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Operations

Double conversion rate: how Jeune Afrique’s dynamic model better acquires subscribers
Jeune Afrique’s dynamic paywall and subscription offers page adapts to user engagement & location, significantly increasing conversion rates.
Enhancing audience engagement with data-driven decision-making: a practical guide
In today’s digital landscape, engaging audiences has become more complex than ever. As consumer behavior continues to evolve, professionals in digital publishing must leverage data to drive their strategies. This…
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…

From The Audiencers' Collections

Moments of truth: retention essentials for publishers
This is an extract of an article published in Tom Burrell’s Retention Blueprint Newsletter. The Retention Blueprint' is a free, retention-focused digest delivered straight to your inbox every Friday, providing…
5 essentials to launch a subscription model risk-free
Although there is of course a lot to master when launching your digital subscription model, these are our top 5 in terms of the paywall journey itself. Below,…
5 low-lift ways The Washington Post increased click-through rates
Kelly Poe of WP shares how they’ve increased newsletter CTRs to better engage, convert and retain their audiences.
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…
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.
The Audiencers’ Festival Madrid presentation slides
At The Audiencers' Festival Madrid, our first event in Spanish, we heard from the top publishers in the country on how they're engaging, converting and retaining digital audiences, plus an…
The conversion funnel framework, explained
This article works through Poool's Conversion Funnel Framework, a set of KPIs that publishers can track in their Dashboard and use to optimize conversion rates. Each quarter, the Poool team…

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
How we launched our article-gifting feature for digital subscribers, with successful cross-functional collaboration throughout the process.
7 lessons for publishers from 7 different subscription businesses
Learn from other subscription businesses to increase engagement, conversion and retention

Conversion

4 things to learn from Babbel’s e-learning subscription success
Humans and machines should work hand-in-hand, personalization is good but individualization is better, and other lessons to learn from Babbel’s subscription
5 simple hacks for publishers to increase paywall conversion rates from Poool’s CEO, Maxime Moné
Increase conversion rates in no time with these 5 simple hacks, effective for all types of paywalls
Increase conversion rates: how to get started with a dynamic paywall
Be audience-first with your reader revenue model by adapting the paywall and experience to a user’s profile and context
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…
Publishers: 10 ways to combat subscription churn
Retention is at least as important (if not more) than acquisition – so how do you increase subscriber retention rate?
7 lessons for publishers from 7 different subscription businesses
Learn from other subscription businesses to increase engagement, conversion and retention
Value proposition examples from successful publishers
Better define your value proposition after being inspired by these successful publishers
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…

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

#16. What explains subscription conversion success?
You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #16, sent out on June 14th, 2023. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here. In The Audiencers' Newsletter #16:…
Subscriber (re)engagement strategies from L’Équipe and Les Echos-Le Parisien
L’Équipe and Les Echos-Le Parisien share retention and re-subscription strategies in 4 steps at The Audiencers’ Festival Paris 2024.
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…
The Washington Post’s attention to detail: 12 things you can learn from their strategy
Nearly 150 years after it first launched as a news publication, The Washington Post is one of the top news brands in the world. And, since its sale to Jeff…
How the experts do brand publishing: when digital marketers launch their own media
We speak to a digital marketing expert on how they successfully launched a media to support their brand.
How to turn passive followers into active community members
Having social followers isn’t the same as a community. Neither is having a large audience. So, what can you do to go from a passive following to an active, engaged…
How we measure audience engagement at DER SPIEGEL
By focusing on delivering a meaningful and relevant experience to our readers, DER SPIEGEL has built a loyal and engaged community of subscribers who actively seek out our brand and…