After the success of a “historic” offer tied to the 1,000-day countdown to the Olympic Games' opening ceremony —a highly competitive rate of €2.24 per month for an extended 34-month period— L'Équipe decided to shift its subscription strategy.
Historically focused on new subs, the priority has moved to a dual challenge:
- Sustainably engaging our customers
- Reducing churn rates through targeted retention and re-subscription offers
These critical goals require a strategic and iterative approach, significantly impacting the experience of all our subscribers and occasionally our members.
Priority #1: Increasing Customer Engagement
An engaged subscriber is more likely to remain loyal – great. But how do we define this concept of “user engagement”, especially at L'EQUIPE where customers are already highly engaged? For instance, 90% of traffic comes from the mobile app, and one-third of app users visit more than five times daily.
How do we (try to) measure and track user engagement ?
I'd already heard about RFV (Recency, Frequency, Volume) as an indicator from the Financial Times, and our version synthesizes subscriber and member activity, considering regularity and consumption.
Given L'Équipe's years-long focus on a membership-driven strategy, we now have over 2 million active monthly members and subscribers, along with a significant amount of behavioral data for analysis.
The most complex phase of implementing this project wasn't developing the formula but rather the iterative testing phase. This allowed us to refine the metric, replacing “Recency” with “Regularity.”
One of the initial conclusions (unsurprisingly!) was a clear correlation between customer lifetime value and engagement level.
The more we increase customer engagement levels, the more subscriber lifetime extends and the more members convert to subscribers
Why is this metric more accurate than page views or time spent?
It takes into account the regularity, frequency, and volume of content consumed, while adding a weighting based on the “importance” of the content: the greater the “value” of a piece of content in terms of editorial significance, revenue generation, and the time spent producing it, the higher its weight will be.
- Regularity, frequency, and content volume: factors in the weight of consumed content—giving more weight to editorially and financially valuable content.
- Frequency of visits: How often a user returns to the platform (both web and apps)
- Content diversity: The range of distinct content consumed
- Tenure: How long someone has been a member or subscriber
- Interaction with content: With higher weighting for Flagship content
For instance, a user who primarily reads “live match” content with low consumption of premium or flagship content will get a lower RFV than someone consuming more higher-value articles or documentaries.
Triple objectives to boost engagement (and of course retention!):
- Increase recurrence
- Improve frequency
- Encourage consumption of high-value editorial content
Key insights from RFV analysis and actions taken:
#1 Correlation between app downloads and high RFV
We developed, in partnership with POOOL, various formats to promote app downloads.
#2 Email openers have higher RFV
We launched a newsletter project targeting subscribers with a low RFV (less than 25) —particularly those with weaker weekend engagement— to provide a weekend news summary and insights from our editorial team.
#3 Consuming Flagship content drives high RFV
Although we defined the content weighting in our algorithm, our initial analysis emphasized the importance of ‘original' content in customer lifetime value.
By ‘flagship content,' I mean the very best of L'Équipe — the finest work from our journalists, whether in the form of videos, podcasts, written pieces, or documentaries.
One of the challenges for a media organization is ensuring its content thrives on the homepage of the site. News moves quickly, one story replaces another, and an incredible piece can fail to reach its audience because it was showcased for too short a time, paired with an unclear image, or given a misunderstood headline.
To address this, we adopted an idea suggested by our subscribers: releasing a monthly preview of upcoming content, similar to how platforms present their programming schedules.
Both on site:
And in the newsletter:
These campaigns resulted in notable RFV increases:
- +9% for platform clickers
- +12% for email clickers
> Subscriber (re)engagement strategies from L'Équipe and Les Echos-Le Parisien
#4 Interactive features do have an impact on RFV (Especially for members)
We aimed to foster interactivity among readers. With over 500K monthly comments, the “comments” section on the platform is essential. So to maximize its value, the first step was to update the space with a redesign and new features, such as emoji reactions, AI-generated comment summaries, etc.
Our second objective was to foster greater proximity between audiences and the brand: bringing journalists and readers closer together to develop a sense of belonging. As part of the Olympic Games, we introduced several types of content, including Q&A sessions, which we plan to gradually roll out across our platforms.
> Going further with interactive engagement: DER SPIEGEL's debating feature
Priority #2: Targeted retention and re-subscription offers in an marketing automated cycle
Prioritizing former subscribers in your strategy, especially reaching out to them within the first few days after they cancel, is crucial:
- 70% of re-subscribers re-engage within seven days of cancellation.Former subscribers acquired during promotions are particularly responsive to targeted relaunches with attractive pricing.
- On average, former subscribers are 18 times more likely to re-subscribe than members, while members are 18 times more likely to subscribe than anonymous users.
Retention and re-subscription scenarios:
We identified two main phases, each divided into distinct analysis periods:
Retention Period: The client has made his cancellation request but still has access and is informed of its impending end.
Re-Subscription Period: The client loses access, prompting relaunches during key periods:
- Day 0–7
- Day 8–30
- Day 30+
We deployed cycles of retention and re-subscription across all customer touchpoints:
- Cancellation form (called in France “loi MUPA”)
- Service-client cancellation confirmation
- Promotional messages on digital platforms
- Apps, push notifications, in-app messages
- Paid media
To achieve the highest possible results, we first implemented offers (initially the same for all users) across all customer touchpoints.
Spoiler alert: doing this across all channels and levers has a MASSIVE impact!
All this communication is coordinated using audiences created within our CDP, which are then shared with all our third-party tools.
A culture of testing as a growth driver
Over the past 18 months, we tried a growth marketing approach, which, in our terms, means ultra-personalization and precise targeting of our subscription messages, starting with our retention and re-subscription offers.
A multidisciplinary team (data, acquisition, and CRM) was formed to define targeting strategies and, more importantly, activate them across our platforms. Each step is tested, analyzed, and then optimized.
Among the initiatives:
- Over 300 campaigns tested annually, featuring variations on:
- Marketing angles (what are the benefits? Content? Which words should we use to define the benefits?)
- Pricing approach
- Trial period and its price
In 2024, enhanced automation of campaigns enabled us to manage around 15 specific segments with tailored offers and messages. The primary advantage of this automation is its ability to significantly improve our conversion rates.
Key learnings from these tests:
- We discovered that a significant portion of former subscribers are quite receptive to retention offers at higher price with commitments that do not negatively impact our ARPU but instead come with a one-year commitment.
- This approach meaningfully increases the LTV of our subscribers and, by extension, boosts our margins.
Thanks to these strategies, 75% of customers who reached the -100 days mark of their promotional offer period are still subscribers as of November 2024.
