Regula Marti helps media organizations navigate transformation at the intersection of editorial, product, technology, and business strategy.

In this article, Regula discusses how engagement isn’t a single metric to maximize — it reflects different reader needs and moments, where the same behavior can signal success or friction depending on context. She recommends moving beyond averages and article-level metrics to analyze engagement by audience segments and sessions, focusing on whether readers get what they came for and return.

Most publishers have more engagement data than ever — and still struggle to agree on what engagement actually means. The tools aren’t the problem. The problem is the assumption behind them.

The assumption is this: engagement is one thing, and more of it is better. But engagement isn’t one thing. It’s the outcome of different reader behaviors, driven by different motivations.

Same reader, different moments

Think about how you consume news. Some mornings you want a quick overview. Some evenings you want to go deep. Sometimes you’re browsing. Sometimes you want distraction.

These aren’t different readers. They’re the same reader in different situations, with different needs.

A short session can mean the reader got exactly what they needed. A long one can mean depth — or friction. High article counts can mean curiosity, or confusion. The same metric means something different depending on what the reader was trying to do. Without that context, you’re pattern-matching on behavior you don’t fully understand.

Who you’re actually looking at

Here’s a pattern that shows up consistently across publisher data: a small group of heavy users (20+ visits per month) drives a disproportionate share of pageviews. A large flyby majority (one visit per month or fewer) makes up most of the audience but a tiny fraction of consumption. Frontpage clicks illustrate this well: they overrepresent heavy users. Optimizing for clicks risks building a homepage for the audience you already have, not the one you’re trying to grow.

In between sit the loyal readers, visiting 2 to 20 times a month. They have a relationship with you but haven’t yet built a habit. They’re the most likely to convert and retain — and the easiest to overlook, because heavy users dominate the averages. The real movement happens here: turning flybys into returning readers, and loyals into heavys.

What a summary feature taught us

Product decisions show what happens when you measure at the wrong level.

When we introduced article summaries across our portfolio at Tamedia — short digests at the top to help readers decide whether to go deeper — the concern was obvious: readers would skim and leave. That’s partly what happened. Scroll depth dropped for some users.

But at session level, something else emerged. Those readers went on to read more articles per visit, and overall session time increased. The summary helped them get oriented quickly and navigate to what mattered for them more in this moment.

Other readers used it differently. After reading the summary, they were more likely to finish the full article. It gave them confidence it was worth their time.

Two opposite behaviors at article level. Both positive at session level. Both pointing to the same outcome: a need met, and a higher likelihood to return.

Segment awareness can also shape product design from the start. We kept our fast news format intentionally compact. Heavy users quickly find what they need, while the freed-up space showcases the differentiated content that loyals and flybys need to keep coming back.

What this means for how you measure

The answer isn’t a more sophisticated metric. You need to be more deliberate about what you measure and why.

Look at your segments separately in your analytics tool. The same metric tells a different story across them — and the average hides most of it. Track them over time: a single snapshot tells you little; the direction of travel tells you a lot.

Article-level metrics will often mislead you. A reader can leave early and still have had a successful session. That’s why session-level metrics matter — but only when read together with segment data. A daily digest designed for quick orientation will show low time-on-page. That’s not underperformance — it’s the format working as intended. The right metric is whether those users come back the next day.

Try this in your next team meeting

Start in your next team meeting. Pick one feature or format you’ve recently launched or are evaluating. Review its impact at article level, then at session level. Then ask: for which segment was this actually useful — and in which moment? A multi-format feature is a good example: a reader who skipped the article but listened to the audio version on their commute — possibly in a podcast app, invisible to your analytics — may well return the next morning. Low article engagement, high likelihood to come back.

You’ll often find that what looks like low engagement in one view is exactly what success looks like in another.

The reader who got what they came for is more likely to return. Design your metrics to capture that.

The post The reader who left your article early might be your most engaged user appeared first on Audiencers.

Khalil A. Cassimally, Consultant in Audience Development, User Needs & AI, and regular contributor to Audiencers, shares 7 strategies to not only become data-informed, but data-led.
1. Data is a compass, not a map
2. Connect every role to the bigger goal
3. User value first; business follows
4. Don't focalise on tools
5. Create one source of truth
6. Start with one analysis, and keep going
7. Optimise the funnel; small lifts compound

There is no shortage of data in media operations. There is also no shortage of stress and overwhelm in media operations – and an abundance of data is now contributing to it.

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

Data is an opportunity for media operations. It improves four things at once:

• Audience understanding (the foundation on which everything else lies)
• Content strategy
• Business performance
• Impact measurement

Unlocking these improvements rely on appropriately leveraging the data in meaningful and actionable ways. And when done systematically, harnessing data becomes a natural part of operations. That’s a data culture to strive for.

Building such a data culture doesn’t happen overnight. And some newsrooms are certainly further along on their data maturity ladder than others.

The data maturity ladder is made up of three rungs:

• Data-informed: we have a basic understanding and visibility on what’s happening
• Data-driven: we are actively using data to support strategic decisions, and ultimately growth
• Data-led: we are putting data in service of business outcomes, having systematised its leverage

The post 7 ways media can build a practical, empowering data culture appeared first on Audiencers.

For a long time, the metrics that defined newsroom success were clear. They revolved around reach, exposure and volume.

Pageviews, sessions and impressions were the KPIs that made it into daily reports and weekly dashboards. These KPIs shaped editorial strategies and justified business decisions. They worked, largely because they aligned with the realities of the time. When advertising was tied directly to traffic, the equation felt logical. More visitors meant more revenue.

But logic has shifted.

Today, readers live across devices, platforms and private spaces. They encounter news in fleeting moments and rarely engage directly with a publisher’s homepage. At the same time, revenue models have moved away from advertising towards subscriptions, memberships and deeper reader relationships.

In this new context, the old KPIs tell only part of the story. Worse, they risk obscuring the most important question newsrooms must now ask:

Who comes back, who stays and who truly cares?

Reach is essential but misleading

No publisher can disregard reach. Visibility is still fundamental. Content needs to be found. Audiences needs to be aware that journalism exists and is available.

But reach has become easy and abundant. Content floods social feeds, arrives through notifications and is surfaced via aggregators and search. Readers encounter it everywhere, often without consciously seeking it out.

This ease of distribution has eroded the connection between reach and value. A headline might attract attention. A push notification may drive visits. Yet these interactions often lack depth. They are transactions, not relationships.

Most publishers know this already. Their analytics show it plainly. Huge spikes followed by rapid declines. New visitors who arrive once and never return.

Counting them makes dashboards look healthy. But reach does not equal retention. It does not predict habit. And it says little about who will choose to pay or stay loyal.

Reach measures visibility, not connection.

Engagement offers more, but not enough

In search of better indicators, publishers began looking to engagement metrics.

Time on site. Scroll depth. Shares. Comments.

These offer more texture than raw traffic data. They indicate that a user did something beyond simply landing on the page. They suggest curiosity or interest.

But engagement is nuanced and often misunderstood.

Time spent does not always mean quality reading. It can reflect distraction. Scroll depth may say little about comprehension or satisfaction. Shares and comments are often driven by strong emotional reactions, including anger or frustration, rather than affinity.

Perhaps most importantly, engagement tends to measure moments, not relationships.

Readers might interact heavily with a single article and then disappear. They may participate without feeling any deeper attachment to the brand or mission.

Engagement reflects attention, but not loyalty.

Belonging is where loyalty and value take shape

At the top of the hierarchy sits belonging. It is the hardest to measure and, increasingly, the most essential.

Belonging describes the reader who returns regularly. Who builds habits around your content. Who participates thoughtfully. Who chooses your publication over the infinite alternatives.

This is not passive consumption. It is investment.

Belonging reveals itself in various ways. Readers who personalise their experience by following topics or authors. Subscribers who continue month after month. Users who leave comments, contribute feedback or take part in communities.

Unlike reach and engagement, belonging is not episodic. It is cumulative. It develops through repeated, meaningful interactions.

It also has clear commercial implications.

Subscribers acquired through belonging are more likely to retain. Loyal users consume more and contribute to higher lifetime value. Advocates bring others into the fold through referrals and word of mouth.

This is not theoretical. Publishers that focus on belonging see tangible results.

The Financial Times, for example, evolved its core metric from recency, frequency and volume towards lifetime value and, later, global paying audience. This reflected a shift from counting visits to cultivating durable relationships.

Der Spiegel analysed its editorial formats to identify those driving habitual use and deeper reading, then prioritised these in product and design decisions.

We see this at tchop.io across all community driven news projects.

These are not isolated cases. They represent a growing recognition across the industry that metrics must go beyond interaction to reflect connection.

Designing for belonging requires more than content

Belonging cannot be willed into existence. It has to be designed for. Not only through content, but also through product choices, community strategies and editorial voice.

Some approaches include:

• Building habits through consistency: Recurring formats, daily newsletters and regular voices help readers establish routines.
• Creating opportunities for participation: Comments, surveys and live discussions encourage users to contribute and shape the conversation.
• Offering personalisation: Tools that let users follow topics or curate feeds reinforce the sense that the product reflects their interests.
• Establishing editorial identity: Publications that take clear positions and develop strong voices foster emotional alignment.

Each tactic on its own may not be transformative. Together, they create conditions where belonging can emerge.

Measuring belonging is harder, but necessary

Unlike reach or engagement, belonging does not lend itself to simple, universal metrics. Still, it is possible, and critical, to measure its signals.

Metrics that suggest belonging include:

• Frequency and regularity of visits
• Retention rates across time periods
• Direct traffic and app opens
• Participation in community features
• Subscription tenure and renewal rates
• Referral and recommendation behaviour

Some publishers create internal metrics to track these factors holistically. Financial Times’ evolution to lifetime value and global paying audience is an example of how KPIs can shift to reflect deeper, more complex objectives.

While these measures require more effort to track and interpret, they offer far greater insight into the strength and resilience of audience relationships.

This is more than a measurement challenge

Metrics shape newsroom behaviour. When pageviews dominated, editorial strategies optimised for clicks. When engagement metrics took over, formats designed to hold attention flourished.

If belonging becomes the true north, it will change how publishers think and act.

Newsrooms will need to shift their priorities:

• From one-off articles to consistent formats and ongoing narratives
• From chasing new visitors to retaining and rewarding loyal ones
• From measuring activity to understanding commitment
• From broad, impersonal reach to creating spaces for identity and participation

These are not small adjustments. They require cultural as well as operational change.

But they reflect the reality of media today. Scale without loyalty no longer delivers sustainable business models. Belonging, though harder to quantify, is now the most reliable predictor of future success.

The future of KPIs is relational, not transactional

Clicks are easy to count. Relationships are not.

This does not mean that pageviews and sessions will disappear from reports. Nor should they. Awareness and attention remain vital parts of the audience journey.

But publishers who stop there will miss what matters most.

Belonging offers a clearer view of whether journalism is resonating. It reflects the strength of community and the likelihood of retention. It provides a foundation for reader revenue and brand advocacy.

Most importantly, it shifts the editorial mission away from serving algorithms and towards serving people.

A pageview shows that you were noticed. A return visit shows that you were valued. Belonging shows that you matter.

As news organisations navigate a post-platform, loyalty-driven landscape, success will not belong to those who attract the most visitors. It will belong to those who turn readers into regulars, and regulars into advocates.

That journey starts with rethinking what you measure, and why.

Author Heiko Scherer is the founder and CEO of tchop, a platform that helps publishers to build thriving communities around their brands that they fully own and control. Learn more at tchop.io, connect with him on Linkedin.

The post Why the most valuable newsroom KPI is no longer reach but belonging appeared first on Audiencers.

Tracking the right metrics, alignment across the organization and ensuring your end user is always put first are essential factors in successful reader revenue products. And for many, including Financial Times, establishing a North Star has been the secret to achieving this.

A North Star goal for media companies represents a guiding, overarching objective that helps align efforts and strategies towards long-term success.

• It drives decision-making
• Serves as a unifying metric for the company’s performance
• Communicates the organization’s impact and progress to the rest of the company
• Enables teams to focus on impact and sustainable, product-led growth.

FT Strategies established a checklist to help organisations create effective North Star goals, detailing that North Stars should be:

• Single, specific and measurable, so that it acts as a vehicle for ambition. This sets it apart from a traditional business plan.
• Bold enough that it challenges you and your organisation. It is based on ambition, not just a calculated projection, with a cost for not meeting it. It should cause slight discomfort.
• Achievable enough to ensure that you don’t set yourself up for failure.
• Memorable enough to keep everyone focused (e.g. the number should be rounded).
• Aspirational and purposeful, so it can inspire the whole organisation on your journey.
• Time-bound (typically 3-5 years). This creates urgency whilst also recognizing that times change.

Above all, the North Star shouldn’t be a vanity metric – a measure that lacks context, has no clear intent and doesn’t guide action or learning. I.e. metrics that make us feel good but don’t help us do better work or make better decisions.

Village Media’s North Star: 25% of the total addressable market should be brand lovers

As a media dedicated to “making community news sustainable”, encouraging readers to return, engage and stay is essential to Village Media’s mission. They therefore defined their North Star around the goal of increasing the percentage of brand lovers – anyone who visits their site more than 15 days/month.

This is easy to understand, specific, measurable, and can guide action across the company.

Nation Media Group’s North Star: to become Africa’s premier news destination, with a 500 million daily interactions across all digital platforms by 2027

Speaking to WAN-IFRA, Pamela Sittoni, Group Managing Editor, says their North Star will see the company “transforming into the most trusted, empowering and innovative content platform in Africa; we want to reach 500 million daily interactions or engagements across all our digital platforms.”

Research and analysis into this target suggests this could be achieved thanks to two major transformation moves: newsroom integration into a single team with one editorial direction and central decision making, and a “quality over quantity” content strategy.

This North Star helps inspire the whole company, not just business teams, towards becoming truly digital and continuously thinking about how to ensure the customer is the central focus.

The Irish Independent’s North Star: secure the future of independent Irish journalism, reaching X digital subscriptions by 2025 and generating X revenue

Although slightly outdated, this example from The Irish Independent (shared at an INMA conference) provides a nice visual of the North Star framework in action.

To reach its North Star goal, teams created metrics and then broke them down into smaller, achievable tasks.

Financial Times’ North Star: from engagement to LTV to Global Paying Audience

Since 2016, Financial Times has defined a single metric that matters, a North Star, that they consider essential to digital transformation – the process of evolving an organisation to a point where it can use technology, data and strategy to fulfill its mission, as Tara Lajumoke, Managing Director of FT Strategies until August 2023, shared in an interview.

When defining this first North Star, the team considered the biggest factor that determined whether an FT subscriber would continue to use their subscription. The answer was determined as their level of engagement with content and amount of value they’re getting out of it. 

Thus, FT’s first North Star: RFV (recency, frequency and volume)

The metric looks over a 90-day period and calculates a score based on the number of days since a user’s last visit (recency), total number of visits in that period (frequency), and the number of “counted content pages” viewed.

A user is considered engaged when their RFV score is more than 18.2, and becoming engaged leads to a 10 percent reduction in cancellation rates. 

This became a very concrete, strategic piece of information that people across the organization could understand, use to prioritize their work and rally behind.

For example, with this North Star in mind, the team set out to build a feature called myFT, a simple but effective personalization mechanism based on a subscribers preferred topics. They discovered that the mere act of becoming a myFT user increased engagement by 86%.

Evolving towards a more comprehensive North Star

From a focus on engagement from 2014-2019, FT has since developed their strategy to develop a North Star metric of lifetime value (LTV) in 2020.

Although, it’s worth noting that LTV didn’t replace RFV, but built on it, especially as the latter is an important predictor of the former.

LTV does however support better decision making when assigning resources or prioritizing tasks for acquisition vs retention, or B2B vs B2C for instance.

> Get started with measuring LTV

GPA: Global Paying Audience

From 2023, the North Star was developed to Global Paying Audience, designed to help grow audience revenue beyond its core journalism offerings and across its broader portfolio of products and services, aiming for 3 million by 2028.

The GPA metric encompasses not only the core digital product but also live event customers, FT Specialist and print newspaper circulation, seeking revenue from across a range of sources.

> 100k downloads later, what I learnt from launching FT Edit

Metrics that matter

The Global Paying Audience North Star is part of a wider framework called “metrics that matter”, outlining a range of metrics that sit underneath GPA and used more regularly by different teams across the organization.

In short, Metrics That Matter (MTM) gives all departments at FT a shared framework & common language so everybody in the company can see how their day-to-day work impacts GPA.

• Reduces focus & pressure on the North Star
• Mirrors a simplified customer lifecycle
• Put more focus on retention
• Encourages evaluation of costs
• Links volume and value in all pursuits
• Uses existing metrics where possible

The new metrics “solar system” framework:

This has been established for 7 departments, hosted on FT Intranet for full visibility, with links to the Data Cataglogue (a space to support consistency and ownership of definitions across the business). KPI checklists help measure performance and take action using data.

For example, the consumer revenue group (B2C): (GPA = Global Paying Audience, FT’s current North Star as of 2023)

And Editorial team:

Looking to get started on Metrics That Matter? FT Strategies has created a dedicated playbook!

The post North Stars for publishers and the example of Financial Times appeared first on Audiencers.

Are you currently planning your subscriptions for 2025 – or have you already completed this process? Do you have a Northstar metric for your digital subscriptions? My planning tool helps you break this down into concrete KPIs.

We often set ambitious target numbers for our Northstar. But what do these numbers actually mean when we break them down? How many conversions do you need per month? What’s the maximum acceptable churn rate?

My planning tool answers these questions for you:

• Google Sheet: Go to Sheets spreadsheet
  [You’ll be prompted to create a copy in your workspace]

A Step-by-Step Guide: 

1. Gathering Your Numbers 

First, collect your current KPIs for the status quo. You’ll need these metrics:

1. Monthly Trial Subscriptions How many new trial subscriptions do you acquire monthly?
2. Trial Conversion Rate What percentage of trial subscriptions converts to the first paid month?
3. Monthly Direct Subscriptions How many subscriptions without trial period (immediate paid subscriptions) do you acquire monthly?
4. Monthly Churn Rate What percentage of your paying subscribers cancel monthly?
5. Current Subscription Base What’s your current paying subscriber base?

For the first 4 KPIs, I recommend using the average value from the last 3 or 6 months. The current paying subscriber base could be taken from a specific date like September 30 or October 31. Regardless, the simulation starts from November 2024 – beginning with the base number you enter here.

The definition of paid subscriptions / paying subscribers (as distinct from trial subscriptions) and paying subscribers varies between publishers. You can apply your organization’s definitions here.

Enter these numbers in the upper ‘Simulation’ table in the ‘Status Quo’ column, replacing the preset red numbers. Don’t have trial or direct subscriptions? Simply enter “0” for these. Enter your current subscription base in the ‘Paying Base’ column on the right.

2. Simulating Uplifts 

After entering the status quo, you’ll see a forecast in the ‘Status Quo’ column showing how your subscription base will develop until 2030.

Now it’s time for uplift simulation. In the ‘Uplift I’ column, you can enter percentage changes for the KPIs. The preset shows a 30% increase in trial subscriptions – meaning instead of 1,000 trials, the preset example generates 1,300. All other KPIs remain unchanged.

In the table below, the ‘Final Base Uplift I’ column shows how a 30% increase in trial subscriptions affects your subscriber base through 2030.

Besides ‘Uplift I’, you can run a second simultaneous simulation in the ‘Uplift II’ column. This allows you to compare two different scenarios. What helps more sustainably: An increase in conversions – or a combination of improved conversion rate with reduced cancellations?

For completeness: The simulations assume trial subscriptions run for one month before converting.

I hope my planning tool helps in your daily work. It enables you to test different scenarios and see how changes impact your subscription base.

Important: The tool assumes KPIs remain constant, which rarely happens in reality. Nevertheless, it provides valuable insights into how your key metrics need to develop to achieve your goals.

Do you have suggestions for improvement or feedback about the tool? Please let me know.

Sascha

The post Planning Your Subscriptions for 2025  appeared first on Audiencers.

This guest post was provided by our friends at Atlas, the recurring revenues growth consultancy.

Understanding your profit on a one-off sale is simple – price paid minus marketing and manufacturing costs. This book costs £30, I spent £7 on marketing and it cost £10 to print and deliver – my profit is £13, and I have that profit as soon as the sale completes. 

The post Getting started with Lifetime Value appeared first on Audiencers.

In today’s digital landscape, engaging audiences has become more complex than ever. As consumer behavior continues to evolve, professionals in digital publishing must leverage data to drive their strategies. This guide will explore how audience data can inform smarter engagement decisions, implement effective retention tactics, and inspire through real-world success stories.

Section 1: Decisions

How to Leverage Audience Data for Smarter Engagement Decisions

Understanding your audience is paramount for making strategic engagement decisions. To effectively collect, analyze, and interpret audience data, consider the following steps:

1. Identify Key Metrics: Focus on metrics that truly matter for your engagement goals. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as session duration, bounce rate, and conversion rate provide insights into user behavior. For instance, a high bounce rate may indicate that your landing pages aren’t resonating with visitors.
2. Utilize Analytics Tools: Employ tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, or Mixpanel to track audience behavior. These platforms offer detailed reports on user engagement, including page views, time spent on content, and user flow, allowing you to pinpoint where improvements can be made.
3. Segment Your Audience: Segmenting your audience based on demographics, behavior, or interests enables you to tailor your content strategies. By creating targeted campaigns for different segments, you can deliver personalized experiences that resonate more deeply with specific groups.
4. Analyze Patterns: Regularly analyze the data to identify behavior patterns. For example, if you notice that users engage more with video content than written articles, it’s a clear signal to incorporate more multimedia into your strategy.
5. Make Data-Driven Decisions: Leverage insights to make informed decisions about content creation and marketing strategies. For instance, if data shows that certain topics drive higher engagement, consider developing more content around those themes.

Key Takeaway: By understanding audience behavior patterns through data, you can make informed decisions that significantly boost engagement.

Section 2: Operations

Implementing Data-Driven Tactics for Audience Retention

Once you’ve made data-informed decisions, it’s crucial to implement tactical measures for audience retention. Here are some practical strategies:

1. A/B Testing Content Formats: Conduct A/B testing to identify which content formats resonate best with your audience. For example, test different headlines, images, or layouts to see which version leads to higher click-through rates and engagement. Tools like Optimizely or Google Optimize can facilitate this process.
2. Optimize for SEO: Ensuring your content is easily discoverable through search engines is essential for audience retention. Utilize keyword research tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to identify high-traffic keywords relevant to your audience. Implementing SEO best practices can enhance your visibility and drive organic traffic.
3. Use Segmentation for Personalization: Leverage audience segmentation to offer personalized experiences. For instance, if you identify a segment interested in technology, create a dedicated newsletter that delivers tech-related content directly to that audience. This level of personalization fosters loyalty and keeps your audience engaged.
4. Utilize Behavioral Triggers: Implement behavioral triggers to re-engage users who may have drifted away. For example, send personalized emails to users who have not visited your site in a while, offering content tailored to their previous interests. Tools like Mailchimp or HubSpot can help automate this process.
5. Regularly Review and Adapt: Continuously monitor the effectiveness of your retention strategies. Use analytics to track engagement metrics and adapt your approach based on what’s working. This iterative process ensures you’re always meeting your audience’s needs.

Key Takeaway: Implementing data-driven retention strategies, such as A/B testing and audience segmentation, can enhance user experience and foster loyalty.

Section 3: Inspirations

Success Stories: Data-Driven Audience Engagement in Action

To illustrate the power of data-driven decision-making in audience engagement, let’s explore a few case studies of successful digital publishers:

1. The New York Times: The New York Times uses sophisticated data analytics to drive subscription growth. By analyzing reader behavior and preferences, they identified that personalized email newsletters significantly increased engagement. They now offer tailored content suggestions, resulting in a notable boost in subscriptions and reader retention.
2. BuzzFeed: BuzzFeed leverages audience data to guide content creation. By tracking which articles and formats perform best, they continually adapt their editorial strategy. For instance, they noticed a surge in engagement with listicles and quizzes, prompting them to produce more content in these formats, resulting in increased social media shares and website traffic.
3. Spotify: Spotify employs advanced algorithms to analyze listening habits and recommend personalized playlists. This data-driven approach not only enhances user experience but also keeps users coming back. The success of Spotify’s personalized playlists demonstrates the power of leveraging data to maintain audience engagement.

4. Netflix: Netflix uses viewing data to inform its content strategy. By analyzing viewer preferences and behaviors, they successfully predict which genres and types of shows will resonate with their audience. This data-driven approach has led to the production of successful original content, significantly boosting subscriber retention.

Key Takeaway: Real-world examples highlight the effectiveness of data-driven strategies in enhancing audience engagement, providing insights that readers can adapt to their organizations.

Conclusion: Why This Topic Matters

As digital audiences become increasingly fragmented, professionals in the publishing industry must rely on precise, data-backed strategies to engage, convert, and retain users. By integrating data-driven decision-making into everyday operations, digital publishers can ensure their strategies are not only creative but also effective.

In a rapidly changing landscape, embracing audience data enables professionals to make smarter engagement decisions, implement retention tactics, and draw inspiration from successful case studies. This approach ultimately enhances audience engagement, ensuring that digital publishers remain competitive and relevant in a crowded market.

Follow Oleksandr’s work on LinkedIn.

The post Enhancing audience engagement with data-driven decision-making: a practical guide appeared first on Audiencers.

The Audience Research Methods Resource Pack was developed by Dr John Mills, the founder and director of Archen Innovate, a consultancy specializing in user-centred innovation, audience research, and developing emerging technologies, and commissioned by International Media Support.

This document is designed to be a short guide to a selection of audience research methods outlined and explored in our Local Media for Democracy workshops. These sessions were designed to be a broad introduction to approaches that publishers can undertake and integrate into their day-to-day activities. This collection should be seen as starting point. One that can be built and developed as Local Media for Democracy moves forward.

Before diving in to the research methods, some key points to mention…

What is your audience research question?

Before engaging with any audience research method, understanding what you need to know and why is critical. Each method has distinct strengths, but also weaknesses. By defining a research question, you can then identify which method and methods are best suited to answer it.

Methods offer different outputs and limitations

Each methodological approach offers specific advantages and insights, but also limitations. When publishers are considering their audience research work, understanding which individual or combination of approaches can meet your needs is an important consideration. A reference table, produced by Reforge, can be found at the end of this document to assist in identifying a useful method for your own needs.

How does it connect with editorial and/or revenue generation strategies?

Actionable research findings are essential in realizing strategic aims. Research in isolation may be interesting, but audience research that is aligned with organizational aims has utility and the potential for real-world impact.

Things change

As some of the examples included in this document show, things change. Markets, audience preferences, needs and opinions, operating conditions, demographics as well as organizational capacity and strategies shift and evolve over time. This means that audience research can sometimes have a shelf-life or may become less relevant. As such, a core recommendation is to work towards making audience research into a standard and normal part of a publisher’s operations. This pack details essential components of eight audience research methods:

• Online surveys
• A/b testing
• 1-2-1 interviews
• Focus groups
• Personas
• Observations
• Design sprints
• Co-creation and participatory design

Online surveys

Online surveys can be used in a range of different ways and for different purposes. Expansive reader surveys can collect data on broad content preferences, audience demographic data, create insights into new product development and better understand what value existing users take from an editorial product.

Comprehensive reader surveys: Spanning qualitative and quantitative feedback, a comprehensive reader survey allows publishers to collect deep information relating to their audience and preferences. Each year, The Conversation Australia runs a broad exercise to deep dive into their readers’ perceptions. Misha Ketchell, editor at The Conversation, explains that the core purpose for this approach is underpinned by their need to deliver a product that is relevant and useful to their readers.

The post The ultimate guide to audience research methods for digital publishers appeared first on Audiencers.

This article is from Tom Burrell’s, Retention Blueprint Newsletter. Transform your retention impact in just five minutes per week. Written specifically for Subscription businesses, 'The Retention Blueprint' is a free, retention-focused digest delivered straight to your inbox every Friday, providing you with the insights you need to drive retention-led growth.

Incremental retention is the realization of value in customer data

Customer data enables us to: 

The post How to leverage customer data to identify & act on drivers of churn appeared first on Audiencers.

This article was co-authored by Alexander Held,  Senior Data Scientist, and Angelika Zajac, qualitative researcher in the audience research department, at DER SPIEGEL. 

In the subscription industry, keeping customers engaged is key to success. Earlier research indicates that engaged readers are more likely to subscribe and less likely to cancel their existing subscriptions. So how do we manage to increase the frequency and intensity of our users in a provable and sustainable way? 

Besides our efforts to improve our product and business through continuous A/B testing, we are committed to gaining a comprehensive understanding of what drives engagement. Therefore, in a recent audience research initiative at DER SPIEGEL, our objective was to identify key engagement drivers. We aim to understand which editorial and product features lead to regular and deep usage, so that we can promote and explain them during onboarding and/or incorporate them into our product design considerations.

To obtain answers to these questions and identify key engagement drivers, it is important to understand the factors that influence a sporadic user’s transition to an engaged reader, including what product knowledge engaged users have and which components they have habitualized in their regular use. We do this by analyzing which features our most engaged readers use and value. 

This text outlines the methodological approach we used to answer this question.

> Also by the DER SPIEGEL team: How we measure audience engagement at DER SPIEGEL

Creating a laboratory 

To identify key engagement drivers, we established a laboratory-like environment through three conditions described below: 

Condition 1: We start by identifying all features available to our users. “Features” can be understood as functional containers, aimed at enhancing user experience and interaction with our platform, giving users a clear and structured way to consume our content. As news constantly changes, editorial topics are explicitly not covered by these features.

Condition 2: We establish a laboratory-like setting by focusing on features that are consistently accessible on our site. Additionally, we concentrate on our most engaged users, identified through a segment based on our engagement score. This way, we create a laboratory environment characterized by the continuous presence of features and active user participation. 

Condition 3: We set a threshold: A feature is considered “regularly used” if it is used by a user at least once a week (over the course of four weeks). 

How do we define audience engagement? 

We use an engagement score as our central metric for audience engagement. Every user (with/without subscription) who has been on spiegel.de in the last 30 days gets an engagement score attached to their user profile. The score is between 0 and 100, the higher the score, the higher the engagement on spiegel.de. The score uses various key figures (e.g. frequency of visits & reading time over the last 30 days) and merges these into an overarching metric. The engagement score can be used to divide readers into segments according to their level of engagement:
- Occasional: 0-25
- Regular: 25-50
- Active: 50-75
- Fans: 75-100

Methodology

Based on the laboratory conditions described above, we have chosen a mixed methods approach which enables us to gain a comprehensive understanding of our user base, their behavior, and their needs. 

Hypotheses generated from guided in-depth interviews are incorporated into a subsequent survey to gain insights into which features our users are aware of, which they use and how they rate them. Looking at the behavioral data not only provides us with information about which features are used regularly and most frequently, but also tells us whether the behavior of the survey participants matches the information in the survey or whether it deviates from it. The findings from the interviews might offer explanations for these deviations. 

Results 

A usage-preference matrix forms the central presentation of results for this audience research project. All features are mapped in space using two axes and can therefore be compared with each other by their positioning. The Y-axis shows the observed usage values from our website tracking tool, while the X-axis shows the preferences that fans indicated in the survey.

From the ratio of behavioral and survey data eight feature groups or individual features can be identified that boost user engagement. The following interpretation is supported by a) findings from the in-depth interviews, b) by analyzing specific sub-segments, like young readers, subscribers or low engaged readers and c) by several findings from previous research: 

App & Push 

• Around 75% of fans use the app, making it a significant driver of engagement. It also serves as an engagement booster across different age groups. 
• Push notifications are regularly used, particularly among fans under 40. Interviews showed room for product optimization, as there is a desire for more customization of which push notifications users would like to receive. 

News & Update 

• News features like our headlines section or our daily morning briefing “Lage am Morgen” are highly popular among SPIEGEL fans and are frequently accessed. 
• All news formats are currently freely available and used by both users with and without a subscription or login. 
• Live blogs (not shown in matrix) are especially favored by fans under 40. 

Opinion 

• Comments and columns are highly valued and regularly read. Even though positioned less prominently, it became one of the most sought-after product features on our front page. 

Debate 

• Interaction options are highly appreciated by users as they have a clear desire to engage and know others’ opinions. Our newly created one-topic-a-day debate feature attracts younger (under 40) users compared to the older comment section centered around each article

Quiz 

• Our quiz has particularly good regular access numbers and preference ratings. It also works well for users with varying levels of engagement, including those without a login. 

Video 

• A relatively high percentage of fans regularly watch videos, although it is not deemed as important based on preference ratings. 
• Regular video consumption is higher among users under 40 and videos have one of the highest retention rates among all features. 
• We know from interviews that people particularly enjoy watching videos if they offer clear added value to what they have already read. A broken dam or the facial expressions and gestures in a political discussion can be conveyed more impressively via the medium of video.

Thematic Entry 

• Thematically focused pages have high access rates among fans. Usage patterns suggest they are used when readers have ample time, possibly without paying active attention. 

Recommendation Boxes 

• Certain recommendation boxes, like “The Best of SPIEGEL+” and “More on This Topic,” are highly utilized, especially among subscribers.

What’s next? 

Through behavioral analysis and audience research, we have shown editorial and product features that have a proven positive impact on engagement. We now aim to increase interaction rates with these key engagement drivers. First, we plan to increase the number of engaged readers by strategically nudging those with lower usage towards key engagement drivers and support the adaptation of ritualized interactions with these features. We do this by highlighting them in our mailing and onsite onboarding. Secondly, our objective is to enhance the visibility and ease of access to these engagement drivers on our front page. 

Research Process and Learnings 

This project provided significant insights and learning opportunities. For the first time, we documented all features on spiegel.de. This comprehensive inventory helped us understand our product offerings and identify areas for enhancement. 

Combining different research methods proved highly effective. Our mixed approach gave us nuanced qualitative insights and robust quantitative data, offering a well-rounded view of user behavior and preferences. By correlating interview findings with survey results and behavioral data, we validated our hypotheses and uncovered more in-depth insights into user engagement drivers. Discussions between researchers of each method were particularly fruitful. 

The project generated interest across various departments at DER SPIEGEL. Its broad scope, touching on editorial, product development, marketing, and user experience, provided a holistic view of engagement across the organization.

Thanks to Jakob Halm, Sophia Egbert, Henning Bumann and Simon Schwandner for editing and proofreading. Special thanks to Oliver Scholz for his major contribution to the quantitative work in this study.

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