The Economist has spent the last few years developing products and offers that foster deeper, more human relationships with readers. Its latest launch, Play, provides a lower-priced audio and video subscription tier aimed at a growing audience across all age ranges who consume news in these formats but aren’t yet ready for a full-price subscription. Crucially, it serves as an accessible entry point to bring younger demographics into The Economist’s orbit before they transition to the full access tier, which also includes all written journalism.

We spoke with Nada Arnot, Co-Managing Director of The Economist, about Play’s launch and how it fits into the publication’s wider relationship-building strategy.

> The Economist has launched a dedicated subscription tier for access to audio and video formats, priced lower than the core digital subscription to attract new audiences

> The "Halo Effect": From early signals, the team has observed an uptick in core Premium sign-ups. Seeing a cheaper, format-specific option next to the full product acts as an anchor, nudging undecided visitors to pay a little extra for the full suite.

> Net-New Audience: Conversions through Play have been driven almost entirely by brand-new readers rather than existing subscribers trading down.

> Play is part of The Economist's wider strategic development (alongside podcasts, short-form video and "Insider") towards building deeper, more "human" relationships with audiences

Play, a new audio and video subscription tier

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In a world of falling traffic, trust and the increasing use of AI, building relationships with readers is more important than ever. It’s the difference between a fly-by and a loyal, returning user who interacts meaningfully, feels a sense of belonging with your brand, who advocates for you and brings in new audiences.

It’s a strategy that many publishers are already benefiting from.

This article shares a few of these case studies, diving into what’s working, sharing lessons to take away and articles to dive in deeper.

1. The New York Times: reporters in the comments

The New York Times recently turned comments into an editorial product to develop relationships with readers and enhance the perceived expertise and trust in journalists.

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The line between subscription and membership is blurring, but that doesn’t mean membership is just subscription with a different name.

Subscription is a transaction. Membership is a relationship.

It’s the difference between “Pay to access content” and “Support something you care about, and be part of it”

To help you build a successful membership model, this article shares 4 publisher case studies, with strategies to steal from each. One of these publishers, The Guardian, would likely say they have a supporter model over membership, but the strategies built around conversion are very membership-like, meaning there’s still plenty to take away from their success.

1. The Guardian: turning readers into supporters

The Guardian’s journalism is free to access for everyone. But even without a paywall, over 1 million readers support them on a recurring basis.

What’s working

Although there are some concrete benefits to supporting The Guardian (such as exclusive newsletters, less ads and access to their app), supporters aren’t paying for access, they’re supporting and participating in The Guardian’s mission. It’s this emotional layer that’s paying off.

Messaging around gaining support is built around the 10 ‘supporter motivations’:

1. Editorial independence  
2. Protect the free press  
3. Investigative journalism  
4. Trustworthy, factual, high quality  
5. Holds power to account  
6. Open for all, no paywall  
7. International perspective 
8. Financial challenges in media  
9. Better understand world events  
10. It’s only fair to pay

These are then integrated into homepage banners, end-of-article ‘epics’ and emailing, where messaging is continuously tested, iterated and updated, often making use of current news events:

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. This plays an important role in building relationships with readers.

In the US, this year-round messaging and UX testing helps to inform the team for their annual end-of-year campaign, running from early November, through Giving Tuesday and on to midnight on December 31st, the most critical window in their financial calendar.

In their most recent EOY campaign (2025), the final numbers were staggering: 

• Total raised: $3.1 million in liquid cash by Dec 31st (exceeding their $3M goal).
• Lifetime Value (LTV): The estimated total value of the campaign (including recurring commitments) is $8.6 million
• Year-on-year growth: This represents an 83% increase in campaign value compared to the 2023 “standard” year (because a presidential election year – as 2024 was – is usually an outlier).

What you should steal from The Guardian’s model

• Understand reader motivations for supporting or subscribing to you
• Continuously test messaging and offers, integrating supporter motivations
• Experiment with innovative ‘asks’, like The Guardian’s article count
• Bring the reader onboard with your mission, so they really see that their support is valuable to you

Dive deeper into The Guardian’s model

• The Guardian: reader revenue growth & proposition development
• Behind The Guardian’s record-breaking US End of Year campaign
• Relaunching The Guardian app: changing reader habits means we must also evolve

2. The Kyiv Independent: humanizing the newsroom

The Kyiv Independent is a young, English-language media, launched in a context of war, who has transformed from a 18-person startup into a globally recognized authority with over 27,000 paying members and 3 million monthly readers.

What’s working

The team has successfully built a mission-driven membership model with a community of supporters around a shared cause. Part of this success is thanks to building trust with their audience, something that is done between people, meaning they work hard to humanize their newsroom.

Instead of hiding behind a corporate brand, the Kyiv Independent puts its journalists at the center of its marketing:

• They don’t shy away from talking about themselves: their work, almost never say no to interviews, a lot of commentaries and opinion articles…
• Marketing communications are built around journalists and their personalities

• Membership is a community, not a transaction. It’s not a key to a locked door, but a way to keep information free for everyone
• Communication is always transparent, giving a glimpse into the behind the scenes and creating visible experts through personality-led journalism

However the team doesn’t shy away from campaigns asking for support. Countdowns to reach their target, birthday campaigns, country-specific campaigns… these have been a vital part of their growth strategy, creating urgency but with purpose and identity.

What you should steal from The Kyiv Independent’s model

• Be openly transparent on your funding, editorial choices, impact…
• Translate what you stand for, and what would be lost without you in messaging
• Bring the newsroom along with you, putting them front and center in marketing campaigns
• Build channels for journalists and readers to connect, whether that be through Q&As, reader-led articles or discord communities
• Ensure supporters are valued as individuals whilst also helping them feel part of something bigger

Dive deeper into The Kyiv Independent’s model

• How The Kyiv Independent is growing membership through relationship-building
• Inside The Kyiv Independent’s membership model

3. Condé Nast: building a premium membership layer

Condé Nast already had strong brands and a mature subscription model, but wanted to build belonging amongst their most loyal audiences. The team therefore created a ‘Membership’ tier that sits above subscription.

What’s working

This new membership layer represents a fundamental pivot from serving passive recipients to active participants. 

This clearly differentiates it from subscription.

Whilst their 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.

This focus on belonging is reflected in their metrics, measuring 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”).

What should you steal from Condé Nast’s strategy?

• Don’t be scared of putting membership and subscriptions alongside each other, but make sure to clearly differentiate them
• Membership means moving beyond access to an elevated experience. For high-value tiers, Condé Nast commits to a white-glove treatment. This involves building dedicated membership teams trained to provide high-touch service. At industry events, these teams are equipped with “face sheets” to know members by name and be aware of their recent professional achievements, fostering genuine, human-to-human relationships instead of brand-to-consumer transactions.
• Measure membership differently – belonging and advocacy aren’t easy to define, but they definitely go beyond traditional engagement
• Segmentation matters: one size of subscription tier doesn’t fit all, and you’re potentially leaving money (and advocates) on the table by not creating a higher tier for them

Dive deeper into Condé Nast’s model

• When is a subscriber more than a subscriber? How Condé Nast is evolving its audience strategy with membership
• How Condé Nast is growing the “happy middle” of the audience funnel

4. Daily Maverick: involving members in journalism

The South African publisher, Daily Maverick, is an outstanding example of a successful membership model.

What’s working

One of their unique strategies that’s contributing to this success is a growing database of contactable “Insiders” (Daily Maverick members), providing expertise on every topic imaginable.

“You’re part of this community – it’s more than just a subscription and we need your help. We don’t know everything and there are experts amongst you. Be a part of Daily Maverick, share your expertise.”

Via a 3-step survey in the email onboarding series, Daily Maverick asked Insiders for their name, email address, phone number, job and other areas of expertise, their ‘superpower’ as it became known internally.

By sharing these details, an Insider could be contacted by the Daily Maverick team to participate in their journalism, provide expertise on a certain topic or even be invited to join a panel session at one of their events. 

It’s an impressive way of making a member feel like they’re directly supporting and involved in your journalism.

According to the reader revenue team, every newsroom should be looking for this sense of belonging, the feeling of being proud to be “a Daily Maverick reader”. And this “superpower” strategy, where community members are put at the centre of journalism, will help achieve exactly this, ensuring Insiders are a part of Daily Maverick.

What you should steal from Daily Maverick’s model

• Give readers opportunities to be involved in your work, whether than be through this form of database, commenting, debates or call-outs. Membership becomes real when people can do something, not just support something.
• Create direct channels between readers and journalists
• Build this into your value proposition – it’s a benefit for members, not just for your membership model

Dive deeper into Daily Maverick’s model

• Learning from Membership models: Daily Maverick’s superpower database
• Boosting membership conversion at Maverick Insider with FAQs

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As media organizations shift from volume-based traffic to value-based reader revenue models, the challenge often lies in bridging the gap between an anonymous click and a loyal subscriber. Sadly, this isn’t like Married at First Sight… this relationship won’t be built in a day, nor with a paywall alone. It takes time, energy and a variety of formats to develop. 

Milenio, one of Mexico’s most influential news groups, has well understood this. Their answer wasn’t found in aggressive paywall tactics, but in cultivating a highly engaged community within its own ecosystem.

We spoke with Chief Reader Revenue Officer Juan Manuel Nava Madrazo about how, by strategically pivoting toward conversational tools and gamified loyalty, Milenio has successfully tripled user time-on-site and established a sustainable pipeline for its January 2026 paywall launch.

> Milenio, one of Mexico's biggest news groups, ran its comments on Facebook for years. It leaked audience to a platform it didn't own, forced a double login, and let toxicity drive off the readers it most wanted

> Bringing comments in-house with single sign-on, hybrid AI and human moderation, and avatars drawn from Mexican culture changed the economics. Commenters average 4 minutes 40 seconds on site against 1 minute 48 for everyone else

> Comments became an acquisition channel rather than a cost centre. They now drive 10-11% of daily registrations, roughly 2,000 to 2,500 people a month, making commenting the fourth-largest registration source

> Puntos Milenio rewards reading, commenting and sharing with points redeemable at Starbucks and Amazon, and Milenio Plus subscribers earn double, turning the loyalty scheme into a reason to subscribe

> Milenio scores commenters as "Lovers" worth 70 points against 10 for a casual reader. Half of all registered users now qualify, and that is the pool its January 2026 paywall launched into

Moving beyond “social media friction”

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In the hyper-competitive world of digital media, where attention is a scarce commodity and paywalls are the standard defense, The Kyiv Independent is carving out a different path. Launched in November 2021, just three months before Russia’s full-scale invasion, this English-language newsroom has transformed from a 18-person startup into a globally recognized authority with over 27,000 paying members and 3 million monthly readers.

The secret to their impressive 78% growth in 2025 isn’t a complex algorithm. It’s a commitment to relationship-driven journalism. By treating their audience as a community rather than a series of transactions, they’ve maintained an average monthly churn rate of just 1.64%, significantly lower than the industry average.

Membership Growth Manager, Yana Zhuryk,  spoke at Audiencers’ Festival in Hamburg to share some of the relationship-building strategies that the Kyiv Independent uses to build a loyal, high-growth membership community.

You can access Yana’s full presentation at the bottom of this article.

Key takeaways to copy & share Copy

> The Kyiv Independent launched in November 2021, three months before Russia's full-scale invasion, and now has 27,000 paying members and 3 million monthly readers, with monthly churn at 1.64%

> They tested a polished promotional acquisition email against a personal one written by a team member. The personal version drove three times the conversions

> Membership is positioned as keeping journalism free for everyone rather than unlocking a paywall. Members submit questions the newsroom answers in articles, and the team replies to member emails within 24 hours

> Geotargeted appeals turn a global audience into neighbourhoods. One campaign challenged Swedish readers to overtake Danish ones as top per-capita supporters, and paying members can add a pin to a public map

> As membership growth manager Yana Zhuryk puts it: "Retention is not only about content. It is about responsiveness and presence"

1. Humanizing the newsroom

Instead of hiding behind a corporate brand, the Kyiv Independent puts its journalists at the center of its marketing. They understand that in an era of disinformation, trust is built between people, not institutions.

The “Authenticity Wins” email strategy: In late 2025, the team tested two types of acquisition emails. A polished, promotional version 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.

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.

2. Radical transparency and participation

The Kyiv Independent invites its members into the newsroom’s journey, making them feel like stakeholders in the mission of independent journalism.

Participatory content: Through their “Our readers’ questions” series, members can submit questions that the editorial team then answers in dedicated articles.

A “No-Paywall” community mission: They position membership not as a key to a locked door, but as a way to keep information free for everyone. This value-aligned positioning resonates deeply with their core audience. However, the team doesn’t shy away from campaigns to acquire new members

Direct interaction: The team maintains a Discord community for real-time engagement and commits to answering member emails within 24 hours.

3. Hyper-local geotargeting

Rather than a one-size-fits-all global appeal, they use geotargeted campaigns to create a “neighborhood” feel within their global audience.

Customized appeals: They create country-specific CTAs, such as challenging Swedes to overtake Danes as the top per-capita supporters.

Some of these are built in the Poool Dashboard and targeted based on the user’s location and level of engagement.

Interactive community maps: Paying members can add a pin to a digital map, visually demonstrating the global scale of the collective effort.

Relationships at the heart of the business model

The success of the Kyiv Independent offers a powerful blueprint for the future of sustainable publishing. By achieving a 25,000-member milestone by the end of 2025, they proved that even in a climate of “news fatigue,” audiences will show up for a brand that shows up for them. Their journey suggests that the most valuable metric isn’t just how many people read a story, but how many feel a personal stake in the newsroom’s survival. 

As Yana notes: “Retention is not only about content. It is about responsiveness and presence”. For publishers looking to thrive in 2026 and beyond, the lesson is clear: building a loyal community isn’t a marketing side-project, it’s the foundation of the business itself.

Find Yana’s slides (39-49), part of the “Community-building” panel, from our Hamburg Festival here:

ViewDownload

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On my recent trip to New York, Condé Nast shared how they’ve developed a multi-layered membership ecosystem designed to drive loyalty, connection and higher lifetime value. Of course, I was hooked. So I followed up with Director of Global Consumer Revenue, Holly Johnson, to find out more about this shift from a volume-based model towards deep engagement and loyalty. 

> Condé Nast built a membership tier above subscription across brands including AD and Vogue Business. A member's lifetime value is up to 50 times a subscriber's, and they are 1.5 times more likely to stay

> The difference isn't price, it's direction. Subscription is one-way and built for volume, while membership is two-way, with members contributing data, feedback and engagement in exchange for belonging to something

> Timing does the selling. 35% of AD PRO acquisitions come from a post-purchase upsell shown immediately after someone buys a standard AD digital subscription

> The AD PRO Directory exists because editors kept being asked to recommend interior designers. Formalising that request became a $1,500-a-year product with 71% year-on-year revenue growth

> Member programming beat discounting outright, lifting marketing performance 70% against running discounted pricing. Staff carry face sheets at events so members are greeted by name and recent achievement

Catch up quickly:
- Condé Nast is one of the world's most renowned media companies covering a wide variety of genres, including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, WIRED, GQ, Architectural Digest (AD), and more
- To build belonging amongst their most loyal audiences, the team have created a "Membership" tier that sits above subscription
- The value exchange here is two-way: Members are active participants contributing data, feedback, and engagement. They expect to belong to a community.
- This strategy is paying off: a member has an LTV (Lifetime Value) up to 50 times higher than a subscriber, amongst other benefits listed below

A holistic, inter-connected ecosystem

Condé Nast views its portfolio of brands not just as publications, but as Intellectual Properties (IPs). The fundamental strategic question guiding all development is: “Where does this brand have permission to play?”

The team aims to leverage the brand’s authority across the entire consumer lifecycle, tapping into different value exchanges (and thus revenue streams) to build an inter-connected eco-system. A consumer may start as a commerce customer, then event attendee, subscriber and eventually a member. This breadth not only builds a consumer’s affinity to the brand, but also ensures sustainability and flexibility in a challenging market. 

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At The Audiencers’ Festival in London this June 24th, Panos Sarlanis, Co-founder of IamExpat Media, invited by kind invitation by code.store, the media tech and low-code experts, shared their journey of empowering expats navigate every aspect of life in a new country. 

The secret? Understanding their audience’s needs, building revenue streams around this and continuously innovating to serve evolving needs. 

> IamExpat serves a million monthly users across the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, with revenue spread across four streams: advertising, classifieds, events and affiliates. No single one carries the business

> Products came from asking what readers needed rather than how to monetise content. Directories of trusted professionals, tax advisors, lawyers, English-speaking dentists, now contribute more than the job board or the housing platform

> The fairs have drawn over 40,000 visitors and 600 exhibitors since 2015, putting readers and advertisers in the same room. Direct contact turns out to be how new products get sold

> When Covid killed the fairs they moved to webinars as a stopgap. It became permanent, and pulled in advertisers who would never have bought online display

> Panos Sarlanis is candid about the fragility. Platform shifts, cookie deprecation, creators and AI are all live threats, which is the argument for spreading revenue rather than optimising one stream

From personal need to pioneering platform

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With the tsunami of content that’s coming with AI, building communities – where publishers listen, engage and interact with readers – will prove essential to survive. In an incredibly interesting session at WAN-IFRA’s World Congress in Krakow, Ryan Y. Kellett, 2025 Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellow for Journalism Innovation at Harvard, Hannah Sarney from Financial Times and Nic Dawes from THECITY share how they’re reimagining journalism as a collaborative, community-driven practice.

> The Financial Times found readers who read comments are 11 times more engaged than those who don't, and commenters 46 times. Yet half of subscribers read comments and only 4% write them

> The FT treats that gap as a design problem, not an audience problem. Its live Q&A feature sends questions privately to journalists rather than publishing them, making the entry point less intimidating

> THE CITY, a New York nonprofit, mails printed postcards carrying explanatory journalism, a QR code and reader questions. Journalists write back to thank people, closing the loop and showing readers they shaped the coverage

> The postcards earn strong evergreen traffic and sponsorship, and sidestep search and AI disruption entirely. They are not, however, a strong driver of immediate donations, and the approach still needs scale

> Ryan Kellett's advice on creator journalists is the least comfortable. Find the staff already at home in those spaces, resource them, and resist the urge to squeeze them into the house brand

The new news ecosystem

Ryan Y. Kellett, 2025 Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellow for Journalism Innovation at Harvard, discussed the current “news influencer” environment.

Specifically, people who are at the cross road of creators and journalists, using creator tactics from a journalistic point of view, building direct connections and personal brands with audiences, often through platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. This is the Opinion section of internet news – a space that has seen rapid growth and where mis-, dis- and mal-information can and does spread rapidly.

For Ryan, these news influencers have a lot of lessons in building and serving communities for media organisations. But, of course, the rise of these creators, who don’t necessarily have the same reliable news sources or training as traditional journalists, don’t come without challenges.

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Lennart Schneider is Founder of Subscribe Now, helping decision-makers in the subscription economy attract subscribers and keep them happy. In this article he shares insights on how to acquire members for high-priced subscriptions from his podcast episode with Chief Growth Officer at Handelsblatt media.

> Handelsblatt sells communities, not content. Its AI Circle costs 2,500 euros a year, the Pulse women's network 2,000 to 3,000, and TECH 20,000 for three members

> The 2016 business club assumed subscribers would become members. They didn't. Events draw people who never subscribe, subscribers rarely attend, and the two groups have very different willingness to pay

> The annual AI Summit is the anchor. A ticket alone costs up to 1,550 euros, so the event justifies most of the membership fee, and members join around it

> Circles are barely mentioned on the Summit registration page. Handelsblatt deliberately holds the pitch until after the ticket is bought, rather than asking people to weigh two decisions at once

> Handelsblatt's free AI newsletter exists to market the paid Circle, inverting the usual logic. Kleibrink expects briefing publishers and community publishers to converge on each other's models within a few years

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“Community building” has become an increasingly more important strategy for digital publishers in recent years, helping to develop a loyal, engaged audience on-platform.

The Globe and Mail is no exception – from live Q&As with journalists to call-outs and reader-led content, their community work is certainly one to be inspired by. We spoke to Audience Growth Manager, Rebecca Zamon, about these initiatives.

> The Globe and Mail runs hour-long live Q&As where subscribers put questions to reporters. Registered readers can watch but not take part, which makes the paid tier visible rather than merely described

> The mechanics are deliberately plain. A form in the article collects questions two days ahead, the same article hosts the session in its comments, and a follow-up piece summarises what was said

> The best detail is the app alert. It goes out only once a few questions have been answered, so readers arrive in a conversation already underway rather than an empty room

> Call-outs now feed the journalism. Asking Canadians how the trade war changed their buying habits produced a database of Canadian companies, and a happiness reporter's call for nominations became a January hit

> Their rule for call-outs is to say what the information will be used for, then close the loop by writing back and sharing the finished piece. Readers become advocates

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