Audience segmentation is more than a technical exercise, it is a critical strategic driver for any modern media organization. In a landscape where generalist appeal is fading, dividing your audience into distinct groups based on shared characteristics allows you to move beyond guessing and start delivering real value.

At Audiencers’ Festival in Hamburg on March 3rd 2026, subscription consultant Selma Stern shared her recommendations for mastering audience segmentation to maximize the value of each reader.

Why prioritize segmentation?

Segmentation can be mind-bogglingly complex and wildly impactful.

The word comes from biology, where it refers to the process of cell division from a fertilized egg to a full organism. In business, it refers to identifying the constituent parts of a whole – ideally, a set of mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive groups of customers. It can’t be perfect by definition, but even an imperfect segmentation can massively improve your bottom line.

At its core, segmentation addresses three fundamental business needs:

• Stickier content: By clearly defining  Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), newsrooms learn not just what to write about, but how to speak to their readers so the content truly resonates. If you replicate your ICPs as agents and train your newsroom to use them, you can get endless customer feedback at any time of the day.
• Smarter monetisation: Without segmentation, a dynamic paywall is only based on recency and frequency – which is fine, but does not capture your full market potential. . With it, you are “fishing where the fish are,” targeting the right users at the right time.
• Better marketing: Different segments live on different channels and respond to unique triggers. Segmentation tells you exactly where to find your users and helps advertising brands connect with theirs.

Choose your lens:

To build a complete picture of a user, like “Amanda, 40, VP of Marketing,” organizations can look through several analytical lenses:

Segmentation type	Focus/use case	Signal examples
Behavioral	UX Optimization	>5 visits per month, scroll depth, newsletter opens
Needs-based	Product Development	Prefers summaries, explainers, or opinion pieces
Value-based	Revenue Optimization	LTV, subscription tier, payment history
Technographic	Paywall Optimization	Device type (Mobile vs. Desktop), OS, Referral (LinkedIn vs. Facebook)
Demographic	Ad Sales / Strategy	Age cohort, geography, seniority

> Spektrum’s evolution of audience segmentation and testing

Five tips for succeeding in segmentation

1 – Hire strong analytics: This is the “single most important lever.” You need talent that can bridge the gap between high-level business strategy and deep data modeling.

2 – Make it cross-functional: Segmentation is a “Left Brain + Right Brain” exercise. Editorial, product, marketing, and data teams must own the model together; no single department can succeed in a silo.

3 – Quantify benefits early: You must build a business case or risk losing organizational priority. Use “Napkin Math” to show the potential uplift: for example, if a newsletter with a defined audience grows twice as fast as a vague one, what could the vague one be worth with a properly defined audience?

4 – Remember the customer: Segments should feel like people, not rows in a spreadsheet. Give them names like “Jane, the CMO” or “Joe, the Sales Lead.” Talk to them, build agents around their profiles, and ask, “Would Jane actually read this?”.

5 – Keep it simple (but useful): Aim for 4–6 mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive (MECE) segments. If your team can’t name the segments from memory, your model is too complex and will fail to be actionable. Even if your goal is to build a dynamic paywall algo – lose (human) control of complexity, and you won’t know what’s working, which means you won’t be able to adjust next time the world changes.

Real-world impact: fewer paywalls, more subscription revenue

A US publisher’s journey from a rigid freemium model to smart segmentation highlights the power of behavioral data. They discovered that just 1% of traffic drove 25% of conversions.

By analyzing attributes, they found that newsletter click-throughs and direct repeat traffic were high-value, while Facebook and Android traffic converted at near-zero rates. By stopping the paywall for near-zero segments and doubling down on high-value behavioral and technographic signals, they achieved:

• A 2x increase in conversion rate.
• 50% fewer paywall exposures, leading to a better user experience for the same number of new subscribers.

Did this publisher get it completely, fully right? Absolutely not. But the model was a dramatic improvement over the simplistic frequency and recency model they were using before.

As statistician George Box famously said: “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. Be pragmatic—start with the data you have, build empathy for your readers, and iterate until your segments drive measurable growth.

The post Mastering audience segmentation with Selma Stern appeared first on Audiencers.

We interviewed Johannes Vogel, Chief Product & Revenue Officer at stern (published by RTL Deutschland) about how they relaunched a subscription offering from scratch, with teams & systems designed for digital reader revenue.

TL;DR
- The product & revenue team grew from 7 to 75 people, with early hires focused on product, data, engineering and Ad-/Affiliate and Subscription marketing
- Moving from monthly to weekly pricing lifted conversion, particularly among readers with less prior brand engagement; the app stores were reverted to monthly after weekly renewal prompts created friction
- GEO and Capital perform particularly well on both conversion and retention, with brand profiles addressing very specific user needs

Key lessons:
- For a general interest publisher, personalisation is not a feature — it will be the product
- The article that converts is not always the one that retains. Content consistency matters more than acquisition volume
- Get editorial positioning right before optimising conversion. The funnel cannot compensate for a weak proposition

When Johannes Vogel, Chief Product & Revenue Officer, joined stern in late 2023, the digital operation wasn’t obviously broken. Traffic was significant, the brands were well-known, and the technology was functional. The problem ran deeper.

The entire organisation had been built on a portfolio model with its core business being mass-reach advertising. “It was a portfolio machine,” Vogel says. “The important thing was not the individual title or the distinctive brand — it was the massive reach.” The distinct editorial identities of stern, GEO and Capital had been quietly dissolved in the pursuit of digital scale.

For advertising, that was a manageable trade-off. For subscriptions, it was fatal. A reader revenue model only works if you are offering something specific enough that an individual reader will pay for it and, importantly, keep paying. stern’s digital setup had spent years doing the opposite.

Subscription sales sat in a separate silo from editorial and product, with few shared goals and little shared accountability. Vogel and editor-in-chief Gregor Peter Schmitz decided early that there was no point trying to reform what existed. “We had the big chance to build a new team,” Vogel says. “We could work on a new philosophy and a new culture.” They started with seven people, one business, and product organisation.

Building the team

Seven became 75, now heading toward 100. The priority among those early hires was product managers, UX/UI designers, data analysts, software engineers, and subscription marketing specialists. In the editorial areas, the focus was more an transformation the organisation toward a digital-first mindset and way of working. The journalism already existed across three established brands. What was missing was the capability to build, iterate and measure a digital product around it. A subscription business requires product thinking, data infrastructure and commercial mechanics that most legacy editorial operations had never needed to develop.

The post Stern+: How one of Germany’s biggest magazine brands rebuilt a subscription business from scratch appeared first on Audiencers.

You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #85 sent out on March 18th, 2026. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

2 weeks already since Hamburg and the article summaries are coming in hot!

The topic of the day was relationship-building in its two forms – ensuring readers feel valued as individuals (through dynamic strategies, targeted offers and personalization) and helping them feel part of something bigger (with communities and conversation elements). By combining the two, publishers can combat many of the challenges being faced by the industry today, including falling traffic, threats of AI and subscription saturation. 

For Festival attendees, Audiencers’ Subscribers and Poool clients, you can catch up with the slides here.

In today’s newsletter: 

• (from Hamburg) Behind The Kyiv Independent’s 20K community success
• Bundling beyond journalism: interview with Mediahuis’ Group B2C Strategy Directorabout their “essential” subscription, bundling hiking apps, e-books and masterclasses alongside its journalism
• (from Hamburg) How Sweden’s NTM Media has grown their young subscriber base: 500% increase in the past year!
• Links to add to your reading list

Behind The Kyiv Independent’s 20K community success

The Kyiv Independent has grown to over 20,000 members and achieved a churn rate of just 1.64%, all without using a paywall…

Membership Growth Manager, Yana Zhuryk, shared the “how” at Audiencers’ Festival in Hamburg last week: 

1. A community philosophy
The core hook is that their journalism is free for everyone. Instead of selling access to content, they sell belonging. Membership is framed as a ‘way in’ to a mission-driven community, which has proven far more powerful for loyalty than a transactional subscription.

2. Human connection
The newsroom prioritises direct communication with individual audience members.
> The team maintains a Discord community for real-time engagement and commits to answering member emails within 24 hours
> Visible experts: field reporters like Francis Farrell are the “faces” of the brand, appearing in trench-side YouTube videos and personal newsletters that provide a “behind the scenes” look at reporting under fire
> A polished, promotional email marketing campaign was pitted against a personal, storytelling email written by a team member. The personal version drove 3x more conversions and saw significantly higher open and click-through rates

3. Innovative engagement tools
> The community map: members can literally place themselves on a global map, seeing the connection to like-minded supporters worldwide
> Participatory content: through their “Our readers’ questions” series, members can submit questions that the editorial team then answers in dedicated articles.

This continued focus on trust and relationships is paying off!
> A churn rate of 1.8% (compared to an industry average of ~3.6%)
> LTV: members stay for years, not months, because the relationship is emotional, not transactional
> Global reach: 95% of their paying members live outside Ukraine, proving that niche local stories can have massive global revenue potential if the relationship building is right

Full article on Audiencers

Mediahuis is bundling beyond news

Mediahuis has built an ‘essential subscription’,  bundling journalism with apps, e-books, masterclasses, the New York Times and… hiking!

The goal: to solve a genuine consumer problem, making a digital subscription valuable enough that subscribers use it daily, not just when news breaks.

Journalism remains the core, but the strategy rests on the belief that Mediahuis can offer subscribers more value beyond it.

-> The bundle is structured around three layers:

Inform: covers the journalism itself, shifting towards depth and away from commoditized news

Guide: covers service journalism, such as restaurant recommendations and personal finance advice

Enable: services that let subscribers act directly on what they have read. RouteYou, a service for outdoor enthusiasts that competes in the same space as Strava, was the first enabling service added to the bundle in 2023.

-> The addition of RouteYou has been a game changer in making the brand’s bundle usable. Mediahuis had long published hiking and biking content, but the next step was always missing: readers could learn about a trail, but had nowhere to go from there. Now, a QR code in the article links directly to the route in the RouteYou app.

-> This focus on usability pays off. Subscribers who activated RouteYou show 26.5% lower churn. 

For Matthijs van de Peppel, Group B2C Strategy Director, the guiding principle for this kind of diverse bundle is to stay within‘one degree of separation’ from your core journalism, adding only services that connect naturally with what the newsroom already produces

> Read our full interview with Matthijs on Audiencers

How Sweden’s NTM Media has grown their young subscriber base by 500%

TLDR: They made it free! (but of course, it’s more strategic than just that!)

First, before even thinking about pricing, a total shift in editorial focus, relationship-building, and commercial offering.

Reporters were encouraged to write specifically for a 30-year-old target audience and provided with the tools to track this, and reporters were turned into local “influencers” on Instagram and TikTok

3⃣ clear offerings were developed based on age group:
-> 18-25 year olds: Free, including access to the website and app, with one session per user
-> 25-29 year olds: 50% off, including access to the website and app, with one session per user, plus membership discounts
-> 30 year olds: Full price, all of the above plus multiple sessions per user

 A “foolproof” age verification system 

The signup process was designed to be rigorous enough to ensure data integrity while providing a smooth transition to paid status. Although NTM acknowledged the six-step process was longer than they ideally liked, it served two critical strategic functions: foolproof age verification (through social security number collection) and long-term billing preparation (users are required to provide credit card or billing information upfront).

This “opt-out” model allows for a frictionless transition to a paid tier once the user turns 25 (30% opt-in conversion rate so far)

The most surprising outcome from this strategy was how easily and rapidly this attracted completely new readers. 88% of the new readers had no earlier customer relationship with NTM’s brands.

> Full article on Audiencers from our recent Hamburg Festival

> And the brilliant Thomas Baekdal made a free-to-paid projection calculator based on the NTM data that you can play around with to see how this strategy will pay off ()

Links to add to your reading list

• Big moves in the UK media industry
  • dmg media has launched UK’s first-of-its-kind subscription bundle, bringing together Daily Mail+, The i Paper, and New Scientist
  • Axel Springer announces agreement to acquire Telegraph Media Group
  • Reach announces 15,000 subscribers months after launching premium tier for readers
• How the Financial Times’ registration strategy transformed anonymous reach into recurring revenue

See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,

Madeleine

The post #85. Mediahuis’ essential subscription bundle appeared first on Audiencers.

You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #84 sent out on March 4th, 2026. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

I send out this newsletter every 2 weeks, and I promise you EVERY time it falls on a week when we have a Festival But so excited to share articles from our time in Hamburg!

But so many great subscription success stories coming in at the moment. Plenty in today’s newsletter: 

• Lessons on breaking the subscription plateau from Forum Communications’ Chief Revenue Officer 
• For many, subscriptions are rising even as traffic shrinks
• Behind The Guardian’s record-breaking end-of-year campaign 
• Links to add to your reading list (including a debate on whether the NYT is still a news company…)

Lessons on breaking the subscription plateau from Forum Communications

Don’t overlook the subscriber acquisition goldmine that is archived content !

As publishers, we tend to obsess over today’s headlines.

At Forum Communications, they decided to looked at 30+ day-old content.

Stephanie Schroeder, Chief Revenue Officer, told me that when they checked Google Analytics, they discovered that ~10% of page-views were on articles older than 30 days.

And unlike homepage traffic, this content is typically accessed via search, social and direct links, which means users are actively seeking out this content.

> High intent = high propensity

So they tested hard paywalling 30+ day-old articles.

The results:
> Conversion rate doubled compared to standard paywalls
> 15–20% of all subscription conversions now come from archived content walls

(and no, they didn’t notice any negative SEO impacts as a result of this change!)

> This is just 1 of the many small tweaks that have culminated to having a big impact on helping Forum Communications to break the subscription plateau

-> Find more lessons in our full interview with Stephanie on Audiencers

For many, subscriptions are rising even as traffic shrinks

This ^^^^ is important news for publishers and your strategy

Despite traffic falling (according to various research, including Reuters Institute)…

> Irish Times journalism is now fully funded by subscribers

> The Atlantic now has “well over 1.4 million subscriptions”

> Daily Mail has seen huge success since launching their subs offer – they “raced past a quarter of a million subscribers” last March

> At The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, growth isn’t just continuing, it’s speeding up

The future of media, and the survival of journalism isn’t about page views, but relationships.

Behind The Guardian’s record-breaking US End of Year campaign

The Guardian’s end-of-year support campaign, running from early November, through Giving Tuesday and on to midnight on December 31st, is the most critical window in their financial calendar.
 
And their 2025 EOY campaign surpassed expectations:

• $3.1M total raised in cash (beating the $3M goal).
• $8.6M lifetime value including recurring gifts.
• An 83% increase in value over the 2023 baseline

So what were the secrets behind this success? 

> Phasing, using lessons built up through the year:

• The campaign isn’t a single burst of energy but a carefully choreographed sequence that leverages cultural and political moments.
• For instance, the campaign starts early, in November, launching on the anniversary of Trump’s 2024 victory to lean into the “defense of the free press” mission)

> Test & optimize in real time: 

• While traditional A/B testing is the industry standard, it’s often too slow for the “winner-takes-all” windows of Giving Tuesday or New Year’s Eve. To combat this, the Guardian team uses multi-armed bandit testing to optimize messaging in real-time

> Deeply root the campaign in the newsroom: 

• Georgia Warren, US Executive Editor and VP, Reader and Supporter Strategy at The Guardian, serves as a bridge between journalists and commercial teams.
• Every public-facing module is reviewed by an editorial eye to ensure the tone is a seamless extension of the journalism, not a jarring commercial break

> Find my full chat with Georgia on Audiencers

Links to add to your reading list

• Digiday’s article mentioned above is worth a read: Subscriptions are rising at big news publishers – even as traffic shrinks
• How South Africa’s Daily Maverick keeps fine-tuning its membership programme
• Is The New York Times still a news company? This graph caused some debates (but don’t forget how news is still part of the bundle!)

See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,

Madeleine

The post #84. Behind The Guardian’s $3.1M end-of-year campaign appeared first on Audiencers.

You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #83 sent out on February 18th, 2026. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

Hope you’re doing well! I never know what to put in these intros , the important stuff is always below, so let’s just dive in: 

In today’s newsletter:

• Profitable by 2026: the business logic behind Le Monde in English
• New “Directory of Consultants”
• A “free” area? New (/old) strategy for hard walled media
• Building resilience with registration
• Links to add to your reading list

Profitable by 2026: the business logic behind Le Monde in English

The ‘Holy Grail’ for many non-English publishers is breaking into the US market, where they can reach a large audience with high propensity to subscribe. And with the rise of increasingly impressive AI translations, this now seems simpler than ever.

For France’s Le Monde, it’s helped turn a high-cost dream into a soon-to-be-profitable reality

But as Director of Diversification Arnaud Aubron highlights, it’s not as simple as just copy & translate…

> AI is the enabler, not the editor – Le Monde uses a triple-check workflow including native-speaking journalists 

> The goal isn’t to replace the likes of the NYT but to become a complementary source with an EU perspective

> Contrary to the ‘AI replaces humans’ narrative, AI hasn’t killed jobs, but made the project viable. It actually allowed Le Monde to hire 10 permanent journalists who wouldn’t have been hired otherwise.

 The verdict: whilst AI does remove the technical barrier to entry, it doesn’t solve the cultural barrier. You can’t just translate and hope for the best, you have to offer a unique lens that readers can’t get elsewhere.

> Le Monde in English has clearly done things well, and is now on track to be profitable in 2026! Find the full interview on Audiencers

New Directory of consultants 

In need of an expert consultant to support you in achieving all your reader revenue goals? Look no further! Audiencers is here to help;)

A directory specifically for media brands

Segmented via key areas of expertise and language

A link to contact them via LinkedIn for more info

Supporting publishers and independent consultants alike

Check it out here

If you’re a consultant not on the list, submit your profile using the button in the top right hand corner!
If you’ve already submitted your profile but haven’t yet claimed it, find your page and click “claim this profile”. We’ll approve it and you’ll have full editing access (cool right!)

P.s. As a team of just 2, we might not approve changes/submissions for a few days, but don’t fret, we’ll get round to it when we can!

A “free” area? New (/old) strategy for hard walled media

We’re seeing an interesting flip in publishers’ subscription models – whilst many used to have a “premium area” with articles reserved for paying subscribers, a few are now including a “free area” on their homepage, with fully open content.

I imagine that these homepages are built specifically for non-subscribers, aiming to balance engagement with frustration whilst combatting the “subscription saturation” challenges (i.e. leaving more content open to allow middle-of-the-funnel audiences to discover the value of their content). 

Thanks Kaiden Chandler (The Ithaca Times) for sending these examples over!

Building resilience with registration

Building resilience in a privacy-first, platform-fragmented market isn’t just about subscriptions, it’s about registration…

Why move registration to the top of the agenda?

> Monetizing the “maybe” segment: In many markets, willingness to pay is low (around 10% in the UK, Spain, and Italy). Registration provides a longer runway to demonstrate value before asking for a credit card whilst increasing revenue from ads
> Counter declining ARPU: Demographic data can increase display ad rates by 45%, and registered users convert to paid subs at 3x to 40x the rate of anonymous readers
> Data resilience: With third-party cookies crumbling, first-party data is the only way to maintain effective audience targeting and personalisation

How can you succeed in registration?

> Build a high-value proposition: a convincing statement and benefits to convince a reader to pass through the registration wall

> Reduce friction with progressive profiling: collect data over time, maybe starting with just an email address and password. But only collect what you’ll use!

> Understand your “Why”: this helps you focus efforts into the right aspect of registration

> Engage immediately: onboarding registered users just as you would subscribers

In our latest article on Audiencers, we share recommendations from FT Strategies’ latest report, combined with our own registration case studies, to help you build the anonymous to known strategy needed for 2026.

Links to add to your reading list

• An audience expert’s advice for getting first-time visitors to come back within a week
• Why Aftonbladet’s readers reject AI articles – but embrace AI chatbots
• News24 curated a “Best of Investigations” series, making high-impact archive pieces free for 24 hours only. This reached 500,000 users and added 23,000 highly engaged readers to their retargeting pool for future campaigns. (from FT Strategies’ registration report)

See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,

Madeleine

The post #83. Le Monde in English is on track to become profitable in 2026 appeared first on Audiencers.

You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #82 sent out on February 4th, 2026. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

Congratulations, you survived January, the seemingly longest month of the year! 

In today’s newsletter:

• How do you get young audiences to engage? Recommendations from the second Next Gen News Report
• A new paywall trend? Promoting popular premium content in the paywall
• Locking in subscribers: how to ‘help’ readers stay without holding them prisoner 
• Links to add to your reading list

How do you get young audiences to engage?

The second Next Gen News Report from FT Strategies, Knight Lab and Google News Initiative is out, sharing a roadmap for news organizations to reach younger audiences.

According to the research, younger consumers are not passive; they are active information curators who cycle through distinct mindsets.

7⃣ To reach the next generation of news consumers, publishers must start designing for 7 specific “modes” of engagement:

The “Sift” Modes: how news is discovered

1. Scroll

The vibe: Passively encountering news whilst browsing social feeds 

The strategy: intentionally create content that feels native to the platform and find patterns that break through to capture fleeting attention in the few seconds before viewers scroll to the next post

2. Seek 

The vibe: actively looking for information on a specific event or topic

The strategy: anticipate information needs and make depth accessible without friction, ensuring that credibility, clarity and efficiency guide every interaction.

…

> Find the full list of modes, as well as recommendations and case studies to win over next gen readers on Audiencers

A new paywall trend?

I’m seeing more and more publishers adding trending premium articles into the paywall itself. It appears to be a great way to show the value of subscription:

 FAZ

South China Morning Post

(Love that they’ve included the features list and benefits too. Makes for a very concise but complete paywall)

Locking in subscribers

Ever wanted to cancel a subscription or switch products only to realize it’s too expensive, too much hassle, or just annoying? Then you’ve encountered lock-in effects.

These clever tricks help to encourage readers to stay and be a little more loyal.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you handcuff subscribers and imprison them in your offer (more than anything, it’s illegal…)

But just look at Apple vs Android, or Spotify vs Deezer or Apple Music – very few users regularly switch between them due to the effort in changing. 

So how could you build that kind of loyalty? 

> Ecosystem (compatibility)
Apple is the master here – if you own an iPhone you might also have a Mac, Airpods, an Apple Watch, iCloud, etc. Everything is seamlessly interconnected, and those who decide to switch one item often have further usage challenges after. 

In the publishing world, think of the New York Times who is slowly taking over your cooking, sports, games, news… 

What does this mean for you? Consider offering complementary products to your subscription that work together to provide greater value.

> Personalization 

After using Spotify for the best part of 10 years, it knows me (a little too) well. Moving to Apple Music now would mean starting fresh. It’s a great loyalty-builder.

What does this mean for you? Algorithms might make this time spent on personalization less valuable, but it does provide us with a welcome reminder to adapt the experience to your user and tell them that you’re doing it. 

> Strategic subscription bridges

Netflix’s Stranger Things schedule is a lock-in masterpiece. It looked like a holiday gift for fans, but was actually a calculated assault on the monthly billing cycle.

• The clever gap between the first and final episodes being released, ensuring subscribers pass a billing cycle whilst waiting for new episodes
• Strategic ‘pulses’ of releases to build buzz around the series, turning audiences into a free marketing army
• Playing a defensive strategy by releasing these episodes during the “churn danger zone” over the holidays when consumers tend to cut finances

What does this mean for you? We often make the mistake of front-loading value, delivering everything during onboarding, and treating renewals as administrative dates rather than strategic opportunities. 

-> Consider strategic “unlocks” of value just after renewal dates

-> Instead of dumping a massive feature update once a year, release updates in “pulses”

> Lennart Schneider writes more about lock-in strategies on Audiencers

Links to add to your reading list

• What WAN-IFRA’s Trends Outlook 2026 Report says for your subscription model
• Beyond the hype: Three cultural traps blocking AI adoption
• New section on Audiencers – Level Up, to help you succeed in your media career! First up: Improve how you communicate with colleagues: an AI method tested by researchers

See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,

Madeleine

The post #82. How to lock in subscribers without holding them prisoner appeared first on Audiencers.

You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #81 sent out on January 21st, 2026. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

It’s good to be back! A little more tanned, a lot more rested (although jet lag is tough!) and very much ready for this year ahead!

It feels like a lifetime ago already, but happy new year – I hope you got to make the most of the festive period to relax and spend time with friends and family. 

In today’s newsletter:

• Benchmarking galore: when you’re in need of some inspo you know where to look
• 5 things subscription leaders should do: how to become an elite player in the game of extreme cross-functional collaboration
• Referrals as a subscription growth tool: the inexpensive, loyalty-building acquisition strategy to make use of

Benchmarking galore

To gently switch my brain back into work mode and catch up on everything you’ve been working on recently, I’ve been busy screenshotting media sites from around the world, covering various steps in the reader revenue funnel to inspire your redesign and testing efforts!

In our latest collection of benchmarks, you’ll find: 

• How to increase your newsletter subscriber base
• User needs models benchmarks
• Value proposition benchmarks
• 150+ paywall (on-site & on-app) benchmarks
• Registration wall benchmarks
• Content, features & benefits to offer subscribers
• Subscription offers page
• Onboarding benchmarks
• Cancellation benchmarks

!!! 

Yes, it took a while… 

> You can find them all here, your new fave link to bookmark and come back to

5 things subscription leaders should do

Subscriptions sit at the exact intersection of business, product, editorial, and data, which makes those in charge of the topic elite players in a game of extreme cross-functional collaboration.

To succeed in this role, consultant Selma Stern suggests working on these 5 things:

-> Accept your real job: consensus builder, not decision maker
You bridge the gap between “commercial needs” and “technical constraints” by analyzing the data and presenting it without ego

-> Master internal storytelling
When you don’t have the power to decide, you only have the power to compel. You can’t simply tell an editor to “assign more premium content”. You have to sell them the story of why it matters in a freemium setup.

-> Build cross-functional infrastructure
While storytelling matters, you cannot rely entirely on logic. You need to build a “shadow” organization that bypasses the bureaucracy to get things done – weekly meetings, chat groups, killer subscription dashboards…

-> Invest in human chemistry
The strongest data pipelines aren’t built in SQL; they are built in social settings. Personal empathy unlocks collaboration

-> Give away the credit
If you make teams look like heroes, they’ll be ready to help you in the blink of en eye in the future! 

Find the full article by Selma on Audiencers

Referrals as a subscription growth tool

Rising customer acquisition costs are making it increasingly difficult to win new subscribers at affordable prices. But, according to Lennart Schneider, there’s one channel that’s not being used to the max… your users. 

Your most loyal subscribers and fans are likely already talking about you to others, so why not reward them for these conversations and encourage them to do it more ofter? 

So how can you make the most of referrals as a subscription growth tool?

1. Maximize visibility

The most common mistake is hiding the referral program in a sub-menu. To maximize engagement:

• Place it on the “first level”: Making the referral icon visible on the main navigation or home screen can increase usage by 8x
• Use visual cues: Include a currency symbol (to highlight monetary value) and small animations to draw the eye to the referral link
• Identify “moments of delight”: Prompt users to refer others immediately after a positive experience, such as finishing a great article or giving a high NPS rating
• CRM integration: Regularly remind users about the program through newsletters and push notifications

2. Prioritize cash rewards

While discounts and free months are common, cash is the most effective incentive for several reasons:

• Universal appeal: It’s valuable to every user, regardless of their interests
• Scalability: Unlike free months (which lose appeal after a while), cash remains a strong incentive even after 10 or 20 referrals
• Mobilizes non-subscribers: In freemium models, cash incentives can turn the 90% of users who don’t pay for a subscription into a powerful acquisition force

3. Align rewards with lifetime value

To reduce the risk of high Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC), publishers should consider ongoing payouts rather than a one-time fixed bonus.

• Revenue sharing: Offer referrers a percentage (e.g., 10%) of the referred user’s monthly subscription fee for as long as they remain a subscriber
• Risk mitigation: This ensures you never pay more to acquire a customer than you earn from them. If the new subscriber cancels, the bonus payments stop

4. Consider double-sided rewards

A referral involves a user spending their “social capital” to suggest to a friend or family member to join. To make sure this isn’t wasted, you could consider:

• Balanced rewards: Provide both the referrer and the referee with a benefit. An exclusive discount for the person being invited significantly increases the acceptance rate.
• Time-limit discounts: For the referee, offer a discount for a set period (e.g., the first 3-6 months) rather than indefinitely. This protects your Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) in the long term.

TLDR: when used effectively, referrals can provide a sustainable, low-risk engine for acquisition! 

> Find the full article on Audiencers, definitely one to share with your acquisition & marketing team

See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,

Madeleine

The post #81. Reduce subscriber acquisition costs with referrals appeared first on Audiencers.

You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #80 sent out on January 7th, 2026. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

Marion here, I’m the (French) Publisher and CEO of Audiencers – Madeleine, currently enjoying the thousand wonders of Nicaragua (ie: beaches and sunset beers), has left me the keys to this newsletter so that we don’t let you wander alone in the audience engagement world for the first half of January.

Happy New Year! I wish you, and those you love, countless small joys and immense happiness.

In today’s edition: French jokes and a selection of last year’s articles  gifted  to celebrate the New Year (you can click on all of them, none will be paywalled if you come from this newsletter – yes, it’s a little Poool trick that works quite well):

• Value proposition: Being able to say why people should buy your product is the first step before any other
• KPIs: Your most valuable newsroom indicator is no longer reach but belonging
• Editorial: What other format than articles could work for what you have to say?
• Retention: What a fitness app has to teach us about habits building
• How do the others do it? The ultimate case study list to inspire your reader revenue model, sorted by type of strategy

“Why should I subscribe?”

Before optimizing your paywall, pricing or conversion funnels, there’s a more fundamental question to answer : why should anyone pay you?

This article walks you through a rigorous, battle-tested method to define a clear, compelling value proposition – one that aligns editorial, product and marketing teams, and actually resonates with your audiences.

From the Value Proposition Canvas to the Golden Circle, with concrete media examples throughout, it gives you the tools to write sharper conversion messages, stronger offer pages and more convincing campaigns.

> If you’re launching (or relaunching) a premium strategy, this is the unavoidable starting point, just right here.

Why the most valuable newsroom KPI is no longer reach but belonging

Pageviews and reach still look good in dashboards, but they no longer explain what really drives loyalty, retention and revenue.

This article makes a clear case for shifting newsroom KPIs from visibility and interaction to belonging – the signal that readers return, build habits and truly care.

Drawing on concrete examples from the Financial Times, Der Spiegel and community-driven publishers, it shows why engagement alone is not enough and how belonging becomes a stronger predictor of long-term value.

> If you’re rethinking success in a subscription-led world, this piece helps redefine what actually matters.

When the article is no longer enough: formats that outperform the article on news apps

For mobile audiences, the article is no longer the obvious entry point – and often not the place where attention actually lands.

This piece challenges the article-centric mindset and shows how formats have become the real interface between journalism and product. Through 10 concrete, mobile-first formats used by leading publishers (from threads to live feeds, polls and timelines), it explains how to capture attention earlier, reduce friction and guide readers more gently toward depth.

> If your journalism is strong but your product assumes too much from users, this article will change how you design stories.

Retention: what a fitness app has to teach us about habits building

What can a fitness app teach newsrooms about engagement, retention and habit-building? Quite a lot, it turns out.

This deep dive breaks down how Freeletics keeps users coming back every day – through emotional motivation, smart onboarding, streaks, community challenges and radical personalization. Each lesson is easy to translate to media or SaaS products, from reducing conversion friction to designing rituals that stick.

> If you’re trying to move from occasional use to real habit, this article is packed with concrete, transferable ideas.

How do others do it? Our ultimate case study list

Looking for concrete inspiration, proven tactics or solid benchmarks – without starting from scratch every time? This curated index brings together every Audiencers article that breaks down a winning strategy from publishers around the world. Organised by topic (engagement, paywalls, subscriptions, onboarding, AI, apps, retention and more), it’s designed to be bookmarked and reused whenever you need ideas, comparisons or ammunition for internal discussions.

> A practical map of what’s actually working in reader revenue today.

See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,

Marion

The post #80. Your most valuable newsroom indicator is no longer reach but belonging appeared first on Audiencers.

You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #79 sent out on December 22nd, 2025. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

Our last edition of 2025! We hope this email finds you already OOO or finishing things up before the festivities begin. 

From Marion and I, we hope you have a lovely Christmas & Happy New Year! 

Talking of the new year… our Festivals are back in 2026  

Hamburg, London, Montreal and Paris, we’re on the road again to bring Audiencers together around expertise, networking and a glass of wine or two! And you can grab your spot already (agendas to come soon)

In this early edition of the newsletter to catch you before the break: 

• How Netflix locks-in subscribers with tactical release dates
• 7 ways media can build a practical, empowering data culture
• Your industry event calendar for 2026
• To add to your Christmas reading list

Netflix locks-in subscribers with tactical release dates

Netflix’s Stranger Things release schedule (Nov 26, Dec 25, Dec 31) is a masterpiece of financial engineering and a interesting case of subscription lock-in.

What looks like a holiday gift for fans is actually a calculated assault on the monthly billing cycle.

 The “Subscription Bridge”

-> The clever gap between the first and final episodes being released, ensuring subscribers pass a billing cycle whilst waiting

The tactic to takeaway: Audit your customer success journey. If you have a renewal coming up in Q4, structure your implementation so that a critical “unlock” (such as a new module, a strategic consultation, or an advanced data report) is scheduled for delivery just after the renewal date.

The “Pulse” Strategy

-> Strategic ‘pulses’ of releases to build buzz around the series, turning audiences into a free marketing army

The tactic to takeaway: Instead of dumping a massive feature update once a year, release updates in “pulses” aligned with your customers’ internal budget cycles.

The Defensive Moat

-> Playing a defensive strategy by releasing these episodes during the “churn danger zone” over the holidays when consumers tend to cut finances

The tactic to takeaway: Analyse your churn data. If you see a spike at Day 90 (end of onboarding), look at your product usage at Day 80. Is the user running out of things to do? You need to engineer a “Subscription Bridge” at Day 75. This is something that initiates a new value cycle that cannot be completed until Day 100.

Brilliant analysis by Davide on Audiencers

7 ways media can build a practical, empowering data culture

“There’s so much data – I don’t know what to look at, I don’t know what’s important.”

Data is everything – it improves audience understanding (the foundation of everything else), content strategy, business performance, impact measurement…

And there’s no shortage of it. But leveraging it in meaningful and actionable ways isn’t simple.

We can start by being data-informed, having a basic understanding & visibility on what’s happening. You might them progress to being data-driven, actively using data to support strategic decisions. But the leading, mature publishers are data-led, putting data in service of business outcomes and systematising its leverage.

In his latest article for Audiencers, Khalil shares 7 ways to build an empowered data culture, working through the foundations and maturity levels because (let’s face it) being data-led won’t happen overnight.

Your industry event calendar for 2026

Open your calendar tab because you’re about to book a whole load of media events for the next year! 

-> We’ve listed all the conferences for you here. 

Of course, the Audiencers’ Festival dates are already in your diary, right?  

• Hamburg, March 3rd
• London, June 11th
• Montreal, June 25th 
• Paris, September 29th 

What we’re reading this week

• Why it’s time to update your subscription management system
• True retention is a relationship: Rethinking retention for long-term value with FT Strategies and Poool
• So you want to paywall? – everything about paywalls & SEO

See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,

Madeleine

The post #79. Netflix locks-in subscribers with tactical release dates appeared first on Audiencers.

You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #78 sent out on December 10th, 2025. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

In this week’s newsletter: 

• 50x higher LTV than subscribers… Condé Nast builds belonging with membership as a tier above subscription
• Two homepages for two audiences at Finansavisen
• A paywall model adapted for games: The New Yorker shares their strategy for monetizing this key engagement format
• What we’ve been reading this week: articles to add to your reading list

Condé Nast builds belonging with membership as a tier above subscription

When is a subscriber more than a subscriber? 

As we all know by now, a small % of our audiences will bring the majority of reader revenue through subscription. But what about those who are prepared to pay more? How can we maximize revenue from, and provide yet more value to, these audiences?

For Condé Nast, this meant creating a “Membership” tier that sits above subscription, building belonging amongst their most loyal users.

The traditional subscription represents a scale/volume tier:

• Audience: Broadly focused on volume
• Value Exchange: One-way (passive recipient absorbing content)
• Goal: Volume and scale-based value – content for scale

Membership is the niche, high-value tier:

• Audience: Caters to a very specific segment of the audience.
• Value Exchange: Two-way. Members are active participants contributing data, feedback, and engagement. They expect to belong to a community.
• Goal: Engagement and high retention, not volume – content is focused on the funnel.

As Holly Johnson, Director of Global Consumer Revenue, shared, the success of this membership hinges on delivering real value and reinforcing the sense of belonging.

• Measuring connection not just conversion: Condé Nast’s Membership Mindset means tracking metrics around loyalty and engagement over volume. The most critical metrics include ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), Renewal Rate, Recency (how recently they engaged), and Feature Engagement (which features are “stickiest”).
• Niche focus, premium price: The most successful memberships, such as the AD PRO Directory (priced at up to $1,500 annually), lean into a specific, high-value niche. People are willing to pay a premium if the value proposition is highly specific and delivers a genuine tool or resource.
• Elevated experience: For high-value tiers, Condé Nast commits to a “white-glove treatment” with a dedicated membership teams trained to provide high-touch service.

And the model is paying off: 

• A member has an LTV (Lifetime Value) up to 50 times higher than a subscriber
• Members are 1.5x more likely to stay than a subscriber

It’s an incredibly smart strategy! 

> Read the full interview with Holly on Audiencers

Two homepages for two audiences

The team at Finansavisen, one of Norway’s leading financial newspapers, found striking differences between the way subscribers and non-subscribers behave on the home page. 

Subscribers gravitated toward premium articles and in-depth financial reporting, while non-subscribers engaged more with free stories, introductory coverage, and selected premium articles that had a track record of converting well. 

And of course, the business goals attached to these two audiences were different too.

A single homepage just couldn’t fit all of these needs at once. 

Two audiences, two goals, two homepages

Working with Kilkaya, Finansavisen developed two separate homepages, one for each audience, with their unique needs and business goals in mind: 

The Subscriber Homepage:

> Designed around premium content, expert analysis and longer articles that subscribers consistently consume. 

> Thanks to a more suitable mix articles in the top rows, subscriber CTR increased by 10-15%. 

The Non-subscriber Homepage

> Built around a mix of free articles and paywalled stories that historically perform well with first-time and infrequent users without impacting the experience for paying readers. 

> Subscription sales rose by 20-30% thanks to this change

(source: Pugpig’s bulletin)

How The New Yorker paywalls games

Puzzles and games are a key engagement driver for The New Yorker, and ripe with opportunity for subscription growth…

> The games section consistently ranks in the top three categories for engaged minutes across the site
> Average time spent per user on crossword puzzle pages sits at 25 minutes.
> The games section drives hundreds of thousands of players each month, with well over half of the audience coming directly

But users behave differently while playing a game versus reading an article, so the paywall strategy needs to adapt.

With the recent launch of a new game, Lindsay Ederheimer & the team revised their paywall model, separating the regular site paywall from the games paywall, with a windowed hardgate that meant users could play the most recent 7 days of puzzles for free, with older puzzles fully behind a paywall.

This approach works well for a few reasons:

> It’s a way to “soft launch” a paywall without frustrating loyal users. It also enables the team to get an initial read on engagement metrics as they consider other conversion levers

> Users can still play up to 5 crosswords (3 full, 2 minis) each week, a large sample. Plus, loyal users who are playing “archive” puzzles (any puzzle published more than 7 days ago) are at a higher propensity to subscribe anyway.

> By leaving many of the games free to play in the app, they can incentivize app downloads for users who may not be ready to subscribe just yet. Getting a user to take the action of downloading our app and creating an account is a tall order in the first place. The more users who at least download the app and build a daily habit of playing are more likely to subscribe down the road.

> Keeping the full archive of puzzles as a subscriber-only benefit makes the digital value proposition even stronger

Full article by Lindsay on Audiencers

What we’re reading this week

• Mediahuis Ireland’s journey to 100,000 digital subscribers: Unifying titles to have a single, distinctive brand, Subscriber Attention Time as their North Star, and focusing on the audience in every way
•  8 common misconceptions about donations, debunked
• Nieman Lab predictions for 2026 are out, what are the themes of note?
  • Journalism is preparing to move beyond using AI as a tool, and instead structuring content to serve AI systems directly
  • The relationship between media organizations and individual journalists is evolving, prioritizing talent and their creative output
  • We’ll be combatting news fatigue by recalibrating tone, format, and purpose

See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,

Madeleine

The post #78. Members at Condé Nast have 50x higher LTV than subscribers appeared first on Audiencers.