Lennart Schneider is Founder of Subscribe Now, helping decision-makers in the subscription economy attract subscribers and keep them happy.

Let’s take a closer look at how it works in this excerpt from the book:

• Reach

Reach includes every interaction with potential subscribers, whether through your own channels or through partners, referrals, paid advertising, or other touchpoints.

a) Anonymous contacts: most of these contacts remain anonymous. They have interacted with your brand, but you cannot identify or contact them directly.

b) Leads: Leads are potential customers whose identity is known and who can ideally be contacted directly. Examples include newsletter subscribers, freemium users, registered accounts, or prospects collected through sales or telephone campaigns.

• Trials

Trial users are people who are testing the subscription through a free or discounted offer while deciding whether the product provides enough value to justify becoming paying subscribers.

• Active subscribers

Active subscribers are customers who have paid at least one regular subscription fee. Later in this article, I’ll explain in more detail where I draw the line between trial users and active subscribers.

Within the subscriber base, customers often move between different pricing tiers through upgrades and downgrades, increasing or decreasing their customer value.

A subset of active subscribers consists of customers with expiring subscriptions. When subscribers cancel, their subscription usually remains active until the end of the current billing period. In other words, the cancellation has been submitted but has not yet taken effect. During this remaining term, there is still an opportunity to persuade customers to reverse their cancellation.

• Former subscribers

Once a subscription has expired, customers become former subscribers. If they have given permission to be contacted, the win-back process begins. Former subscribers effectively become qualified leads again and can be targeted with dedicated retention and reactivation campaigns to encourage them to subscribe again.

Let’s go through these stages in detail:

1. Reach

The first step in any subscription business is making sure that potential customers become aware of your brand, your product, and your subscription offering. To achieve this, you should continuously expand the range of channels through which you reach your target audience. In addition to your own website, these channels may include social media, podcasts, public relations, events, partnerships, and many other customer touchpoints.

However, reach alone is not enough. What matters is reaching the right people. Ten million impressions may sound impressive, but they have little value if the audience has no genuine interest in your product. That’s why every subscription business should define an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)—a description of the customers who are most likely to become successful, long-term subscribers.

Very few products are truly designed for everyone. Instead, companies should focus on the people or organizations that have a real need for what they offer. If you cannot clearly define your target audience, you risk wasting both time and marketing budget on customers who are unlikely to convert. An ICP therefore defines not only who you want to attract, but also who you deliberately choose not to target.

The best starting point is your existing subscriber base. Analyze your most valuable customers, identify the characteristics they have in common, and use those insights to guide future acquisition efforts. At the same time, you should regularly challenge your assumptions and explore whether there are attractive customer segments beyond your current audience.

For the digital subscription of a regional newspaper, an Ideal Customer Profile might look something like this:

Potential subscribers have lived in the region for several years, feel connected to their local community, and are interested in topics such as local politics, schools, transportation, public safety, sports, real estate, and local events. They are typically between 35 and 64 years old, employed, and have started a family. Many own their homes and expect to remain in the region for years to come. Although this profile is still relatively broad, it also illustrates that younger audiences or digital nomads may currently be much harder to convert into paying subscribers and therefore might not be the primary focus of acquisition efforts.

At the same time, additional customer segments may exist outside this core audience. For example, people who no longer live in the region may still have a strong interest in the local football club. The German newspaper Ruhr Nachrichten identified exactly this opportunity and introduced a separate, lower-priced BVB subscription for Borussia Dortmund fans living outside its core distribution area. This represents a second Ideal Customer Profile that can be targeted independently and generates up to 2,500 additional subscribers during a single football season.

Once you have identified the right audience, the next challenge is to create a positive first impression and spark genuine interest. Or, as Lucas von Gwinner and Dirk von Gehlen would put it, to build a strong brand. In their book Macht Marke, they argue that a brand is far more than a company’s name or logo—it is its reputation.

Before people decide to subscribe, they need to understand what your brand stands for and why it solves their problem better than any competing alternative. Strong brands communicate a clear positioning that differentiates them from competitors. As a result, they not only increase awareness but also improve conversion rates and strengthen long-term customer retention.

2. Leads

Before asking people to commit to a subscription, it is often worth getting to know them first and gradually introducing them to your product. A well-designed lead generation strategy helps build a large pool of potential subscribers whom you can engage with on an ongoing basis.

Compared with anonymous visitors, leads are significantly more likely to become subscribers. Because you know more about them, you can tailor your communication and offers to their individual interests, needs, and stage in the customer journey.

One of the key metrics at this stage is the Lead Rate, which measures the percentage of people reached who are willing to share their contact information and give permission to be contacted.

For example, if 5,000 out of 100,000 people reached provide their email address and marketing consent, the Lead Rate is 5%.

Lead generation serves two important purposes. First, it creates an owned audience that you can contact repeatedly without relying solely on paid advertising or third-party platforms. Second, it allows you to build trust over time before presenting a subscription offer. Especially for products that require a high level of commitment or involve a longer purchasing decision, this gradual relationship-building can significantly improve conversion rates.

3. Trials

In most cases, customers can only determine whether a subscription is worth paying for after they have experienced the product firsthand. Free or discounted trial offers lower the barrier to entry and encourage potential subscribers to give the product a try.

There is no universal formula for determining the ideal trial length or discount level. Companies continue to experiment with different approaches, and in my interviews I have seen everything from one-day trials to introductory offers lasting two years. Some businesses prefer short trials that generate revenue quickly, while others use longer trial periods to help customers build lasting habits, making the subscription an integral part of their daily lives before they begin paying the full price.

One of the most important phases of any subscription begins during the trial: onboarding. Effective onboarding helps new customers discover the value of their subscription as quickly as possible. The sooner they experience meaningful benefits and establish regular usage habits, the more likely they are to become long-term subscribers.

The Trial Start Rate measures the percentage of people reached who begin a trial. For example, if 2,000 out of 100,000 people reached start a trial, the Trial Start Rate is 2%.

The Lead-to-Trial Rate, on the other hand, measures how many known leads convert into trial users. If 500 out of 5,000 leads sign up for a trial, the Lead-to-Trial Rate is 10%.

Not every trial results in a paid subscription. Users who decide not to continue after the trial often return to the lead pool. If they have given permission to be contacted, they can be nurtured through future marketing campaigns and may eventually decide to subscribe.

4. Active subscribers

Active subscribers are the foundation of every subscription business. They generate predictable, recurring revenue and therefore determine the long-term health of the business. At this stage, the primary objective is to retain subscribers for as long as possible while increasing their lifetime value through upgrades and cross-selling where appropriate.

The Conversion Rate measures the percentage of people reached who become paying subscribers. For example, if 1,000 out of 100,000 people reached purchase a subscription, the overall Conversion Rate is 1%.

Like most funnel metrics, this KPI can also be broken down by funnel stage. If 200 of those 1,000 subscriptions originated from 2,000 trial users, the Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate is 10%. Likewise, if 750 out of 5,000 leads purchase a full subscription, the Lead-to-Paid Conversion Rate is 15%.

One important question remains: When does a trial become an active subscription?

In practice, the boundary is not always clear. Many subscription businesses offer heavily discounted introductory pricing before customers begin paying the regular rate. However, not every discounted offer should be classified as a trial. A clear definition is essential because it directly affects the accuracy of key performance indicators such as retention and churn.

Consider the following examples:

1. DIE ZEIT

The German newspaper DIE ZEIT offers a print subscription in which the first 13 issues cost €5 each before increasing to €7.50. Since subscribers pay roughly two-thirds of the regular price from the very first issue and generate at least €65 in revenue, I would classify them as active subscribers from day one.

2. BILDplus

A BILDplus subscription costs €1.99 per month during the first year before increasing to €7.99 and can be cancelled at any time. In this case, I would consider only the first month part of the trial period. Once the subscription renews, customers become active subscribers, even though they continue to receive a substantial introductory discount.

3. The New York Times

The annual All Access subscription is sometimes available for $20 instead of the regular $90. Because these customers pay only around one-fifth of the standard price—and many are likely to cancel before ever paying full price—there are two reasonable approaches. They can either be treated as long-running trial users or as heavily discounted active subscribers.

Why does this distinction matter?

Cancellation rates during trial periods are typically much higher than among established subscribers. For that reason, trial users are generally excluded from core KPIs such as Retention Rate and Churn Rate. An inconsistent or poorly defined distinction between trials and paid subscribers can therefore distort these metrics and make performance comparisons misleading.

The Retention Rate measures the percentage of active subscribers who remain subscribed from one period to the next. If you begin the month with 10,000 subscribers and 9,500 are still active at the end of the month, your monthly Retention Rate is 95%.

The Upgrade Rate and Downgrade Rate measure how frequently subscribers move between pricing tiers. For example, if 200 out of 4,000 subscribers on the Basic or Standard plan upgrade to a higher-tier subscription within a month, the monthly Upgrade Rate is 5%.

4.5 Expiring subscriptions

Expiring subscriptions are subscriptions that have already been cancelled but remain active until the end of the current billing period. Although this stage is often overlooked, it can last for a surprisingly long time.

For example, a customer with an annual subscription may cancel on the very first day simply to avoid missing the cancellation deadline. Even though they have already submitted their cancellation, they remain an active subscriber for another 365 days. That also means you have 365 opportunities to convince them to stay. In many cases, a cancellation is not a final decision against the subscription but simply a precaution to avoid an unwanted renewal.

The Cancellation Rate measures the percentage of subscribers who submit a cancellation request during a given period. If 300 out of 10,000 active subscribers cancel within a month, the monthly Cancellation Rate is 3%.

The Cancellation Rate should not be confused with the Churn Rate. The two metrics often differ because a cancellation usually occurs well before the subscription actually ends.

For example, if a customer cancels in January but still has six months remaining on an annual subscription, they contribute to the Cancellation Rate in January but only enter the Churn Rate in June—provided they do not withdraw their cancellation beforehand.

In addition, the Churn Rate includes not only voluntary cancellations but also involuntary churn, such as failed payments or expired payment methods.

The Reactivation Rate measures how many subscribers reverse their cancellation before their subscription expires. If 30 out of 300 cancelling subscribers decide to stay before the end of their billing period, the Reactivation Rate is 10%.

Finally, the Save Rate measures the percentage of subscribers who begin the cancellation process but never complete it. In other words, it captures the cancellations that were successfully prevented before they were ever submitted.

4.6 Former subscribers

Once a subscription has expired, the customer becomes a former subscriber and the win-back process begins. Provided you still have permission to contact them, former subscribers can be reached through email, phone calls, push notifications, or other marketing channels with tailored offers and messages designed to encourage them to return.

From the perspective of the subscription funnel, former subscribers effectively become highly qualified leads again. Unlike new prospects, they already know your product, have experienced its value, and have demonstrated a willingness to pay in the past. As a result, win-back campaigns often achieve significantly higher conversion rates than campaigns targeting first-time subscribers.

As a subscription business matures, win-back becomes increasingly important because a growing share of the addressable market has already subscribed at least once. Over time, acquisition efforts naturally shift from attracting entirely new customers to re-engaging former ones.

For that reason, it is useful to measure how many people you are targeting have previously been subscribers. The Former Subscriber Rate measures the percentage of contacts—such as recipients of an email campaign or visitors reaching a paywall—who have held a subscription before.

This metric provides an indication of how frequently you are “fishing in the same pond.” While it is often impossible to identify former subscribers across third-party channels such as social media, logged-in users on your own website can usually be matched to their subscription history.

In some industries, particularly video streaming, customers regularly pause and restart their subscriptions depending on the content available. In these markets, cancellation is often not the end of the customer relationship but simply a temporary break.

The Win-Back Rate measures the percentage of former subscribers who return within a given period. For example, if 1,000 out of 5,000 former subscribers purchase another subscription within one year, the annual Win-Back Rate is 20%.

Viewed as a whole, the subscription funnel is not a linear process but a continuous cycle. Every former subscriber represents a potential future customer, making retention and reactivation just as important as acquiring new subscribers.

Hi, I'm Lennart Schneider, Founder of Subscribe Now, helping decision-makers in the subscription economy attract subscribers and keep them happy.

When I talk to newsletter creators, it usually doesn't take long before one of two questions comes up:

1) What actually constitutes a good open rate?

2) My newsletter has an open rate of 40%. That's great, isn't it?

The honest answer is: There is no such thing as a "good" open rate, and the open rate really says nothing about the quality of your newsletter. 

In this article, I want to clear up this misconception and explain when you should still pay attention to it.

P.S. I've written a book! The playbook for successful subscription models: With growth strategies and best practices from 50 leading companies. You can pre-order here (or on Amazon).

I completely understand the need for benchmarking and comparability. With newsletters, you have relatively few metrics, so you try to draw as many conclusions as possible from what you do have. Often, however, you draw more conclusions than are actually useful.

Let’s start with the basics: open rate is a fraction. You calculate it by dividing the number of unique opens by the total number of recipients. So far, so simple.

However, this leads to a small detail that is often overlooked. You can increase the open rate in two ways: more openers, or fewer recipients.

The latter point is often overlooked, but it’s crucial. People who don’t open your newsletter are often the same ones. And especially with older mailing lists, you often have a large proportion of inactive subscribers who have lost all interest.

So, if you have a 50% open rate with 10,000 recipients, then there are probably several thousand among them who haven’t opened a single email in six months. Let’s say there are 3,000 of them. If you remove them from the mailing list, your open rate immediately jumps from 50% to 71.4% (5,000 opens/7,000 active recipients).

Has this improved the quality of your newsletter? Are your readers more satisfied? No!

Has the quality of your distribution system improved as a result? Absolutely!

Why would you delete valuable leads?

Admittedly, I’ve recommended this to many newsletter creators, but the enthusiasm is usually lukewarm. They’ve put a lot of money and effort into acquiring these subscribers, so why would they just delete the addresses? Perhaps the reach is even important for advertising sales (even if nobody sees the ads).

But here are a few reasons why it’s worth it:

1. If someone hasn’t opened your emails for a long time, the likelihood of them returning is relatively low
2. You increase the risk of being perceived as spam
3. Depending on the newsletter tool and contract, costs increase as you send more emails
4. Your brand suffers when customers perceive you as pushy
5. Your advertisers are surprised when clicks fail to materialize on a supposedly large distribution list, and become suspicious
6. …

Many of the world’s leading newsletters therefore place great importance on the quality of their mailing lists and remove users after a long period of inactivity. The New York Times even discloses this quite transparently:

How can I find out who is inactive?

Good question! And not so easy to answer. Since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, it’s often difficult to track who actually opens an email – Apple automatically opens emails before they reach the recipient, and therefore your email program thinks these users are active. Other users block tracking and are registered as inactive, even though they enthusiastically read every issue. So if you’re unsure: just ask the users.

Clicks can be tracked more reliably than opens, and if readers don’t click after (repeated) requests, you can remove them from the mailing list with a clear conscience.

Do I really need to delete them?

No. You can also pause them for now, or reduce the frequency. A good example is the sports newsletter “The Gist”. They temporarily pause inactive subscribers, and then when a major event is coming up (for example, the Olympics), they try to reactivate them.

However, you shouldn’t overdo it. If you haven’t contacted them for 1.5 years, you should continue to refrain from doing so. After that time, their consent to contact them also expires.

Even more reasons why open rate is misunderstood

Your open rate depends on numerous factors, and the quality of your content is just one of them. Here’s a (likely incomplete) list of factors that affect open rates:

Mailbox display:

• Subject lines (Do they encourage clicks?)
• Pre-header (Do you tease the content well?)
• Sender’s name (Do they trust you and look forward to your emails?)
• Sender images (Will they stand out in the inbox? Only works with certain clients)

The quality of your distribution:

• Cleanup of inactive users (Are non-openers regularly removed?)
• Segmentation (Do you always send emails to the entire mailing list or do you select recipients based on interests?)
• Preference Center (Can users configure which emails they receive and how frequently?)
• Age of the addresses (How long ago did someone sign up?)
• Lead campaigns/address origin (On which channels and with which promises were the users acquired? Did they want the newsletter, or did they just share their email to participate in a competition, for example?)

Deliverability

• Advertising tab in Gmail (Are emails from Gmail classified as advertising and not delivered to the main mailbox?)
• Spam (Do the emails often end up in the spam folder?)
• Bounces (Can the emails not be delivered? What are the different types of bounces, hard and soft?)
• Image sizes (are the images too large?)
• Email size (Will the email be truncated, for example, by Gmail, which happens from 102 kb upwards?)
• Shipping time (Is the shipping time chosen?)

Contents

• Good quality & relevance
• Diversity (do you cover different needs so that every issue contains an “aha” moment?)
• Continuity & predictability (Do readers know what to expect and why each issue is worthwhile?)

Technology

• Email tool or measurement technology (each mailing tool measures opens slightly differently, which affects the KPIs)
• Tracking Opt Out (Have users disabled tracking of clicks and opens?)
• Auto Opens on iOS (Are open rates inflated because emails are automatically opened due to privacy settings?)

So I can ignore the open rate?

Not quite. Since we don’t have many metrics, it’s still a valuable signal, as long as you’re aware of what it tells you, and what it doesn’t.

What you shouldn’t do is compare your absolute open rate with competitors who use completely different tools and whose lead generation works differently. This apples-to-oranges comparison is completely pointless.

What you can do instead:

• Observe long-term trends: Is my own open rate constant? Have there been any sudden changes I should understand? (But keep in mind that these changes could be due to technical reasons, e.g., more users with tracking protection.)
• Optimize your open rate with A/B testing: e.g., send each email with 3 different subject lines to a sample group beforehand and send the best version to the rest of the distribution list.
• Examine outliers: Were there any particular issues that were opened more or less frequently than average? What can I learn from them?
• Re-contacting those who didn’t open the email: Some companies send a newsletter a second time if it wasn’t opened the first time. I find it a bit spammy, but it seems to work.
• Use net reach (recipients x open rate) as the basis for advertising deals: This is fair to your advertising clients and you can also justify why the CPM (cost per thousand contacts) is higher if you are contacting a cleaned distribution list.
• Comparing segments: When running different lead generation campaigns, you shouldn’t just focus on the short-term cost per lead (CPL), but also consider whether the campaigns generate active recipients in the long run. A sweepstakes often generates a large number of addresses cheaply, but the open rate drops significantly after just a few campaigns.
  For better comparability, you can calculate a cost per lead after, for example, 10 campaigns. If you generate 1,000 leads per campaign for €1,000 in each of two campaigns, the short-term CPL is €1. If, after 10 campaigns, 70% of the leads in campaign A are still active, while only 30% remain active in campaign B, you get a clear picture: In campaign A, an active lead cost €1.43, while in campaign B it cost €3.33.
• …

PS: My newsletter has an open rate of 51-58%. That’s great, isn’t it?…

PPS: To hear more from me about subscription and newsletters, sign up to my own newsletter, Subscribe Now, here

This article was originally published in German on the Subscribe Now website, translated and republished with permission.

This article was written by Lennart Schneider, founder of Subscribe Now podcast & newsletter, and expert on digital subscription models.

> Duolingo's streak counts consecutive days with at least one exercise and resets if you miss. Nine million people hold streaks of a year or more, and the feature has run through 600 tests in two years

> They optimise for CURR, the share of today's active users who were also active in the past week, rather than daily actives. Focusing on it since 2018 grew daily actives 4.5 times in four years

> The wins are often tiny. Changing a commitment button from "next" to "I'll commit" measurably lifted retention, and reminders fire 23.5 hours after the last lesson

> Streak Repair used to cost money. It is now free but requires extra exercises, choosing long-term loyalty over the easy revenue

> Lennart Schneider's warning matters more than the tactics. Streaks work because every Duolingo user shares one goal. News audiences don't, and a comic animation rewarding an article on the Middle East confuses rather than delights

> Freeletics asks why, then asks it again. A user wants a six-pack, because they are ashamed at the pool, because they fear looking undisciplined. The third answer is what marketing should address

> Just as useful is asking why not. Finding that people lacked space or had neighbours who complained produced small-space and quiet workouts, and both constraints are now asked about during onboarding

> The streak resets unless you train 17 minutes a day. Some users email support when a time zone breaks it, which tells you more about the mechanic than any engagement chart

> The onboarding questionnaire does two jobs at once: it decides which benefits to show to convert free users, and it starts personalisation. The first plan meets 85% of a user's needs

> Freeletics began as three students emailing PDF training plans. The real signal was not sign-ups but what happened when they stopped: readers offered their payment details to get it back

1. Start with why

Freeletics relies on strong emotions throughout the entire user journey. Ellie says:

To make this work in practice, she reveals a few tricks:

• Always ask “why”

Users have very different reasons for wanting to get fit: some want to fit into a wedding dress, some want to be more successful at dating and others want to change their mindset.

If you understand these underlying motivations, you can address the strong emotions in acquisition, but also in churn prevention.

Laddering helps with this. So ask “why?” several times in a row.

Why did you sign up for Freeletics?
“I want a six-pack.”

Why do you want a six-pack?
“Because I’m ashamed of my body in the swimming pool.”

Why are you ashamed of your body?
“Because others might think I lack discipline”

• User Generated Content

Freeletics’ advertising relies primarily on content from real users. They work with impressive transformations, i.e. before and after videos.

The idea behind it is: “If Peter can do it, then I can do it too.”

These videos are sometimes sent in by users without being asked, but sometimes they are also professionally produced, for example as part of a boot camp lasting several weeks, where the participants are accompanied by camera teams.

Ellie says: “Many people are actually very proud to be Freeletics users because it has a certain meaning in terms of consistency and effort.”

• Show relevant success stories

These success stories work particularly well when they are highly personalized. As a woman, you are more likely to be attracted to a female success story than to a man who has trained himself to have a six-pack.

But it gets even more granular. Since Freeletics wants to appeal to as diverse a target group as possible, they also have videos with trans people and other minorities so that they too feel represented.

This personalization begins with targeting on the advertising channels, but also continues through to engagement and retention. The CRM campaigns, for example, always contain motivational stories that are tailored as well as possible to the user.

2. Personalization in onboarding

Most successful apps now start onboarding with a questionnaire.

This questionnaire has two functions:

1. Based on your answers, the appropriate subscription benefits can be displayed to increase your conversion from free to paid
2. Your answers are the first step to personalization

With Freeletics, you start by choosing a training plan that suits your preferences. The better the app knows you, the better the plan fits your lifestyle and the more likely you are to stick with it.

Ellie says that the training plan meets 85% of the needs in the first week and then becomes more personalized from workout to workout.

> Publisher onboarding benchmarks and best practices

3. Streaks keep daily engagement high

One day without using Duolingo and the streak is gone. Ouch!

Freeletics has also started using the popular streak-strategy. In order to not lose the streak, you have to exercise for at least 17 minutes a day, otherwise the counter drops back to zero.

Ellie emphasizes that these streaks are not relevant for every user, but some even write to support if the streak didn’t work because of a different time zone while on vacation! It shows how much they want the workout to be recognized.

The email tool that I use for my newsletter proves that streaks work outside of sports and languages. I write this newsletter in beehiiv and if I don’t publish a newsletter within four days at the latest, my weekly streak expires.

By the way, Ellie is currently at 309 days in Duolingo. Respect!

4. Understand the conversion killers – and address them openly

It’s not enough to understand why someone wants to use the app. It’s just as important to understand why not?

At Freeletics, they realized early on that many people don’t have much space to train at home. So they developed special workouts that can work in small spaces. Other users have neighbors who complain about the noise, so they need quiet workouts.

If you understand these conversion killers, you can address them openly and offer solutions. That’s why such restrictions are asked about directly in the onboarding process. This is where Freeletics can show that they understand your concerns and take the limitations into account when personalizing.

5. Activate the community with challenges

70,000 people took part in the Freeletics Summer Challenge. This surprised even Ellie and her team. The goal is to make the challenge even bigger and better this January.

The challenge shows that the best way to motivate one another is for people to share a common goal and unite over this.

6. Newsletter as MVP

12 years ago, three students sent training plans as PDFs via email. That was the birth of Freeletics.

This example shows once again that a newsletter is often the best minimum viable product to find out, without much effort, whether people want your product.

If a significant number of people give you their email address, you have a first positive signal. But even more important is what happens when you take the newsletter away from them.

When the founders stopped the newsletter, users wrote to them: “Here are my PayPal credentials, take whatever you want, but please keep sending me my training plan.”

7. A letter to yourself

This feature does not exist yet, but Ellie dreams of introducing it! Anyone who registers for the app can write a letter to themselves and make a commitment in it.

When your motivation wanes after a few weeks, this letter appears again and you are reminded of the big dreams you started with.

You will find out if this feature is really coming when you install the app…

1. Find the right analytics method for your question

AI is being applied to many problems today, often as the default. However, this approach often doesn’t make sense. In many cases, a simpler analysis method—such as a basic hypothesis test or descriptive statistics—is sufficient. These traditional techniques can be more appropriate and effective for many analytical tasks.

Ana therefore recommends considering these four types of analysis for each question, considering what level of complexity is appropriate for the question:

• Descriptive statistics: What’s happening in my business?
• Exploratory statistics: Why is it happening?
• Predictive statistics: What’s likely to happen?
• Prescriptive statistics: What should I do now?

Important: All of these analyses only work if they are based on a solid data foundation. Otherwise, the old rule applies: Sh*t in, sh*t out!

> Also by Lennart: Handelsblatt Circles: 6 lessons on community from Chief Growth Officer Jan Kleibrink

2. To reduce churn, you need models that explain why users cancel

Many companies are currently introducing prediction scores to analyze which users are particularly likely to take out a subscription, accept a subscription upgrade, or cancel their subscription in the next X months.

There are two ways to build these models:

1. Pre-trained models that have already been optimized with subscription data and are often already integrated into tools, such as Piano
2. Self-trained models that you develop in-house and feed with your own data

Although the latter is much more complex and requires a lot of know-how in the data science team, Ana recommends this approach.

She sees two advantages in this:

1. You are tool-agnostic, so you can use these analyses independently of the systems used for subscription management and the like and combine data from different sources.
2. These models provide a more precise understanding of how individual variables affect the probability of termination.

Pre-trained models are quicker to use and can often be implemented by laypeople, but they often remain a black box. That is, each user is assigned a value between 0 and 100, but it is not possible to understand exactly why.

If you work with such a black box, you can test a measure (e.g. an email campaign) and see whether it reduces the likelihood of cancellation.

However, it is better if you understand that, for example, payment by invoice has a major impact on the likelihood of cancellation. Then you can test measures to steer users to another payment method with a lower churn rate.

The success of this measure can then be measured in two steps:

1. Were fewer subscriptions ordered on account?
2. Did users in this test group cancel less often?

So you should try to improve the input variables rather than focusing on the output like a churn score.

A statistical model is particularly useful if it helps you understand the patterns behind the terminations, because then you can develop and prioritize targeted hypotheses and measures.

3. The difference between a CDP, a CRM, a data warehouse and a data lake

When it comes to data, you come across these terms all the time and it helps to understand the differences. to put it simply, they’re different ways of storing and structuring data.

1. A data lake collects data from different sources in different formats. This includes data where it is not yet known whether and how it will be used and often the data is not yet finally structured and cleaned.
2. In contrast, a data warehouse has a clearer structure. The data is (symbolically speaking) already stored in labeled boxes on pallets on a shelf in a warehouse. Imagine it like an Ikea warehouse, where you always know where to find the Billy shelf and how many of them are still in stock.
3. A customer data platform (CPD) organizes the data around the customer. While the data warehouse contains all possible data, the CDP bundles different sources and all touchpoints with your users in order to understand exactly what a customer is interested in, what they last bought and when they last visited the website.
   
   In addition, a CDP offers operational functions, such as personalization and campaign management, in order to implement marketing and communication measures based on data.
4. A customer relationship management (CRM) system manages the interactions between you and your customers. In contrast to the CDP, however, the CRM usually has a more limited view of interactions within certain systems and does not yet contain the data from all touchpoints.

Each of these systems has its advantages and disadvantages, so it always depends on the area of ​​application what you need. However, it is important that the data is properly compared so that you have a single source of truth and no contradictory information that then leads to chaos.

1. The motivation

Why should I read you? This will arouse your visitor’s interest. What do I get out of it? What goal will I achieve with it?

In the USA, a fairly simple formula has been adopted: “Get smart (about XY) in X Minutes”.

It combines three promises: fast, simple, effective!

• Morning Brew: Become smarter in just 5 minutes
• The Hustle: Get Smarter on Business and Tech
• Smart Nonsense: Get smart about nonsense 

Other newsletters promise you a good start to the day:

• The Newsette: Make good mornings even better.

• Nice News: Wake up with a more optimistic mindset and start your day inspired.

Others help you understand the world:

• Daily Skimm: Get caught up on the top stories and information you need to start your day. We filter the noise so you don’t have to — all in a well-rounded read.
• 1440: Feed your curiosity & expand your knowledge.
• intrigue: Know what’s going on in the world, and why

And others promise you success in your career:

• Creator Wizard: Find & Negotiate your Dream Sponsorships
• girlboss daily: Finally, an email you’ll actually look forward to. Join 250,000 ambitious women who are finding  success  on their own terms.
• Startup Insider Daily: Be one step ahead and actively shape your success story in the emerging startup ecosystem.
• Techpresso: Keep up with Tech in 5 minutes. Save time, become more productive and boost your career.
• SmartBrief: We make it easy for business leaders to stay up to date on their industry’s most important topics.

Personally, I like the newsletters that just make you a better person:

• Rocca News: Become the most interesting person at Happy Hour

• Arnold’s Pump Club: The positive Corner of the Internet. The daily email that makes it easier to live a healthier, happier life without all the confusion and stress.
• Crooked: Put an end to doomscrolling forever

 Tips:

• Here you should stimulate the imagination of your users: The motivation can either be a positive vision of their future, a problem that the newsletter solves for them, or a concrete task that it takes on for them.
• It’s best to repeat this mission statement at the top of every newsletter issue. This will remind your readers every time why your newsletter is worth it and it will be your obligation to always live up to this promise.

> To read next: How to make newsletters valuable in a reader revenue model – The Telegraph & The Edinburgh Guardian

2. The solution

Here you have to prove that you have the right content, categories and formats to fulfill this motivation. It is best to be very specific here and describe content that makes you unique and arouses desire.

 Examples: 

• The Newsette: With shopping recs, lifestyle tips, inspiring interviews, and the news you need to know.
• 1440: We scour 100+ sources so you don’t have to. Culture, science, sports, politics, business, and more—all in a five-minute read.
• TLDR: Get the free daily email with summaries of the most interesting stories in startups  , tech  , and programming !
• Startup Insider Daily: Get curated summaries of the latest startup and tech news delivered daily at 7am.
• Blazer: We source through hundreds of publications and social media accounts every day to find the best articles, photos, and inspiration from around the web. Then we package it all into a simple and brief email once a week and deliver it right to your inbox.
• The Daily Upside: Delivering razor sharp analysis and perspective on all things finance, economics, and markets.
• Semafor Flagship: The biggest stories across the globe in 100 words or less.
• chartr: Data-driven insights into business, tech, entertainment and society.
• Axios Media Trends: The trends reshaping the digital media ecosystem, by Sara Fischer.
• intrigue: Craving apolitical, jargon-free news and analysis from around the world? You’re in luck!
• Nice News: News, but only the good stuff. Nice News sends a daily digest to your inbox every morning with only positive news stories.

• Crooked: Get more pithy analysis of the world we live in including what’s happening, why it matters, and what you can do about it.
• Bits & Pieces (scalable Capital): Your weekly dose of financial news in 5 minutes. The most important things about markets, stocks, ETFs & Co
• Arnold’s Pump Club: Arnold’s Pump Club is a daily newsletter by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Simplify nutrition, fitness, and wellness with Arnold’s email every day.
• Smart Nonsense: Get our daily comic explaining nerdy stuff like you’re 5.

 Tips:

• It is best to list the three most important points as bullet points.
• You should keep it as short as possible on the first screen, but below the fold you can explain in more detail what this content is about.

> Also by Lennart: Lock-in effects: How to make your subscription irreplaceable

3. The target group

Who is your newsletter aimed at? The more specific the target group, the faster the visitor will recognize whether the newsletter is intended for them.

 Examples: 

• The Hustle: innovators
• 1440: intellectually curious individuals
• Blazers: men who care about how they look
• The Peak: Canadians

• Bits & Pieces (scalable Capital): Investors
• The Diff: industry professionals and curious generalists
• girlboss daily: ambitious women
• TLDR: busy techies
• chartr: visual thinkers and data-driven professionals

 Tips:

• Always ask yourself: Is this a target group that people would like to identify with?
• You can define the target group, for example, through a common goal, socio-demographics, professional groups, etc.
• The target group is often mentioned in the value proposition or social proof and should be described in a maximum of three words.
• The best target groups also make it clear who the newsletter is not for . You don’t want to be everything for everyone, but the right solution for certain people.

4. The social proof

You can claim a lot, but is your newsletter really that great? User numbers or opinions from readers or experts build trust and make you seem relevant.

There are many possible forms, for example:

• User quotes
• Expert opinions
• Star ratings
• User numbers
• Logos of media in which you were mentioned
• Celebrities who recommend the newsletter
• Companies where your readers work

 Examples: 

• Techpresso: Join 100,000+ free daily readers / Read by professionals from Apple, OpenAI, Nvidia, and more
• Bits & Pieces (scalable Capital): Over 700,000 investors
• Smart Nonsense: Read by nerds from …
• The Diff: Join 50,000+ industry professionals and curious generalists
• girlboss daily: Join 250,000 ambitious women
• The Hustle: Trusted by 2.5m+ Readers
• Daily Skimm: The morning newsletter that millions wake up to
• 1440: 3,666,461 Readers today (updated every second)
• TLDR: Join 1,250,000 readers

• The Gist: Join 900,000+ readers. As seen in Forbes, goop, TechCrunch
• chartr: Join 500,000+ visual thinkers and data-driven professionals…
• intrigue: designed by former diplomats. Trusted by Professionals at Microsoft, Meta, McKinsey, …

 Tips:

• The testimonials should express different aspects of your value proposition in readers’ words
• The more reputable your testimonials are in your target group, the better

5. Address concerns

Most users are initially hesitant about whether they should really enter their email address. Make them feel comfortable by openly addressing their concerns and signaling that they can trust you.

First and foremost, they have three concerns:

1. Can I simply unsubscribe?
2. Am I getting spam?
3. Do I have to pay anything?

 Examples: 

• intrigue: 100% FREE. NO SPAM. UNSUBSCRIBE ANY TIME.
• TheFutureParty: It’s free!
• girlboss daily: No spam. No junk. Only the most curated content, we promise!
• chartr: completely free … PS No spam. Ever.
• The Gist: 100% free.
• 1440: 100% free, unsubscribe anytime.

 Tip:

• These points should be close to the call to action, e.g. in small print above or below.

6. The frequency

The best newsletters become a regular habit that readers integrate into their daily lives. Some are read in bed in the morning, others on the way to work or home, and some on the toilet.

So when they register, show them what ritual they will develop with you.

 Examples: 

• Rocca News: 11 AM ET on weekdays.
• Daily Skimm: SEVEN DAYS A WEEK
• TLDR: one daily email
• Quartz Daily Brief: delivered every weekday morning

• Startup Insider Daily: daily at 7am
• The Gist: every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday morning
• Semafor Flagship: twice daily
• Axios Media Trends: Weekly – Tuesdays
• Nice News: daily digest / every morning
• Crooked: free nightly newsletter
• DTC: five times a week
• Techpresso: daily readers
• TheFutureParty: 5-min daily newsletter
• Arnold’s Pump Club: Arnold’s email every day
• girlboss daily: Monday to Friday.

 Tip:

• Precise time specifications seem binding. If you promise that your email will be in their inbox every morning at 7 a.m., prospective customers will immediately see that they can rely on you.

7. The length

I admit: This newsletter is way too long again. Most readers don’t want any waffling, they’ll give you a maximum of 5 minutes of their time. So it’s no wonder that so many newsletters are optimized for exactly this reading time (or at least promise it).

 Examples: 

• The Hustle: 5-minute newsletter
• Rocca News: in 5 minutes or less
• The Gist: in less than 5 minutes
• chartr: takes 5 minutes to read
• The Peak: in one 5-minute email
• intrigue: 5-minute newsletter
• TheFutureParty: 5-min daily newsletter
• Morning Brew: just 5 minutes

• TLDR: in 5 minutes
• Semafor Flagship: in 100 words or less
• finish: three minutes

 Tips:

• Remember that most newsletters are skimmed rather than read, so you can set aside time for a cursory reading.
• The best newsletters are respectful of their readers’ time. To underline this, Axios lists the exact word count and reading time at the beginning of each email: “Today’s AI+ is 1,214 words, a 4.5-minute read.”
• If you can’t estimate the reading time, copy your newsletter here and let us calculate it. This issue will take you 8:11 minutes.

8. The Call to Action

It’s just a small thing, but you can also tell a story on the registration button:

• “Join” suggests a community
• “Try it out” lowers the hurdle
• “Sign up for free” alleviates a worry
• and “Wake up happy” promises me a better life.

 Examples: 

• Axios: Sign Up
• finimize: Join Free
• Blazers: Join
• Semafor Flagship: Sign up for free
• The Peak: Try It
• intrigue: Try it out
• Nice News: Wake up happy
• Bits & Pieces (scalable capital): Get started now
• Creator Wizard: SEND ME SPONSORSHIPS ➤

 Tips:

• Maximum three words.

9. The product

The same applies to newsletters: show, don’t tell! A meaningful screenshot of your newsletter says more than 1,000 words.

 Tips:

• Some newsletters show the inbox as well as the email. This allows you to see the subject lines and the topics that await you.
• The screenshot can be animated or scrollable and thus serves directly as a reading sample.
• It doesn’t have to be a real screenshot. Feel free to shorten text or summarize sections to show more on one screen. Above all, it should give a feel for your product.

Speak German? You HAVE to sign up to Lennart’s newsletter, an essential read for anyone in the publishing industry!

Here are four things you can learn from the NZZ:

1. Four Mission Teams along the Subscriber Journey

The NZZ works in four cross-functional mission teams that are organized along the subscriber journey: Discover, Subscribe, Engage and Delve deeper.

So the first step is to create a positive first contact with the NZZ for as many people as possible, then to bring them closer to the brand through registrations, podcasts and newsletters  convert them to a subscription and finally build loyalty and increase ARPU through additional offers and upgrades such as the premium subscription “PRO Global”.

The missions are intended to break down silos and bring product, UX design, technology, marketing, data and editorial teams closely together. Each mission consists of a core team from three disciplines (product, design, technology), which draws support from adjacent teams depending on the project.

Aligning the customer journey means that there are clear responsibilities and each team has KPIs that are easy to measure. But Alban also sees challenges in that users are not accompanied from start to finish and there are sometimes dependencies between teams that make the work more difficult.

That’s why he’s currently working on revising the team structure as part of his leadership program at Columbia University. Because, just like product development, organizational development should be driven forward iteratively and learnings implemented efficiently.

2. From registration to subscription

Alban’s team is responsible for discovery, which roughly means from the first contact with the brand to registration and subsequent onboarding.

They are currently experimenting with registration walls and when this makes more sense than a paywall to build up a pool of interested users.

After registration, he considers the first 100 days to be crucial, because if you don’t take out a subscription by then, in most cases you won’t do so again.

The most important product to get started with is the daily NZZ Briefing. Readers receive this automatically after registering and it is designed to build a habit of reading NZZ journalism.

But it is also important for them to ensure that their offerings are used as widely as possible. That’s why podcasts and videos are also recommended to registered readers, even if they are usually available for free. It’s about building a relationship with the brand in a variety of ways, developing loyalty and trust.

3. Using personalization to combat the filter bubble

Personalization plays a major role on NZZ, especially in the newsletter, “My NZZ”, and in reading recommendations below articles.

However, one should pay attention to the users’ needs and concerns. They fear missing out on important topics because they don’t match their profile or because they sink deeper and deeper into their own bubble.

That’s why the personalized NZZ products are designed so that you always see the most important news whilst also getting targeted inspiration for topics that broaden your horizons.

To do this, the internal data team develops models based, for example, on users with similar profiles.

The homepage and the NZZ Briefing are not yet personalized. Alban hasn’t ruled this out, but they would like to use more editorial expertise in this area and curate topics that are relevant to readers.

He generally sees personalization as a retention rather than acquisition tool. On the one hand, the data to give good recommendations is (still) missing at the acquisition moment, but on the other hand, the reading recommendations are only valuable if you have a subscription in order to access the articles.

4. Develop new markets with verticals

NZZ, for example, has set up verticals with “Planet A” for climate journalism and “Well-Being” to attract users in new subject areas.

The verticals often start with a newsletter or podcast, but are then expanded to other areas.

They are managed by editors who serve as the face of the brand and work closely with the product team. This is also one of the big differences to departments, because verticals can work like small startups within the company, pursuing their own goals and being developed by cross-functional teams.

Even if the verticals open up new topics, they must always have a connection to the core product, because only then can readers be transferred to the core subscription. Depending on how much they already offer for these target groups, Alban recommends different strategies.

What he advises against: cheap subscriptions for individual verticals. They should continue to contribute to the core business and not shift the focus away from the normal NZZ subscription.

Find more of Lennart’s work on Subscribe Now.