Newsletter landing page: 9 essentials for a successful acquisition strategy
I've subscribed to over 2,000 newsletters over the last few years. Most of them had terrible landing pages, but a few were excellent. What sets them apart? They focus on…
State of the mobile publishing market report 2024
Media businesses are facing their most difficult moment ever, Politico and Axios co-founder Jim VanderHei recently said as he ticked off challenges in audience acquisition and monetization. To compete, publishers…
L’Équipe: limiting churn when increasing the price from a highly discounted subscription offer
Romain Lhote, CMO of L’Équipe, spoke at The Audiencers’ Festival about their retention strategy whilst increasing their subscription offer price.

From The Audiencers' Collections

35 ways to grow your newsletter list
The newsletter man himself, Dan Oshinsky, founder of Inbox Collective, spoke at The Audiencers' Workshop in New York in March 2024 on how to grow your newsletter list. With 35…
The publisher’s practical guide to success with gamification
8 essentials for success in gamification, how to use this format to increase revenue, tying content to games and marketing games.
Annual vs. Monthly Subscriptions, what drives more value?
Discover why monthly subscribers may offer greater flexibility, pricing power, and growth potential. Refine your strategy by understanding the nuances of acquisition, retention, and revenue trends to maximize subscriber value.…
Publisher onboarding journeys: benchmarking and best practices
Increasing retention rates has been a key focus for subscription businesses in recent years, particularly as it's now widely recognized that retention is more valuable to your business, and less…
Community building ideas to steal
Content is everywhere. It's unfortunately not so much as a differentiator for your product anymore. …
Media Time: the ultimate engagement metric for subscription publishers
Organized by German press agency dpa and consultancy firm Highberg, the DRIVE (Digital Revenue Initiative) project was launched in 2020 to support publishers in digital transformation with reader revenue models…
5 low-lift ways The Washington Post increased click-through rates
At The Audiencers' Newsletter Workshop in New York in March 2024, Kelly Poe of The Washington Post shared how they've worked to increase click through rates across their newsletter portfolio.…
Building the optimal registration journey
Registration is a valuable model for digital publishers at any level of maturity or revenue model: …

Inspiration from publishers around the world

Newsletter Walls: How a French publisher is innovating to increase its subscriber base
This French print and digital news publisher has developed a unique engagement strategy involving newsletter inscriptions and registration walls to boost ARPU and de-anonymize audiences. 
The Wall Street Journal: how to develop long term relationships with young audiences
The Audiencers' Festival at The New York Times Building on March 15th brought together 150 digital publishing professionals to discuss everything from audience research to newsletters, engaging young audiences and…
Audience research at The Atlantic: The questions that data can’t answer
Exclusive interview with Gina Bulla, executive director of audience research at The Atlantic
Retention, engagement & subscriber-only newsletters: lessons to learn from the experts at WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media Europe
From LADbible group and Die Zeit, to The New York Times and The Mill, what did the experts have to share at WAN-IFRA’s event?
How we introduced group subscriptions to The Atlantic
From the early days of market research homing in on a target audience to finding ways to incorporate user feedback throughout the development cycle, the goal was “seamless.” For years, The Atlantic has…
The Atlantic: bringing more value to readers and subscribers through our mobile app
"Our products are better when informed by the people who use them" The Audiencers' Festival at The New York Times Building on March 15th brought together 150 digital publishing professionals…
A Spirit of Generosity: How The Atlantic team collaborates to launch features like article gifting
At The Atlantic, we pride ourselves in fostering an environment that abides by a guiding principle: a spirit of generosity, or, in other words, “a natural disposition in each colleague toward…
7 lessons for publishers from 7 different subscription businesses
Learn from other subscription businesses to increase engagement, conversion and retention

Conversion

Managing editorial production: giving an objective to each content
What is my content actually seeking to achieve? With 50 pieces of content produced each day across 14 sections, Elodie’s team at Unify’s women’s brands need to make each content…
Don’t feel like subscribing? 12 examples of alternatives to increase ARPU
I'm guessing that you're a fan of subscriptions, otherwise you're in the wrong place. But, unfortunately, not all of our users and readers are as enthusiastic about this model. Some are…
Audience research at The Atlantic: The questions that data can’t answer
Exclusive interview with Gina Bulla, executive director of audience research at The Atlantic
4 things to learn from Süddeutsche Zeitung’s digital transformation
Transformation is a process, not a state, developing multiple revenue pillars, and other lessons to learn from Süddeutsche Zeitung’s subscription model
The New York Times dynamic paywall model, analyzed
Registration as a soft conversion step, developing numerous levers for value creation and not worrying too much about bypassing are just some of the strategies you can apply to your…
Advertising, philanthropy, and user engagement: How the non-profit La Presse generated $13 million net assets in 2023
Montreal-based La Presse is a unique news organization. Long-time property of the Desmarais family, the legacy daily, which famously ditched its print edition for an iPad-only app in 2015, became…
7 lessons for publishers from 7 different subscription businesses
Learn from other subscription businesses to increase engagement, conversion and retention
Changing the way we do paid: how L’Équipe halved subscriber acquisition costs whilst increasing both attribution and last-click subscriptions
how, by trial and error, L’Équipe managed to halve acquisition costs on advertising platforms, while increasing both attribution and last-click subscriptions.

Subscription

Engagement data & conversion strategies to increase revenue
Quantify user’s loyalty journey, monetize conversion events and adapt user experiences to increase reader revenue
Forget focusing on paywall types, it’s time to put your audience first 
Instead of trying to find the ‘best paywall model’, look at your audience, segment them into engagement groups and present each group with an adapted journey that’s most likely to…
How publishers are using A/B testing to optimize conversion rates
3 examples of A/B testing – what you can test, what you should define before a test and what can you learn from these examples to apply to your own…
How to reduce the risks of launching a subscription strategy
How can you launch a subscription strategy without putting your traffic, SEO, advertising revenue and your reader’s view at risk?
The New York Times dynamic paywall model, analyzed
Registration as a soft conversion step, developing numerous levers for value creation and not worrying too much about bypassing are just some of the strategies you can apply to your…
Newsletter Walls: How a French publisher is innovating to increase its subscriber base
This French print and digital news publisher has developed a unique engagement strategy involving newsletter inscriptions and registration walls to boost ARPU and de-anonymize audiences. 
Paywall visibility rate: the essential KPI you should be tracking in your subscription strategy
Tracking and optimizing both premium content visibility and paywall visibility rate will help move users through the funnel towards subscribing in the future.
Subscription Conversions: Finding the balance between frustration and engagement
Too much frustration and a user leaves your site to find content elsewhere. Leave too much content open and you may well increase engagement but this won’t increase your revenues. So…

Retention

Retention-minded acquisition: workshop recap
This is a recap from The Audiencers' workshop in London in June 2024. An INMA benchmark report recently suggested that publishers should convert readers into subscribers quickly, then put in the…
NZZ: How do you inspire people in the first 100 days?
100 days. During this time, you have to convince new users that your subscription is worthwhile for them. One of the latest guests on my Subscribe Now podcast has been…
Key publishing insights from media leaders at Mx3 conference in Berlin
From data & subscription growth to Gen Z & new content formats… what can we takeaway from Di5rupt’s Mx3 event for publishers?
The New York Times dynamic paywall model, analyzed
Registration as a soft conversion step, developing numerous levers for value creation and not worrying too much about bypassing are just some of the strategies you can apply to your…
How Reuters and The New York Times use newsletters to drive loyalty, subscriptions, and revenue
Newsletters continue to be a valuable tool for cutting through the noise of shared online spaces and engaging audiences in direct and meaningful ways. To learn from a couple of…
#26. The Renaissance of WhatsApp & the launch of The Audiencers’ Community
You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #26, sent out on November 15th, 2023. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here. The Audiencers' Community is…
A Spirit of Generosity: How The Atlantic team collaborates to launch features like article gifting
At The Atlantic, we pride ourselves in fostering an environment that abides by a guiding principle: a spirit of generosity, or, in other words, “a natural disposition in each colleague toward…
Audience research at The Atlantic: The questions that data can’t answer
Exclusive interview with Gina Bulla, executive director of audience research at The Atlantic