You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #60 sent out on April 2nd, 2025. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.
We’re back Festivalling!
London. 24th June. The Tabernacle Theatre.
6 sessions. 15 experts taking to the stage. 200 publishing pros working in digital reader revenue.
BBC. Thomson Reuters. Conde Nast. Business Insider. BILD…
You’ll definitely want to be there!
> Find the full program & reserve your spot here
In today’s newsletter:
- ELLE Magazine increases conversion rates by 20% with contextual dynamic paywalls
- Live Q&As & happiness officers, The Globe & Mail on community building
- Putting your community members’ faces on a bus? Belgium’s HBVL’s unique value exchange
- 🔗 Links links links – articles to add to your reading list
Increasing conversion rates by 20% at ELLE
ELLE knows better than anyone that changing the paywall design for sales periods and important moments in their readers’ calendar is essential for reigniting conversion rates…
But you can’t offer discounts forever…
Plus, the team wanted to adapt paywalls to reader profiles based on their browsing behavior, to ensure the subscription met their expectations. Thus the idea of contextual paywalls was born!
Contextual paywalls? – i.e. a type of dynamic paywall that adapts to the reader’s context. In ELLE’s case, the content tag.
What part of the paywall was adapted?
- The top level tagline
- The visuals, making them relevant to the topic
- As well as an adapted benefit in the checklist, highlighting the editorial pieces most appreciated by subscribers in that specific section
In which contexts?
7 paywalls for various editorial topics:
- Society (“Société”)
- Fashion (“Mode”)
- Psychology-relationships (“Psycho-sexo”)
- Beauty (“Beauté”)
- Design (“Déco”)
- Cooking (“ELLE à table”)
- Well-being / Fitness (“Forme / bien-être”)
Results
Overall, in the last quarter of 2024, conversion rate to subscription via the paywall rose by 20%!
3 sections showed a leap in conversion rate of 50% on average on contextual paywalls versus the generic paywall.
Other sections trended towards a 10% conversion rate increase, and only 2 sections performed either similarly to, or slightly below, the generic paywall.
> Full article on The Audiencers
Live Q&As and happiness officers at The Globe & Mail
The Globe and Mail has a happiness reporter (LOVE) who ran a call-out for readers to nominate the happiest person they know!
It was part of their wider community engagement strategy, as shared by Rebecca Zamon on The Audiencers.
> Live Q&As – organized around large events, whether that be elections, leadership race, interest rate changes, or around feature stories, evergreen content not tied to a specific news moment
> The team collect questions prior to the event via in-article call-outs as well as during the live discussion
> Journalists also get involved in the conversations, creating a two-way conversation with readers – they get to talk about parts of the story that didn’t make the article, or go deeper into this topic, getting story ideas for future coverage
> They also use call-outs to ask for audience opinions, with the goal of building reader-led pieces
This is where their happiness reporter came in, running a call-out for readers to tell her about the happiest person they know, before sharing all these stories in an article, with recommendations on what we can learn from these happy individuals!
A really great way to get readers involved whilst combating news avoidance and balancing more negative news events!
> Full interview with Rebecca on The Audiencers
Putting your community members’ faces on a bus? Belgium’s HBVL’s unique value exchange
Building an engaged community is about value exchanges, and the more value you can offer, the more you can ask for in return.
HBVL in Belgium offered members the chance to have their photo printed onto the local football team’s bus, meaning they get to travel to the final with them!
What’s in it for HBVL?
In order to enter a photo for this prize, members had to download the HBVL app. Thousands of photos were collected, a new fan newsletter launched and 44% increase in app downloads thanks to the initiative.
Recommendations to add to your reading list
- Data and metrics are not the only way to consider the impact of news. A framework used by Dutch public broadcaster NPO factors in individual audience needs and broader societal functions (journalism.co.uk)
- Building a Product team on a tight timeline, from FT
- I was on a podcast with the brilliant Lennart Schneider, talking everything engagement, conversion & retention (like normal!)
See you in two weeks for the next newsletter,
Madeleine
