> L'Équipe sold a 34-month subscription at 2.24 euros a month for the 1,000-day Olympic countdown, then had to keep those readers. Of those reaching the 100-day marker, 75% were still paying

> They rebuilt the Financial Times RFV metric and changed recency to regularity. Their version weights content by editorial value, so a reader of live match feeds scores below one watching documentaries

> Subscribers themselves suggested the fix for good work getting buried: a monthly preview of what is coming, like a TV schedule. It lifted engagement scores 9% on site and 12% by email

> The ladder is stark. Former subscribers are 18 times likelier to resubscribe than members, and members 18 times likelier to subscribe than anonymous readers. 70% of returns happen within seven days of cancelling

> The surprise is that many lapsed subscribers accept a win-back offer at a higher price if it carries a one-year commitment. Retention without discounting, and lifetime value goes up

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!):

1. Increase recurrence
2. Improve frequency
3. 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

#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.

The context of our two media brands featured in the session?

• L’Équipe: the newspaper (inevitably) took advantage of the momentum of the Paris Olympics to launch a monthly subscription offer at €2.24 for 36 months in the 1000 day run up to the Games. Never-before-seen for L’Équipe over such a long period, and an exciting opportunity to acquire and engage. But a super discount also means potential super churn. But, spoiler, 75% of those who subscribed to this highly reduced offer are still active today (the end of November 2024).
• Les Echos – Le Parisien: acquiring new subscribers was THE priority for the group. But the teams realized that, while welcoming new customers, they were sometimes forgetting to take the time to get to know them properly – so as not to let them slip away.

So what lessons did these two huge names in the French Media landscape have to share on retaining subscribers?

The best-of retention strategies from The Audiencers’ Festival Paris in 4 steps!

Step #1 : Define engagement

How do you define and measure engagement to be able to effectively use it in subscription models?

For L’Équipe, the aim is to define a score for each subscriber, enabling them to be classified according to a RFV index: Recency, Frequency, Volume. They chose to measure 4 criteria corresponding to this index:

• Number. of visits
• Volume of unique content consumed
• Frequency of visit
• How long the reader has been a subscriber

To these criteria, L’Équipe adds a weighting according to the content formats most followed: a subscriber who visits long-form documentaries twice a week, for example, obtains a higher RFV score than one who visits the web every day only for live content.

For Les Echos – Le Parisien, the challenge was to measure engagement using simple, readable data that could be accessed in real time. First of all, the group collected its readers’ browsing data over a one-week period:

• Number of devices
• Number of visits
• Number of days when the reader visited the site at least once
• Number of articles consumed

This criteria enabled them to distinguish 3 reader segments and define a decision tree to detect weak or positive engagement signals. The result: data that is sorted, ordered and, above all, immediately usable.

> To read next: How we measure audience engagement at DER SPIEGEL

Step #2 : Segment audiences

For L’Équipe, the D-1000 offer for the Paris 2024 Olympics gave them the opportunity to test scenarios on their subscribers, using a bit of what they knew but also experimenting with hypothesis:

• What they already knew: ex-subscribers are 18x more likely to subscribe than readers who have never subscribed before
• What they learnt: there’s a “promophile” audience who’s addicted to good deals! And this requires a very specific retention strategy. If it’s well thought out, it can lead to an even better re-subscription

To reach profiles with lower RFV scores, multidisciplinary teams tested over 300 different messages in one year. Verdict in 2024: L’Équipe has identified 15 segments, with specific offers and messages for each.

At Les Echos – Le Parisien, to address paying customers – and thus generate additional sales – they segmented subscribers into 3 categories:

1 – Subscribers who haven’t logged in for a while, who don’t seem to visit anymore (with a high churn propensity)

2 – Subscribers with a falling level of engagement (who need to be re-engaged)

3 – Engaged subscribers (who should be converted into brand ambassadors)

Recurring actions have been set up for each of these identified populations, with different triggers when engagement decreases or increases.

Step #3 : Prioritize

As we said at last year’s Festival, keeping up with 4,000 KPIs at a time is a fail-safe way of losing track of what’s important. It’s all a question of focus and prioritization.

At L’Equipe, certain projects have been prioritized for long-term retention: 

• Previews of upcoming releases in newsletters: +9% clicks and +12% email opens. And, according to a study conducted by the publisher, subscribers report consuming more content thanks to this feature.

• More interactivity between readers: with over 150,000 comments per month, the publisher has chosen to redesign this key space with new functionalities. Subscribers can now find all their comments in one place, click on other subscribers’ profiles, add emojis or ask an AI to summarize all the comments on an article.

• Closer to the media brand: the aim here is to bring journalists and readers closer together, to develop a sense of belonging. How do they achieve this? With a WhatsApp channel gathering 195K followers (+6.3 CTR) or with words signed by the editorial team directly inserted in the weekend debrief newsletter (+16% RFV).

These examples have been materialized in a time matrix that defines which actions are activated throughout the lifecycle. Including for churned subscribers, during their grace period, and to promote re-subscription.

For Les Echos – Le Parisien, this began with the prioritization of 4 major KPIs to measure the actions implemented:

1 – Churn rate

2 – Email performance

3 – Subscriber evolution by offer development

4 – Follow-up of unsubscribers after 1 week, following a retention action

Some of the projects introduced by the group, according to their different types of subscribers:

• For sleeper subscribers: the publisher has chosen to completely stop sending emails to 20% of this group as a test.
• For those with declining engagement: more personalized content and an invitation to join the ‘Club Les Echos Débats’, the debating feature for Les Echos’ subscribers
• For those already engaged: communication focused on services and features (as opposed to content) and news previews.

> Unsubscription journeys on top publisher sites

Step #4 : Takeaways to apply elsewhere

What can you takeaway from L’Équipe and Les Echos – Le Parisien’s strategies? 

• Retention and engagement strategies are a team effort. Not just marketing. It’s a tasty blend of talents in data, CRM, distribution and, of course marketing. Several publishers also made a special mention to customer service, an essential aid to re-engaging ex-subscribers.

• Measure, classify, simplify, prioritize: when it comes to your engagement strategy, it’s tempting to go off in all directions. But at the end of the day, there’s only one objective: to produce data that’s simple, readable for everyone, accessible in real time, and that implies precise actions to be taken.

• 70% of re-subscribers do so within 7 days of the end of their access (the rate is even higher for new arrivals during a promotional period!). The actions to be taken before and during these first post-subscription days clearly depend on the subscriber’s profile and the weak signals of their commitment.

• Test, test, test. In addition to the duration and price of the subscription, many other metrics can be tested: the introductory price, tagline, design, email content, recurrence of notifications and pushes, etc. As the tests progress, the relevance of the tests is refined until the most impactful ones are defined.

L'Equipe is an emblematic French sports newspaper with a daily digital readership of 2.5 million, and over 200,000 subscribers to its paid digital offer. Romain Lhote, CMO, spoke at The Audiencers' Festival and Workshop in London this June about their retention strategy whilst increasing their subscription offer price.

Romain L'hote is Marketing Director of L'Équipe, the emblematic French sports newspaper with a daily digital readership of 2.5 million, and over 190,000 subscribers to its paid digital offer. Subscriber acquisition is, as it is for many, at the heart of its monetization strategy. Today, Romain shares how, by trial and error, his team managed to halve acquisition costs on advertising platforms, while increasing both attribution and last-click subscriptions.