You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #29, sent out on January 10th, 2023. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.
2023 in review
Happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely break, surrounded with friends and family, and have come back to work refreshed and full of energy for 2024!
The past 12 months have been a whirlwind, and it's only upon writing this newsletter (and trying to pick the top content of 2023) that I remember how much has happened.
So let me start by saying thank you! 2023 brought The Audiencers to life with 2 Festivals and a growing community, IRL, online and on WhatsApp. And it's all thanks to you.
Looking forward to 2024 and there's a lot of exciting things on the horizon, including 7 Festivals and another (very) exciting project (to be revealed soon).
But before we get on to all that, let's look back over some of the top performing articles of the past year, the ones that got away and the content needed to ace 2024.
The most read article
In at no. 1 on The Audiencers' charts, looking at a mix of page views and time on page, analyzes how 3 successful British publishers are onboarding their subscribers – The Economist, The Telegraph and The Times & Sunday Times
My personal fave
Stories from some of the smaller publishers of the world are often my favorite – the more limited resources and challenging environments can give way to very innovative strategies.
One such example is the success of Blick.ch's registered user acquisition channels, from raffles and walls to comment sections and hiking.
TL;DR
- Before even launching their premium model, Blick acquired over 660,000 free, logged members through 6 central acquisition channels
- The most successful of these is raffles, organized in partnership with widely recognized sponsors to offer enticing prizes. Participation requires registration and these users will also receive a dedicated raffle newsletter with the goal of increasing frequency of visits, encouraging future participation and sharing success stories from winners
- Employing a registration wall has allowed them to test copy and reader conversion journey to not only increase registrations but put these learnings to practice on their future paywall
- Their innovative event verticals make use of 2 popular hobbies in Switzerland – hiking and skiing – allowing the title to be present where Swiss people are, connecting the offline and online worlds
> A definite must-read on The Audiencers
Most talked about LinkedIn post
Given their maturity in the digital subscription market, The New York Times and Washington Post often dominate our leaderboards for top performing content. And this is no different when it comes to LinkedIn. One of the most popular posts from 2023 covers The WP's “The 7” newsletter and steps to building this kind of product (click to view on LinkedIn).
The one that got away
This was one of the toughest to pick. With so many intelligent contributors, but limited time to dig into The Audiencers' content, some fall through the cracks.
One article that you may have missed shared how Le Monde launched a new mobile app feature to combat news avoidance & information fatigue.
According to the latest Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Digital News Report, 36% of people worldwide choose to avoid news.
From a business perspective, this represents a significant number of readers who may never subscribe to any news title or are at risk of unsubscribing soon.
We met with Quentin Leredde, Product & Audience Director, to discuss how the team launched “Découvrir”, a new tab in their mobile app showcasing primarily positive and feel-good stories.
The content to ace 2024
There are 3 trends on my mind for the next few months, so here's some content to get ahead of the game…
> Maximizing the value of each article, aiming to do more with less. Here's a LinkedIn post on the topic, and I'd also highly recommend the very popular article from The Audiencers' Festival in London – Bridge roles in practice: the models, strategies and structures for success
> Increasing lifetime value: if I had to choose a single metric to track in 2024, it would be this, and not only as an afterthought prior to subscription. LTV should be used to increase revenue from the moment a reader arrives on your site. Atlas' Abi Spooner (the Queen of LTV?) discusses this in more detail here
> Registration (again): yes this was my prediction for last year too, but it's taken longer than imagined for registration to be taken seriously, likely because it's hard to measure the ROI directly from this model. But the value of this for diversification, data collection and a whole lot more is unparalleled. No wonder titles such as The Economist, DN Media Group and Ringier have added registration to the user journey over the past year… More on the value of registration here.
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