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.

Moving beyond “social media friction”

For years, Milenio relied on Facebook for its comment sections. However, this led to audience leakage, where users were pulled away to external social platforms, and a double login friction that stifled local community growth. Worse, the lack of moderation created a toxic environment that excluded younger audiences and alienated quality readers.

“We needed to centralize data and convert anonymous readers into loyal registered users, all within our own ecosystem,” 

To reclaim its audience, Milenio replaced its social media plugin with a proprietary community engine, Logora, focused on three pillars: 

• Unified login (SSO): Eliminating friction by integrating the comment system directly with Milenio’s registration.

• Smart hybrid moderation (AI+Human): A robust moderation that drastically reduces toxicity and ensures a civil debate.
• Local identity: Total customization, including avatars specifically designed to reflect Mexican culture (e.g., Frida Kahlo), strengthening the sense of belonging.

• New editorial product (“Realidades”): Creation of a new video-debate section that fosters deep discussions on everyday life topics (Mexican lifestyle and social topics).

This ownership of the community, with attention to details that help encourage participation, is paying off across the board: 

1. Community growth

• Volume: +150% in daily comments in the first year and an additional +100% in the second year
• Engagement: Over 120,000 comments accumulated with 80–85% approval rate (vs. 60% previously) and 120,000 interactions (likes/votes)
• Quality: Users went from leaving emojis or short phrases to writing reasoned paragraphs and reading others’ opinions

2. Retention and time spent

• All Milenio users: 1 minute 48 seconds
• Registered users (non-commenting): 2 minutes 20 seconds
• Registered users using commenting: 4 minutes 40 seconds (+200% vs. average)

3. Conversion driver for registration

• 10-11% of new daily registrations come directly from the comments widget
• Between 2,000 and 2,500 new users register each month to participate in comments
• Commenting is the 4th most important registration source for the media outlet, surpassing many content sections

The new video series “Realidades” shows:

• +20% higher participation
• +10% more users writing arguments, not just voting

Gamifying loyalty: the points milenio program

A central component of Milenio’s retention strategy is Puntos Milenio, a loyalty program that rewards high-value behaviors with redeemable points.

To bring Puntos Milenio to life, 3 key elements were needed:

• The talent of the Milenio team (Development, Business, Data, etc.).
• External platforms that understood their needs
• Trust in the project

With these three elements, they had to integrate and adapt different technologies so they could coexist and function as a single system. In addition, it was essential that operations and configuration were as simple and scalable as possible.

The end user was always the focus: “someone for whom we aimed to create an easy, hassle-free experience and who clearly understands the value of staying informed through reliable journalism”.

Users aren’t aware of how they earn points in detail, to avoid cheating of the system, but internally these are built up by:

• Engaging with content: commenting, reading multiple articles, or reaching specific scroll depth targets
• Watching videos (encouraging long-form consumption)
• Referrals: sharing articles to social platforms (to bring in new potential registrants)

Although the project is still in a maturation phase, the initial results already show strong signs of impact:

• More than 2,500 users are currently participating in the program
• They have generated more than 1 Million points, mainly by reading news, playing EntrenaMentes, listening to podcasts, watching videos, and commenting on content

These points can be exchanged for tangible rewards, such as discount coupons for Starbucks, Amazon, and Google Play. Critically, subscribers to Milenio Plus receive double points for their activities, adding a layer of perceived value to the subscription itself.

Community “Lovers” as a qualified pool for subscription

Registration is widely recognised as a valuable model to launch pre-subscription. It helps to build a qualified, engaged audience of potential future subscribers, as well as providing a testing ground for conversion tactics. Mileno, however, have gone a step further by building a community around registration, ensuring these audiences are engaged enough to convert when faced with a paywall. 

Commenting is placed behind the registration wall, establishing a simple value exchange that builds engagement whilst collecting key data points. 

Using Marfeel’s scoring, Milenio identified commenters as high-value “Lovers” (70 pts vs. 10 pts for casual users). With 50% of registered users classified as lovers, this community is the prime target for the subscription revenue to come in 2026.

The post Owning the community and gamifying loyalty: Inside Milenio’s engagement strategies appeared first on Audiencers.

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.

The post How The Kyiv Independent is growing membership through relationship-building appeared first on Audiencers.

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. 

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. 

The post When is a subscriber more than a subscriber? How Condé Nast is evolving its audience strategy with membership appeared first on Audiencers.

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. 

From personal need to pioneering platform

Panos’s own expat journey began in 2007 when he moved to Rotterdam with one of his co-founders for his studies and met the rest of the founding team there. A year later, after moving to Amsterdam, the idea for a comprehensive platform for internationals moving to the Netherlands was born. 

“When you move to a new country, there are so many challenges you have to deal with. You may have no network, you may not speak the language, you don’t know who to trust for the main services you need.” This sense of insecurity sparked the creation of IamExpat.

The platform’s core mission is to empower the expatriate community by providing essential resources, tools, and a community to more confidently navigate life in a new country. This includes a wealth of content: news focused on expat life and local culture, crucial guides on topics like taxes and healthcare, articles from experts and even a dedicated job board and a housing platform. 

Today, IamExpat is active in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, welcoming a million users monthly and collaborating with over 800 companies annually, ranging from banks to real estate agencies and healthcare providers.

Evolving beyond traditional revenue streams to consider user needs

In its early days, IamExpat focused on building the brand through “evergreen content,” such as guides on applying for work permits. This foundational content continues to perform, and has provided an important advertising space for monetization.

But as the platform grew, the team began exploring other revenue streams based on their user’s needs. The question they kept asking: “What essential needs can we solve with new products or services?”

This led to the launch of directories, helping users find trusted professionals, from tax advisors and language schools to English-speaking dentists, lawyers and career coaches. These have become a significant part of IamExpat’s business model.

Recognizing the challenges of finding accommodation and employment in new countries, IamExpat also launched a housing platform (aggregating rental properties from partners) and a job board specifically tailored for their international and multilingual audience. 

These “classifieds”—directories, housing, and job boards—now account for a considerable part of their revenue. Directories contribute the most, and this highlights the high value and conversion rate of these specialized services that focus on user needs.

From online to offline, to online again

IamExpat’s journey didn’t stop at online services. “What if users and clients could actually meet in person?”, leading to the creation of the IamExpat Fair in 2015. These events bring readers and advertisers together under one roof, fostering direct connections. 

Since their inception, the fairs have attracted over 40,000 visitors and 600 exhibitors across four locations in the Netherlands and Germany.

The COVID-19 pandemic, while initially impacting revenue, spurred further innovation. The need for personal advice remained, prompting IamExpat to shift from offline to online with webinars. What started as a temporary solution has become a permanent and successful part of their business model, with events and webinars (primarily the fairs) now being important revenue contributors. This diversified approach not only serves their existing advertiser base but also attracts new clients who may not have considered online advertising.

Today, IamExpat boasts a remarkably balanced revenue model in the following areas:

• Online Marketing (banner ads, content marketing, email marketing)
• Classifieds (directories, job ads)
• Events (fairs, webinars)
• Affiliates

However, Panos emphasized the need for constant vigilance in the rapidly changing media industry, citing concerns like platform shifts, cookie deprecation, the rise of content creators, and the uncertainty surrounding AI.

A crucial first step in further diversifying IamExpat’s portfolio was a significant technological upgrade. Recognizing their outdated website was a “big pain point,” they decided to rebuild everything from scratch. Partnering with Code.Store, they adopted a modern tech stack, including a headless CMS (Directus), Vercel for front-end hosting, Cloudflare for caching and CDN, Algolia for powering search, and n8n to import jobs and properties.

With the close support of the team at Code.Store, this overhaul dramatically improved performance and user experience, while maintaining an SEO-first approach.

Vertical expansion and community spaces

Looking to the future, IamExpat is considering different expansion plans. Ideas for diversification include:

• Vertical expansion: Identifying opportunities from popular products and services for expatriates
• Membership programs: Offering packages with special discounts and offers from existing clients, potentially as a company benefit for international employees.
• Merchandise: While not expected to be a major revenue driver, it could enhance offline branding.
• Physical IamExpat spaces: A bold vision for a blended short-stay, co-working, café, and restaurant space where expats can live, work, learn, and connect. This concept draws inspiration from media companies like Time Out, which have successfully integrated online and offline experiences.
• Geographic expansion: Bringing their proven model to new international destinations in Europe and globally.

What can you take away from IamExpat’s diversification strategy?

• Diversification is crucial to reduce exposure to industry volatility – new products and services are no longer optional
• New products must be aligned with the core mission and users to expand reach and influence.
• Build products with cross-functional teams that unlock synergies
• Be open-minded for opportunities to emerge
• Offline experiences will become even more vital for building connections and trust – direct client contact is invaluable for distributing and selling new products.
• The right technology and partners are essential for scaling – keep the tech fresh to unlock speed, scale and innovation.

IamExpat is open to strategic partnerships to support its growth plans. Interested? Contact their team via https://www.iamexpat.com or connect with Panos.

"IamExpat shows what we do at code.store: help clients pick the right stack and make the move without pain. We retired their costly Drupal 7 system and migrated to Directus Cloud + Vercel. Our team handled the migration end-to-end—data, content, SEO, editor workflows, and deployment—without downtime. For media and publishers, we provide practical, full-scope IT outsourcing, from CMS, Data, Mobile apps to subscriptions. The relaunch of IAmExpat is a good example: with the right stack and a focused team, you get a faster site, lower costs, and room to grow."
- Maxime Topolov, Founder & CEO at code.store

The post IamExpat: Keeping users at the center when diversifying revenue appeared first on Audiencers.

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 shares how they're reimagining journalism as a collaborative, community-driven practice. 

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. Thie 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 influences 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.

What is a creator-model journalist? 

• Creator journalists combine journalism with elements of content creation
• Creator journalists work independently, in collectives or collaboratively
• Creator journalists run a small business with multiple products and revenue tied to ads, sponsorships and donations
• Creator journalists are accountable to their audience on social media, often by creating a para-social relationship

What can we learn from creators? 

• Be more trustworthy in sharing expertise and having bias
• Become more accessible in online spaces where audiences already consume other content
• Be more reliable in tone and style, including bits of personal life to add a human touch
• More transparency in choices made to run a sustainable model
• Be more responsive to audience feedback 

Creators are often a supplement, a new way of thinking about news, but elevate news organisations because of their resources.

But this doesn’t come without challenges, for the creators and the industry. 

• The algorithm still rules the world around us for both creation and consumption
• Is this actually the uber-fication of news, if journalists are all independent contractors? Who will do BIG investigative or accountability journalism? 
• Curating your own news feed with the creators you like is actually really hard. And it’s hard to elevate new voices
• No incentives for young journalists to train. Inconsistent ethics and editorial judgement
• Does nothing to counter polarization and conflict entrepreneurs

What can your newsroom do to lean into a creator future? 

• Share your favourite creators with colleagues and even bosses
• Identify and uncover talent on staff most comfortable with creator spaces. Give them resources and support to try something new 
• Align talent with aesthetic without forcing brand on them (where a lot of newsrooms go wrong!) – don’t squeeze them in the brand, be creator / person first 
• Empower your audience teams to explore and lead with AI tools
• Partner with non-journalist creators, paid and organic. Try academics or other subject-matter experts you trust first
• Formalise a creator-program that scales affiliate/referrals for subscriptions or registrations
• Start an in-house creator team to extend your brand at the top of the funnel 

Loyalty isn’t built by speaking louder, it’s built by speaking with

Hannah Sarney, Editorial Product Director at Financial Times, highlighted the importance of building a future of trusted journalism. How? Trust builds loyalty, community builds trust, and community is built through two-way engagement spaces.

Curate the story but also the conversation around the story 

Given that owned platforms have the highest trust, it’s here that publishers need to build conversations and interaction around the journalism.

This has already been proved at Financial Times:

• Comment readers are 11x more engaged than those that don’t
• Commenters are 46x more engaged than those that don’t read or write comments

However, research found that although 50% of subscribers read comments, only 4% actually write them. Maybe the door doesn’t feel open, or maybe the door isn’t easy to find?

Encouraging commenting at Financial Times

Protect civility

• Making community guidelines easy to find and understand
• Clearly enforced by the moderation team
• AI-powered moderation bought in to bring up the moderation baseline, re-trained off human comments, with humans still kept in the loop

Spark participation

• “Join the conversation” tag with a question to encourage readers to answer and be more thoughtful in their commenting
• Make it easy for readers to jump down to the comments section

Fostering connection and togetherness

• Upcoming live Q&A feature designed to encourage broader participation and lift conversation into the story
• Only send these questions to journalists, rather than publishing on the site immediately, making the entry-point less intimidating
• Easy-to-use, mobile-first experience
• Clearly defined roles and experts
• Easy to catch up when the event is over

Build direct 1-2-1 relationships to create stability and resilience against big tech platforms 

Nic Dawes, Executive Director at THECITY, a local news nonprofit serving the people of New York City, with a clear mission: provide news for underserved communities.

One way that they achieve this is with targeted, printed postcards via mail, a uniquely non-digital strategy to get in front of the people impacted by these stories. The postcards include explanatory journalism, a QR code to the website and question-and-answer content.

Recipients then share questions, with journalists writing back to thank them and close the loop, showing that readers are part of the process, reinforcing communities. This also helps to better serve readers as content is based on reader questions

These stories have consistently strong evergreen traffic performance, help to acquire new audiences and allow for sponsorship opportunities for different campaigns.

Although they may not be a key driver of immediate donor intent, they have the potential to short-circuit search and AI related challenges (although significant scale-up is required).

The post Building and serving communities with Ryan Y. Kellett, Financial Times and THECITY appeared first on Audiencers.

Membership in the Handelsblatt ‘AI Circle’ costs €2,500 per year. In return, members receive access to exclusive events, discussions with experts and the editorial team, a Handelsblatt subscription, and much more.

With ‘Circles’, Handelsblatt, the German-language business newspaper, aims to demonstrate what a media company can be in the 21st century. In addition to the hyped topic of AI, they’re also focusing on exchange and networking among decision-makers at the PULSE women’s network and the upcoming TECH (Technology Experience Convention Heilbronn) conference.

In one of my recent Subscribe Now podcast episodes (in German), Chief Growth Officer Jan Kleibrink explains how they acquire members for their high-priced communities and what their big ambitions for the future look like.

1. What are “Circles”?

Handelsblatt now has a fairly extensive portfolio of memberships for various areas of interest. These have evolved significantly over the past few years, leading to each having their unique business model.

Their ‘Circles’ products were originally intended to keep people connected between major events. Accordingly, membership was initially free, financed through sponsorships and ticket sales.

Shortly after launching the first communities, a pandemic broke out (some will remember) and the demand for virtual networking was huge. This put Circles in a very good position.

Since then, new circles have been launched (Pulse, TECH). Unlike the others, these are packaged as high-value memberships where it’s not sponsors who pay for the content and network access, but the members themselves.

2. Prices depend on company size and number of licenses

The membership itself and their respective prices vary slightly between circles. For instance, Pulse costs €2,000 or €3,000 per year, the AI ​​Circle €2,500, and TECH €20,000 for three members. Startups receive significant discounts, and those who purchase multiple licenses can save up to 20%.

While that sounds like a lot of money at first glance, Jan says that some people believe that such communities should be offered at a much higher price given their value.

3. Memberships and Professional Briefings are two sides of the same coin

In a previous newsletter, I featured Table.Briefings who, interestingly, charge up to €2,388 per year. They’re in the same price range as Circles, and also offer in-depth coverage for highly interested specialist communities.

The big difference is their approach. While Table.Briefings primarily focus on regular and in-depth content, Circles focus on the network. The AI ​​briefing newsletter is even free at Handelsblatt and serves more as a marketing channel for the Circle.

However, Jan can well imagine that both approaches will converge in the coming years – briefing providers could also increasingly rely on events and Circles could perhaps expand their content offerings.

4. Events are the focus

Circles attract the most members around major annual events like the AI ​​Summit. The AI ​​Summit costs between €990 and €1,550 alone and is included for members. A member could therefore estimate that participation in the Summit alone justifies 62% of the membership fee.

Interestingly, there’s hardly any mention of Circles on the AI ​​Summit registration page. Jan explains this by saying that they don’t want to overwhelm or confuse attendees when purchasing an event ticket, but that participants will be made aware of the Circle after purchasing the ticket and during the event.

5. Subscriptions and memberships appeal to different target groups

In 2016, Handelsblatt launched their business club. The hypothesis back then was that subscribers would become members. Live journalism, networking, and exclusive benefits are just as important for subscription as the editorial content.

There is not much left of the Handelsblatt business club (their sister magazine’s club, WirtschaftsWoche, still exists) and membership has moved away from paid content.

The idea is that events often attract guests who don’t have subscriptions, and many subscribers never attend an event. These are two target groups that only partially overlap and also have very different willingness to pay.

At the same time, the Handelsblatt subscription is also an added value for Circle members and part of the bundle, but it is not the main focus.

(I already wrote about the return of memberships in a previous newsletter)

6. TECH: “The largest single initiative the Handelsblatt Media Group has ever launched”

Handelsblatt has big plans for the “Technology Experience Convention Heilbronn.” The event, which will take place for the first time from May 25-27th, aims to establish itself as a “Technology Davos,” where the world’s most important decision-makers come together to discuss Europe’s technological future.

The website already states that it will be more than just a conference, but rather a membership. TECH is intended to combine learnings from previous Circles and expand them into something truly large. Whether this succeeds remains to be seen in the coming years.

If you like this article, you can follow my work in four ways:

 Follow me on LinkedIn

Discover my newsletter (in German but easily translatable)

 Subscribe to the podcast (in German)

The post Handelsblatt Circles: 6 lessons on community from Chief Growth Officer Jan Kleibrink appeared first on Audiencers.

“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 post Audience, engagement and community at The Globe and Mail appeared first on Audiencers.

Regular commenting below articles has always been a frequently-used engagement feature on DER SPIEGEL. In fact, Product Manager Laura Badura shared that at the peak 1.7M comments were left in a month… too much for AI and human moderation to manage and too much for users to read . 

Not only this, but conversations on a single topic were happening in multiple places across the site, diluting the potential value of this feature. Debates on the US elections for instance took place in the comments section of several articles covering the topic a day. 

So, when the time came to review the feature and evaluate tools used, Laura and the DER SPIEGEL product team decided to run some user research to understand the popularity of comment sections, why users turned to DER SPIEGEL for debating instead of X or Reddit, and find ways of improving the feature.

A lot of research later… 

Quantitative analysis meant asking questions such as “How much do you use the space?” and “Do you prefer active or passive participation?”, revealing that only 5% of users are commenting on a regular basis.

This is supported by industry research in Germany by Reuters Institute. The graph below shows active participation in news reporting since 2013, with the yellow results representing commenting.

Qualitative research found that users associate trust and safety with these conversations when they happen under the DER SPIEGEL branding. There’s a mutual appreciation for the publisher’s work, and a reputation that users appreciate. Moderation means that users know that not every comment gets through to be published, and that journalists can vaguely guide discussions if needed. Overall, interaction options are highly appreciated by users as they have a clear desire to engage and know others’ opinions.

For those users who haven’t yet participated, the term ‘safe space’ kept coming up, particularly amongst women. Some mentioned interest in using the feature but a worry of publishing under their real name as well as deliberate choices over which topics they want to participate in.

Re-building the feature with this research in mind

To build trust with users and ensure they feel confident that they’re in a safe space, clear branding and custom design allows the debates to fit perfectly into DER SPEIGEL’s site.

Their tool for implementing debates into the site, Logora, allowed for plenty of features, but it was important for DER SPIEGEL to evaluate which would be the most relevant to their audience. 

For instance, one of Logora’s features is a form of rewards system for high commenters that sends a congratulatory message after a certain number of comments. But the team decided not to implement this at the launch to give readers the chance to test and interact with the debates un-interrupted. However, today, one year on from launching, and they’re considering ways of rewarding high engagement such as this. 

The team also decided to omit ‘dislikes’ on comments to support the creation of a safe space. 

Interestingly, they’ve also decided against making it obligatory for commenters to use their real name to allow users to feel safe. However, they have an account verification process, even for free members, and are continuously evaluating this decision. 

Real name commenting at The Times

At The Audiencers’ Festival London, The Times & Sunday Times shared how they did the opposite, aiming to reduce toxicity by reducing anonymity in their comments section. The idea: “people should know who they’re speaking to if you want a high quality conversation.”

At the time, only 37% of commenters were using their real name, today they’re at an impressive 98%.

“It was a long process involving many different departments at The Times, and lots of communication around it. Subscribers were told early on that they needed to use their real name, and there was a 3-step process to do this. But since making the change we’ve seen toxicity come down – it’s a safer, more welcoming community, and attacks on writers were down 25% – and an increase in the number of comments. People who don’t use a real name stick out for a bad reason – they’re now blocked and then become compliant.“

Debating in practice

For SPIEGEL Debatte, you only need to create a free account or log in to read the debates. 

But in order to actually comment, react, see the distribution of votes (before the debate has ended) or suggest a debate topic, you need a paid subscription. 

The feature is promoted in subscriber onboarding to increase regular usage amongst subscribers.

And debates are integrated into editorial content and vice versa to encourage recirculation. Notice the high visibility of premium (S+) content here to promote the value of subscription.

This premium article below is accompanied by a debate topic open to all, allowing free members to engage in the debate to an extent without being able to benefit from the full experience and accompanying content – a great balance between engagement and frustration to encourage conversion.

To reach new users and draw attention to the digital platform, they sometimes show comments from SPIEGEL Debatte in the print magazine and link to the Debate Space via a QR code. And finally, they also draw attention to the debate on social media channels such as LinkedIn or Instagram by publishing quotes or voting results, linking to the debate.

The goal wasn’t necessarily to increase conversions or retention, but commenting and interactive engagement has been an important feature of DER SPIEGEL’s site, so improving this feature was important, especially for subscribers who have full access to debating.

Some initial results

• Within the first 7 hours of launching, 10,000 users logged in within the debate space
• In the first year, the team created over 900 debates with more than 3M votes and about 400K comments.
• The quality of comments has increased with feature changes. “That is a qualitative observation for now. But it is also reflected in the rate of accepted comments, which has risen from 80-85 to 85-90 percent.”

Thank you Laura for taking the time for this interview!

The post Going further with interactive engagement: introducing the debating feature appeared first on Audiencers.

“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.”

This is the idea that came into the Daily Maverick team’s head in 2019. One that led to a huge internal database of contactable ‘Insiders’ (Daily Maverick members) who are experts in every industry and discipline possible.

I spoke to Francesca Beighton, Head of Growth and Julia Harris,  Head of Reader Revenue, to hear more about this unique strategy. 

The post Learning from Membership models: Daily Maverick’s superpower database appeared first on Audiencers.

Content is everywhere. It’s unfortunately not so much as a differentiator for your product anymore.

Community, on the other hand, is not a commodity. It’s an asset. Something that feeds into your brand value, that a user will come back for and that will make you different from other publishers producing similar content. 

What’s more, when audiences aren’t on your site, they’re spending a great deal of time on social media, growing accustomed to certain experiences and features that keep them coming back for more. They can…

• Interact with content
• Comment 
• See other user’s opinions
• Join events 
• Like and share content 
• Follow topics and authors that match their interests

These experiences have become user expectations, making traditional digital publisher sites seem passive with very little direct interaction. 

In short, we’re social beings who want to react and have human experiences – and it’s this that makes community so powerful. Publishers therefore need to build a bridge between user expectations and experiences on their sites.

The challenge with community building

All publishers with a reader revenue strategy aim to subscribe their audience. The problem, however, is when they try to go from 0 to 100 – from unengaged to a loyal subscriber. 

We can compare it to dating – you wouldn’t immediately ask someone to marry you (unless maybe if you’re on ‘Married at first sight’!), you’d ask them to dinner first. 

Community helps to provide these intermediary steps, building engagement before trying to get value from your audience. I.e. Community-led conversion.

Not only this, but community has been proven to correlate with engagement metrics, bringing readers back on a more frequent basis, consuming more content and staying on site for longer. This naturally supports engagement, as well as conversion, retention and, ultimately, lifetime value.

The goal of this article: benchmarks to build a solid community strategy

WhatsApp

• Be in your audiences’ pocket, even if you don’t have a mobile app
• Establish more personal relationships – WhatsApp is traditionally for conversations between friends and family, but you now have the chance to enter into this very personal space
• The new WhatsApp’s Communities format – this product offers valuable features, including a notably augmented maximum membership limit and the crucial ability to hide user numbers, thereby safeguarding user privacy. Furthermore, the seamlessness of sharing the community link and joining the community itself has remarkably streamlined user acquisition process. This has removed any technological barriers and frictions for users, regardless of age; joining the community is an intuitive process, universally understood.

Case study: Pamplonews

“Pamplonews is all about Pamplona and its community, offering localized information and topics in a unique style. Unlike traditional local media, which often cover a broad range of subjects and areas, we focus on a distinct agenda. While other outlets may churn out the same mix of stories, including local, national, politics, crime, entertainment, sports, weather, and business, we steer clear of that terrain.

Our approach revolves around serving up news that’s useful, events, and lifestyle content—stuff that enhances our users’ experience of the city and lets them squeeze out all the enjoyment.”

> Read the full interview with co-founder Juan

Commenting

Whilst only one of the ways of engaging readers, it’s a foundation of the community model, helping readers get involved in journalism.

• Encourage conversations between readers on a specific article
• Block content with a registration wall or paywall, but leave comments open to create a sense of FOMO
• Require readers to create an account in order to comment or react to someone else’s comment
• Consider engagement-based blocking of comments – for instance, block after a certain amount of time to convert readers who usually hover over the comments but never participate
• Notification bell to bring readers back

For example, The Telegraph has been developing their commenting feature, helping it to play a larger role in their wider community- and loyalty-building strategy.

“Since the beginning of this year (2024) we’ve been working closely with our editorial team to get writers involved in the comments section, interacting with our audience. It’s one of the strategies that’s been the most effective in getting readers engaged. We’ve seen a 119% increase in the number of comments that are posted once an author has ‘gone below the line’ (i.e. joined the comments section).”

> Read more in our article from The Times and The Telegraph speaking on commenting and community

User generated content: citizen reporters

Social media platforms are great for new audience acquisition, but creating social media-inspired features on your website are valuable for having audiences engage on-platform.

• Graham Media launched “Pins”, their own photo and video posting platform that the newsroom can then use in stories.
• Village Media have just launched “Spaces” their own chatting platform, for users to connect with others based on topics of interest or joining in on conversations

Forums

Create discussion groups around specific topics to engage readers in a niche that matches their interests.

Digital Spy, for instance, have forums around different TV show, films, etc. which has significantly supported engagement and relationship-building efforts. They even had a member write in to share that they met their partner through the forum and have now got married!

Debating

For many publishers, regular commenting is a key engagement feature, but too much of it can overwhelm AI and human moderation efforts, not to mention make it difficult for users to follow discussions.

This was the case for DER SPIEGEL in Germany. The sheer volume of comments, coupled with discussions on the same topics occurring across multiple articles, diluted the feature’s value and prompted a reevaluation by the product team.

After research and testing, the team developed a debating feature, allowing readers to share their opinion on a specific topic or question, linked to one or many articles on the site.

You only need to create a free account or log in to read the debates, but in order to actually comment, react, see the distribution of votes (before the debate has ended) or suggest a debate topic, you need a paid subscription. 

Some initial results

• Within the first 7 hours of launching, 10,000 users logged in within the debate space
• In the first year, the team created over 900 debates with more than 3M votes and about 400K comments.
• The quality of comments has increased with feature changes. “That is a qualitative observation for now. But it is also reflected in the rate of accepted comments, which has risen from 80-85 to 85-90 percent.”

Registration

Registering audiences is arguably THE biggest priority for publishers in 2024, and rightly so:

• Increased engagement (at 20 Minutes, logged users spend 2 times more time on page and have 4 times higher page views)
• Higher propensity to subscribe (40x at The Independent)
• More advertising revenue through increased engagement and targeting
• Data collection & better understanding audiences
• Increase lifetime value (see here)
• Improve the user experience, such as with personalization

And community is a valuable asset that you can offer in exchange for registration, as part of your value proposition.

Registration best practices:

• Define a clear value proposition just as you would for a subscription offer
• Forefront the value that users will get in exchange for registration (e.g. a lighter ad experience, exclusive content, your newsletter, UX features, etc)
• Reduce the number of clicks, typing and scrolling needed to register (i.e. reduce friction)
• Onboard newly registered users just as you would subscribers, considering which engagement actions often lead to high LTV
• Make sure to connect registration with subscription, if you employ a premium model
• Bring the reader back to the article they were hoping to access in the first place
• Offer real value in exchange for registration, making sure to emphasize this value at each step in the journey – find 10 ideas here
• Only ask for the information you need – there’s no point in creating extra work for the reader if you won’t use it
• Welcome the reader, either onsite or via email
• Consider offering the option to register with an existing social account, such as Google, Facebook or Apple
• Don’t forget about the registration experience on mobile, perhaps offing app download as one of the onboarding steps

Conversations with journalists

Building relationships is an essential piece of the community puzzle, and it’s significantly easier to build relationships between 2 people than between a person and a brand. This is why giving your editors, journalists and podcast hosts the chance to have 1-to-1 conversations with readers is essential.

The Toronto Star has seen great success with the Billionaire Murders podcast, but the majority of this engagement was off-platform. The question was ultimately how can these audiences be brought back to their own platform? How can The Star create unique experiences for these users that they’re not getting already with the podcast?

The solution was a masterpiece collaboration between product, marketing and the newsroom – an Ask Me Anything feature.

Best practices that have made this strategy so effective:

• Signposting the fact that a journalist is ‘going below the line’ across all platforms, with a specific time for readers to join
• Being able to pin comments to highlight them to readers
• Have a badge to verify journalists so readers know to trust them
• Highlight the best questions and answers with a particle, making readers feel recognized and valued

Reader-led stories

Call-outs for journalists to get information for articles directly from readers means that your audience feel involved in your work and see themselves as part of the brand’s value. These call-outs could ask for reader opinions, get them to share their experience and send in photos giving their perspective on an event, or try to reach out to experts on a topic.

This is something The Globe and Mail has been testing.

“For instance, Toronto had a snow day last month (fairly rare here, surprisingly) so we asked readers to submit their memories of snow days as a child, leading to a really heartwarming story pulling together all of these experiences. It’s also this kind of journalism that helps combat news avoidance and balance out the more negative news events. 

We also work with individual reporters to run call-outs. For example we have a happiness reporter, who ran a call-out for readers to nominate the happiest person they know!“

“It was such a great piece, sharing all these stories and sharing what we can learn from these happy individuals. Wonderfully it was one of the most successful stories in the first week of January and ended up being republished into a Q&A with our happiness reporter.“

> Full interview with Audience Growth Manager, Rebecca Zamon, here

The Daily Maverick even had a database of contactable readers and their expertise, collected during the membership onboarding journey, ready for whenever they’re in need of additional knowledge.

1-2-1 conversations

Historically, the only moment that a reader can speak to someone working at the publication is when they’re trying to cancel their subscription or if they have a problem. In fact, these personal calls can go a long way in retaining members.

Zetland, for instance, ran a project whereby the whole team worked to call their members and simply say thank you, building that all important human relationship.

Bringing online communities IRL

Events organized by publishers are nothing new, but this strategy can be taken a step further with some innovation to go with it to build communities that go further than your website to connect IRL.

For example, Blick.ch launched a hiking vertical, 26summits, with the goal of building a community of readers interested in hiking (a very popular hobby in Switzerland).

Launched in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, Blick’s hiking campaign challenges individuals to hike 26 peaks in each of the 26 regions of Switzerland, scanning the QR code at the peak, gaining points and prizes (for every hike you win a prize, such as a voucher for partner stores or a hiking product). 

The results:

• 3.3 million page views on 26summits.ch
• 1.8 million unique users
• 25k registrations
• 4.3 survey reviews showing great user feedback 

Next steps:

User feedback has been very positive, so much so that participants would like to connect with each other to hike together and discuss routes. This has led the publisher to recently launch the 4th edition of 26summits with its own Facebook group! 

Bringing IRL communities online

Finding existing communities and brining them online, helping to provide a space for them to interact around your content, is a valuable strategy to grow more organically.

Australian Broadcasting Association for instance placed QR codes around the city during Queer history month, linking to articles describing what happened there.

“For Sydney World Pride, the team created a web interactive that re-traced the route of the first Mardi Gras parade in 1978. The project I led looked at using QR codes to distribute this piece of content seeing as we could link the locations from the story to their real-world counterparts. When someone scanned one of our QR code decals on the street, they were directed to a video on the queer history behind that location and a link to the web interactive. This is how we managed to turn audiences in real life into digital ones.

My main goal with the QR code project was not to achieve a high reach but to foster meaningful engagement with a specific community. We knew there were going to be thousands of people in these areas for World Pride however we wanted to ensure we were putting this content in front of the audience for whom it mattered the most. And we saw results — visitors who accessed the World Pride interactive through the QR codes had a notably longer time spent on site compared to all other visitors.”

The post Engagement and community building ideas to steal appeared first on Audiencers.