You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #72 sent out on September 17th, 2025. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.
It was our Paris Festival yesterday, where 400 publishing pros joined us at the very-cool Ground Control in the 12th arrondisement (add it to your list for your next visit to Paris!), with speakers from Le Monde, Le Parisien, Le Soir, The Guardian, The Telegraph et moi!
Plenty of strategies and best practices to come (but first, recovery!)
In today’s newsletter:
- Digital transformation: The Irish News shows us how it’s done
- Turn fly-bys into loyal audiences: strategies to build engagement on-site
- Personalized homepage: how NPG increased performance across every key metric
- What we’ve been reading this week: articles to add to your reading list
The Irish News’ impressive digital transformation
The Irish News, the top selling regional daily newspaper in the UK and Ireland, has been quietly undergoing a digital transformation without sabotaging print. It’s a masterclass on how to build firm foundations and make strategic choices for long-term sustainability…
> Step 1: Build a solid tech stack
Digital transformation begins with infrastructure, and a focus on actionable data.
- CMS and subscription management: Arc XP
- Paywall, landing page, promotional modules, onboarding and cancellation: Poool
- Payments: Stripe
- Tech partners: code.store
- Strategy partners (at various moments): FT Strategies & Atlas
> Step 2: Customer segmentation and prioritization
Rather than treating all readers the same, initial segmentation has focused on high-value groups such as frequent newsletter subscribers, engaged GAA (Gaelic Games) fans and Politics readers, registered users as well as lapsed subscribers.
> Step 3: Funnel optimisation, KPIs & next best action
User journey mapping has been a major focus and is an evolving area. The team is actively working to improve each stage of the funnel with clear KPIs: from anonymous visitor to engaged reader, subscriber, and retained customer.
One of the biggest learnings so far is the power of simple changes like dynamic subscription prompts and homepage banners to drive results.
> Remembering what’s essential to the brand & its audience
The transformation has been about more than technology – it’s also been about being unmistakably clear on who they are and what the brand stands for, such as community and building trust through putting writers front and centre in both content and marketing
> The results: steady, sustainable growth
The Irish News is now seeing consistent subscriber growth, with digital making up a growing share of total revenue. Since March, their total subscriber base has grown by over 15%. This has been driven in part by a 109% increase in new subscription orders compared to the previous six months.
> Step 4 & beyond: Transformation never stops! This is only the beginning…
There’s a long road still to go but the momentum is real, and the strategy is sound. Print remains strong. Digital is growing. And the foundations are being laid for a business that will endure well into its next century!
> Find the full case study on The Audiencers (big thank you to Annette and Paul for their time!)
How to turn fly-bys into loyal readers
If you’ve been following The Audiencers or Sarah Marshall recently, you’ll have heard about the need to build out the “happy middle” of the audience funnel (read this to catch up if you haven’t already!) —the space between a casual visitor and a loyal, paying reader.
Unlike the fly-by visitor, these readers have repeated, meaningful interactions with your brand. They consume more, contribute to higher lifetime value and even advocate to bring others to discover your work.
But how do you go about doing this?
Culturally, it means shifting from a content-centric approach, where the end goal is publication, to an audience-centric one, where the focus is on impact.
In practice, it means working on the world’s least sexiest initialism, H.E.C (it’s the best I could do…): Habits, Engagement & Community
> This article lists case study examples to inspire your teams on how to achieve this effectively
Increased engagement & paywall hits at NPG with a personalized homepage
The challenge for publishers isn’t a lack of content — it’s making sure each reader sees what’s truly relevant to them. Which is why personalization should be a a core principle of your product strategy.
This is the case for Neue Pressegesellschaft (NPG), where 80% of the homepage is now personalized.
⚡ How is this personalization powered?
It’s a mix of user-configurable modules and algorithmic recommendations, driven by their central data warehouse, where they track reading behavior, user choices, subscription status and more
📈 How has this impacted performance?
Since launching the new homepage strategy earlier this year, results have been impressive:
> +10% increase in paywall hits
> Personalized teasers: 10% CTR (vs. 3% for manually placed content)
> +28% increase in average active days per subscriber
➕ What about personalization beyond the homepage?
This strategy is in fact working across every product touchpoint:
> Their personalized newsletter is the best-performing email by far (opens and CTR)
> They’re expanding personalization into push notifications and other channels.
> And they’re now launching a new feature: “Frag mich” (Ask Me) – a chat-based assistant powered by generative AI.
Full story from Head of Product Management, Daniel Geigner, on The Audiencers
What we’re reading this week
- The Economist’s president on how the publisher plans to navigate shrinking search traffic and the rise of AI platforms (from The Media Stack)
- How El País became a digital subscription powerhouse (INMA)
- The Guardian’s annual reports are out, showing a significant increase in reader revenue (The Guardian)
See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,
Madeleine
