At the Audiencers’ Festival in London, Shirin Shity, Senior Marketing Manager at Project Syndicate, shared how transitioning from an aggressive friction model to an open, communication-first strategy revitalised user engagement and subscription conversion. 

> Project Syndicate passed 200,000 registered accounts while engagement stayed flat because the wall fired straight after a reader's first article. People arriving from LinkedIn or social left before discovering what the site was for

> The second leak was their most engaged readers. Newsletter subscribers kept hitting unpredictable hard walls with no indication of how many free articles remained or when the allowance reset, which broke exactly the habit the team was trying to build

> Working with FT Strategies & Poool, they concluded more friction wasn't the answer and loosened the wall instead. Readers now get three free reads every 30 days, up from two, with the terms stated openly across multiple touchpoints rather than discovered by hitting a wall

> The mechanism is the interesting part: on the second and third article, readers have to click "Continue Reading" to spend a credit. Making the allowance something you actively spend, rather than something silently consumed, turns it into something worth having

> Over a four-week trial, registered users converting to paid rose 52%, click-through across registration and paywalls went from 7% to 9%, subscription prompt success from 11% to 14%, and RFV scores lifted 22%. Monthly sessions for logged-in accounts climbed from 1.9 to 2.5

By treating the registration layer as a value journey rather than a restrictive barrier, the publication grew their logged user base, increased the number of registered users converting into paid subscribers by 52% and saw a 22% uplift in overall RFV (Recency, Frequency, Volume) scores. 

Context: balancing global reach with direct subscriptions

For over 30 years, Project Syndicate has operated as a syndication network, distributing high-level commentary from leading global thinkers as widely as possible. Its primary business model involves charging media outlets in developed countries to subsidize the dissemination of op-eds to more than 520 outlets across 158 countries.

Direct consumer digital subscriptions represent a newer engine of growth. However, traditional subscription paywalls naturally pull against their historic key metric, reach. This tension is where registration sits perfectly: it acts as a bridge, allowing for intentional content sampling while pulling anonymous readers into a known ecosystem.

The evolution of the reg wall

Project Syndicate launched its initial website in 2012 as a fully open platform. The site has since evolved through several operational iterations:

• 2017: Introduced the first native paywall with a single subscription offer.
• 2020–2022: Moved to a dynamic paywall approach and introduced multi-tiered subscription packages.
• 2023: Conducted A/B testing comparing a 1-read vs. 2-read allowance. This led to a standard model where readers received 1 free article, then had to register to receive 1 additional free article every 30 days.
• 2025–2026: Migrated to a new, flexible paywall architecture (powered by Poool) to run rapid onsite user experiments. Prior to this upgrade, backend limitations meant simple copy or design changes took weeks or months to implement through remote developers.

The metrics that made the case for a change

Data collected in early 2025 revealed a structural mismatch between user acquisition and long-term retention. While Project Syndicate excelled at building an initial database of registered users, surpassing 200,000 total accounts, active engagement post-registration was remarkably low.

An audit of user segments highlighted two main leakage points:

1. The fly-by loop

Because the old registration wall appeared immediately after a visitor’s first article, light readers coming from external platforms (such as LinkedIn or social media) simply left. The wall blocked them before they could discover the site’s wider value, resulting in zero captured emails and an average of just 0.8 article page views per user.

2. The newsletter wall

Even highly engaged newsletter subscribers regularly hit unpredictable hard walls without any indication of how many free articles they had remaining or when their monthly allowance would reset. This arbitrary friction disrupted habit formation and caused valuable readers to abandon the platform entirely.

The experiment: communication over friction

Collaborating with FT Strategies, the marketing team realised that increasing wall friction was not the answer. Instead, expanding content sampling while providing transparent progress indicators would give readers a clearer path to building a subscription habit.

The team launched a soft-to-hard paywall journey based on three pillars:

1. Transparent onboarding: The site clearly states the exact terms of the offer up front across multiple touchpoints: three free reads every 30 days.
2. Explicit personalisation benefits: The registration wall highlights functional perks, showing readers they can follow specific topics, track favorite authors, and save pieces to a personalised reading list.

3. An active unlock mechanism: Instead of immediately showing a full article, the platform introduces a stepped widget on the second and third pieces. Readers must intentionally click a “Continue Reading” button to spend one of their available credits, encouraging them to treat their monthly allowance as something of value. Once the third credit is spent, a hard paywall prompts a direct subscription offer.

Strategic impact and performance signals

The soft-to-hard communication strategy yielded immediate results over a four-week trial period, proving that looser constraints could drive higher economic value:

• Higher direct subscriptions: The business saw a 52% increase in registered users converting into paid subscribers compared to the previous model.
• Stronger onsite conversion rates: The combined click-through rate across both registration and paywalls jumped from 7% to 9%, while subscription prompt success rates rose from 11% to 14%.
• Deeper reader habits: Registered users saw a 22% uplift in overall RFV (Recency, Frequency, Volume) scores. Average monthly sessions for authenticated accounts climbed from 1.9 to 2.5, demonstrating steady habit formation.

Core takeaways

Shirin summarised the lessons from Project Syndicate’s migration into three operating principles for digital publishers:

• Registration volume is a vanity metric without engagement: Amassing hundreds of thousands of registered emails is meaningless unless you build an active onboarding experience that keeps readers engaged during the critical first 30 to 90 days
• Understand your audience: Publishers must build flexible data infrastructures to track how their unique audience sample content, how often they return, and what roadblocks cause them to churn
• Fail fast: Cultivating an internal environment where teams feel safe running iterative product experiments, and knowing when to sunset unsuccessful tests, is essential to keeping pace with fast-changing user behaviour

The post Project Syndicate’s registration strategy: refreshing the value proposition to engage and convert appeared first on Audiencers.

At the Audiencers’ Festival in London, Ross Wilmot, Director of Reader Revenue at Broadsheet, shared how implementing a registration wall served as the cornerstone for a highly resilient digital subscription model. By transforming anonymous audiences into known, authenticated users, Broadsheet unlocked a powerful engagement framework that directly accelerated conversion rates.

After months of testing, Broadsheet found registration works best as a step before the paywall, building a direct relationship while readers are still deciding

> Registration selects for quality: Superfans register at 127 times the rate of casual Fly-bys, with 38% willingly authenticating

> Newsletters are the conversion engine: registered, newsletter-engaged readers hit the paywall 3.5 times per visitor against 0.1 for anonymous ones, a 35x difference

> The compounding effect: that cohort is 0.7% of the audience but drives 43% of all digital subscription conversions, an over-index of 61x. Direct offer emails to readers already warmed by daily editorial account for a further 18%

The strategy behind registration

To pave the way for their subscription model, Broadsheet deployed a registration wall in December 2025, strategically positioning it as an essential precursor to the full paywall, which followed on 21 April 2026, both built and launched using Poool. This sequential approach was designed to achieve several key outcomes:

• Accelerating conversion: By unlocking specific engagement features, the team could efficiently increase user exposure frequency to the upcoming paywall.
• Unlocking direct channels: Secure marketing permissions during the registration process to establish direct lines of communication, which heavily influences ultimate conversion.
• Setting the tone: Introducing a clear value exchange on the site, conditioning readers to understand that completing an action is required to access premium content, ensuring a smoother transition to a paid model.
• Boosting confidence: Confirming the audience’s willingness to complete an action built immense internal confidence within the company regarding the viability of the model.
• Guiding product strategy: Capturing known user identities allowed Broadsheet to develop personalised services tailored to specific reader needs.

Five key findings from Broadsheet’s registration data

Despite being in the early stages of the paywall rollout, Broadsheet data has already yielded critical insights regarding user behavior and the reader revenue funnel.

1. Registration captures high-quality readers

Broadsheet segments its audience into four distinct engagement cohorts based on monthly session frequency: 

• Fly-bys (1 session)
• Regular Readers (2–4 sessions)
• Engaged Regulars (5–9 sessions)
• Superfans (10+ sessions)

The data reveals that registration penetration rises sharply alongside engagement. Specifically, Superfans exhibit a registration rate 127 times higher than casual Fly-bys, with 38% of them willingly authenticating. This confirms that a registration wall successfully establishes a direct relationship with the most loyal segments of the audience, those with the highest propensity to buy a subscription in the future.

2. Newsletters initiate the conversion journey

Authentication acts as the primary gateway to newsletter adoption, which serves as a massive catalyst for paywall hits.

While registered users who actively engage with newsletters account for less than 1% of the total audience, they drive a staggering 7% of all paywall exposures. This means that this specific segment over-indexes for paywall hits by an impressive 10x, successfully drawing high-intent readers straight back into premium, monetisable touchpoints.

3. The newsletter is the core conversion engine

The daily newsletter serves as a continuous, automated nudge that repeatedly invites authenticated users back to the site, where they naturally encounter paywalled boundaries.

Registered users who are signed up for newsletters hit the paywall an average of 3.5 times per unique visitor, representing a 35x higher exposure rate compared to the average anonymous reader, who sits at a mere 0.1 exposures.

4. The compounding effect drives the majority of subscriptions

When high-intent audiences are paired with a high frequency of paywall exposures, the compounding effect generates the vast majority of subscriber growth.

The numbers paint a clear picture: the cohort of registered, newsletter-engaged users, which accounts for a tiny 0.7% fraction of the total audience, drives a disproportionate 43% of all digital subscription conversions. This equates to an extraordinary over-indexing factor of 61x. Registration hooks the high-intent reader, and the newsletter sequentially delivers the repeat paywall exposure required to close the sale.

5. Registration unlocks direct offer emails

The marketing permissions captured during the initial registration step open up a highly profitable parallel conversion path: direct offer emails.

By targeting prospects who are already kept warm by daily editorial newsletters, these high-impact, immediate sales emails successfully account for 18% of all subscription conversions.

The registration flywheel

The compounding dynamics of Broadsheet’s strategy form a self-sustaining lifecycle designed to maximise reader value:

1. Register: Capture invisible, anonymous readers via the registration wall to unlock the newsletter engine.
2. Engage: Deploy targeted newsletters to consistently return these authenticated readers back to paywalled content.
3. Expose: Systematically increase the frequency of paywall exposures over time.
4. Convert: Activate premium digital subscriptions through a combination of repeated paywall prompts and direct offer emails.

Next steps for Broadsheet

To refine the registration flywheel and further optimize conversion rates, Broadsheet is focusing on five core strategic enhancements:

• Refining analytics tracking: Adjusting internal analytics tracking frameworks to compile a completely transparent picture of user engagement metrics both immediately before and after registration
• Revamping user onboarding: Overhauling the initial post-registration onboarding flow to actively encourage the early adoption of editorial newsletters across the new database
• Introducing dynamic onsite experiences: Moving away from a static, one-size-fits-all approach to deliver tailored onsite journeys based on an individual’s specific engagement cohort
• Segmenting email campaigns: Categorising and filtering direct offer email campaigns to match the specific engagement levels of different user cohorts
• Continuous A/B testing: Initiating rigorous A/B testing variations directly on the registration wall interface to continuously optimize structural conversion efficiency

The post Broadsheet’s path from reader to subscriber: The registration flywheel in action appeared first on Audiencers.

Broadsheet, Australia’s leading cultural publisher, is embarking on a bold new chapter. Founded 16 years ago, the brand has become synonymous with the best in food, drink, fashion, and design across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. Now, they’re taking their successful model to London whilst also moving towards a reader revenue strategy.

We sat down with Nick Shelton, Founder & Publisher of Broadsheet, and Ross Wilmot, Director of Reader Revenue, to discuss their international expansion strategy and the development of a subscription revenue stream, layered on top of their advertising model.

> Broadsheet Media treats advertising and subscription as complementary rather than competing, with engagement as the thread running through both

> Readers said they'd pay for quality content, but only bundled with things they couldn't get elsewhere: exhibition tickets, free coffee, and tools to curate their own Broadsheet experience

> Subscription isn't marketing's project. Broadsheet already ran 'Squads' against 90-day, one-year and three-year goals, so they formed a new audience monetization squad spanning editorial, product, data and CRM

> They launched registration ahead of the paywall, which built internal confidence before the subscription launch as much as it built the audience data

A consistent lens for diverse markets

For Broadsheet, the move from Australia to London is built on a repeatable editorial framework. Nick Shelton describes Broadsheet’s core product not as a list of recommendations, but as a specific lens that can be applied to any global city.

“The way we think about Broadsheet editorially is that it’s a framework,” Nick explains. “What you see through that lens differs depending on the city, but the values of the lens itself – quality, celebration, and curation – remain constant.”

Rather than relying on local intuition alone, Broadsheet uses this framework to solve a universal problem for urban audiences: the paradox of choice. By applying the same rigorous standards in London that they do across Australia, they maintain brand integrity while respecting local nuances. This city-agnostic strategy allows the brand to:

• Curate rather than catalog: Instead of exhaustive listings, they use a highly curated approach where they “don’t write about things we don’t like.”
• Prioritize the premium enthusiast: By maintaining high editorial standards, they attract a specific high-value audience cohort regardless of geography.
• Operationalize local reporting: By treating London as just another “market” within a proven system, they can scale quickly without reinventing their brand identity.

“We learned this lesson in Australia long ago,” Nick notes. “Sydney and Melbourne are fundamentally different markets with different behaviors. Going into London wasn’t about having expectations of what the city would look like; it was about reporting on it through that consistent, high-definition lens.”

Engagement: the common thread between ads and subscriptions

One of the biggest challenges in the publishing industry today is the perceived conflict between advertising and subscription revenue. Broadsheet, however, sees these models as complementary, with engagement being the common thread. 

“We’re not a traffic-based model, we don’t sell programmatic advertising. It’s not about more people equals more money; it’s about the depth of engagement. And we’ve long had the muscle and mindset in the business of engagement. The better engaged the audience, the better we do as a business, something that applies across both advertising and subscription revenue goals.” 

In short: by focusing on engagement, everybody wins. 

Ross, Director of Reader Revenue at Broadsheet, who recently joined Broadsheet after working at a legacy media publication, explained that by moving even a small subset of their flyby audience into a medium-engaged cohort, they see an exponential increase in page views, the currency of traditional commercial models. This approach is useful for showing teams the clear benefit of engagement to the advertising side of the business while simultaneously building a base for subscriptions.

Whilst they measure a collection of engagement metrics, focused very much on quality over scale, frequency is their most important, north star metric. 

The five pillars of a successful subscription strategy

Broadsheet’s transition to reader revenue is built on five key pillars, as outlined by Ross:

• An audience-centric approach: A laser focus on the most engaged readers, understanding their motivations, pain points, and what adds value to their lives.
• Compelling value proposition: Ensuring the subscription product addresses the needs of engaged readers. Initial research at Broadsheet showed that their readers would be prepared to pay for high-quality content, but that it needed to be combined with unique experiences like exhibition tickets, and perks like free coffee as well as tools to help them curate their Broadsheet experience.
• Cross-departmental alliance: Moving beyond a traditional marketing-led view of subscriptions to ensure buy-in across the entire business, from editorial to product, data, and CRM. At Broadsheet, they already had established ‘Squads’ associated to 90-day, one-year and three-year goals, so when moving to subscription, a new audience monetization squad was formed.
• Culture of test and learn: Continuous experimentation with subscriber journeys, funnels, pricing, and offers to drive sustainable growth.
• End-to-end lifecycle marketing: Delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time, supported by a robust data infrastructure and access to the right platforms.

“There are of course many other aspects to consider, but in my opinion, these 5 are the ones that move the dial the furthest”

Building a value exchange through registration

A crucial component of Broadsheet’s reader revenue model is the registration wall. Launched in Australia in December 2025, a few months before their subscription model, the registration wall has already outperformed industry benchmarks: 

Specifically, a conversion rate (% of unique visitors who encountered the reg wall and converted) of 5.5% on the registration wall, compared to the industry benchmark of 3-5%.

“Registration serves us on several different levels,” Ross says. “It gives us the ability to communicate more directly with our most engaged audience, gather insights into their needs, and personalize their experience. And of course, it helps us reduce the reliance on third party platforms for our audience, which is going to be more and more crucial.”

Crucially, the registration wall introduces a clear value exchange on the site. “Previously, people were completely free to browse the site as they wished,” Ross explains. “The registration wall helps set the tone for the eventual introduction of a paywall, ensuring it’s not a shock when certain content becomes paid.”

Registration has also built confidence internally ahead of their paywall launch

“The insights from our research proved that there was definitely an appetite to pay as long as it’s the right proposition and that a subscription adds significant value to an individual’s life. And that’s where we’ve been focused on these three aspects of the subscription proposition, the content being the inspiration, the experiential side of things, and the utility aspects as well, pulling all those different ingredients together.”

Nick added that, ultimately, the team believed in the strength of their brand. 

“We’ve been running this for 16 years. We know we have a strong brand. We know we create a product worth paying for. So let’s do it. Having a reg wall in place was valuable for validating our assumptions on conversion rates through the steps in the funnel. We exceeded every single one of those assumptions. Of course, more people provide data for registration than handing over a credit card, but we consistently exceeded benchmarks since the launch, so we didn’t feel we needed to wait around for subscription. We just had to go for it, with confidence.”

London: building a cultural footprint, Australia: Broadsheet digital subscription

Currently, Broadsheet’s London operation is focused on audience acquisition and brand awareness. Before switching on monetization features, they are busy establishing themselves as the ultimate London city guide.

While London is about growth, Australia is the testing ground for the brand’s most ambitious move yet: Broadsheet digital subscription. Launched just days ago (April 2026), this membership program represents the official transition from a free-to-read model to a premium value exchange.

Ross highlights that early data from Australia has been “very strong,” already exceeding industry benchmarks for conversion. The model isn’t just about a hard paywall but rather an integrated experience:

• Exclusive experiences: Members get early access to ‘Readers’ Preview’ dinners at the city’s hottest new restaurants
• Perks and rewards: The program includes ‘The Vault’ (high-value giveaways) and daily rewards like free coffee or discounts at local partners
• Journalism access: Unlimited access to Broadsheet’s trusted journalism for A$1/week

The current content access model is a static meter, where audiences have access to a set number of articles per month before being asked to register and then subscribe, but the goal is to move towards a dynamic model adapted to a reader’s level of engagement via Poool.

What’s next?

Of course, the launch is just the beginning! Ross shared that the team is already focusing on:

• Identifying optimisation opportunities that exist within their key conversion journeys and subscription checkout funnel
• Leveraging those insights to inform a cross-departmental working group focused on CRO, building a roadmap of experimentation and executing
• Introducing new forums to share actionable insights with editorial: what content is driving conversion (last click and participation) and engagement to inform content and commissioning strategy; identifying opportunities to potentially convert a higher proportion of readers below the superfan engagement cohort 
• Building CRM muscle through talent acquisition and data engineering: unlocking capabilities within their Customer Engagement Platform (Braze) and Customer Orchestration Platform (Poool) to become more personalised and dynamic across owned channels 
• Building further value into the subscription proposition through product development of utility tools

The post From Melbourne to London: how Broadsheet is scaling culture and reader revenue appeared first on Audiencers.

Max Moné is co-founder and CEO at Poool, the dynamic journey builder to boost subscription conversion, engagement, and loyalty.

This is the fifth in a 6-part series where I share what I learned from studying 100 subscription business models across 15+ industries. 
> Episode one: 100 subscription business, 15 industries, 1 moodboard
> Episode two: What’s free, what’s paid, and why it’s really an engagement trade-offf
> Episode three: Why the best subscription businesses don’t try to sell on day 1
> Episode four: The subscription pricing page we've all built at least once

The cycle doesn’t stop when someone becomes a subscriber

In episode 1, we introduced the idea that the best subscription businesses don’t follow a linear journey (attract → convert → retain) but an infinite cycle of micro-conversions, where each step has one goal and unlocks the next. In episodes 3 and 4, we looked at what happens before the first paid conversion: how these businesses use registration, onboarding, and pricing to guide the user step by step.

This episode covers what happens after someone becomes a subscriber.

And what we observed is that the journey really doesn’t change in nature once the user has paid. After someone subscribes, the next micro-conversion might be signing up for a newsletter. Then downloading the app. Then discovering podcasts or games or a specific section of the product. Then, when the subscriber is ready (and when you know enough about their usage), you can propose an upsell or bundle.

Acquiring a subscriber isn’t the end of the funnel. It’s just one more step in the infinite cycle we described in episode 1. And what most people call “retention” is really just the continuation of the same sequence of micro-conversions, except now you have data about the user and can be much smarter about what you propose next.

The problem is that most of this work needs to happen fast.

Why you have about 100 days (and probably less)

INMA data shows that a quarter of subscribers cancel in the first month, and half are gone by the fourth month. And a Nieman Lab study on The Wall Street Journal’s data showed that the probability of adopting a new habit drops dramatically after about 100 days.

Half of your new subscribers are gone within 4 months, and after about 100 days the window to build a new habit narrows significantly. If you don’t manage to execute enough micro-conversions during those first few months (newsletter signup, app download, feature discovery, habit formation), the probability of keeping that subscriber drops, regardless of how good your anti-churn campaigns are later on.

(I know this isn’t the most cheerful insight we’ve had in this series, but it’s what the data consistently shows.)

What this looks like in practice: L’Équipe after the Olympics

This is where the theory gets concrete. L’Équipe (a Poool client), speaking at The Audiencers’ Festival in 2025, shared how they built 12 post-subscription projects after the Paris 2024 Olympics, which had generated a huge spike in new subscribers, subscribers they needed to keep. I won’t go through all 12 (the full article is worth reading), but the ones that stood out to me are the following.

Their data analysis revealed something I found really striking: what a subscriber does after paying has more impact on M+1 churn than what they did before subscribing. When Fabien Mulot showed this at The Audiencers’ Festival, it was one of those moments where you think “of course, that makes total sense” and at the same time you realize that most of the industry’s energy is still focused on acquiring subscribers, not on what happens once they’ve subscribed.

Based on this insight, they focused their onboarding on one specific goal: getting new subscribers to read at least two paid articles within the first three days. Their data showed that each paid article read during those first 72 hours reduces the following month’s churn by about 5 points, so two articles in three days already makes a meaningful difference on the curve.

The onboarding sequence they built follows the same micro-conversion logic we’ve been describing throughout this series:

• first, welcome the subscriber and showcase what their subscription unlocks;
• then encourage them to personalize their experience (alerts, newsletters, favorite topics);
• then immediately serve them paid content tailored to their interests. Each step has one job.

The cumulative impact is significant.

• Simply being exposed to this onboarding journey reduces churn by 7 points at M+1.
• Completing the onboarding journey while also activating an action (turning on alerts, signing up for a newsletter) reduces churn by 20 points at M+3
• The more micro-conversions a subscriber completes in those early weeks, the less likely they are to leave.

Beyond onboarding, L’Équipe continued the logic with a newsletter strategy (a monthly preview of upcoming content, plus journalist-led newsletters across four sports verticals where subscribers can ask questions directly to editorial teams), and a new “Games” vertical to expand consumption into other formats. Each of these is another micro-conversion in the sequence, another reason for the subscriber to come back tomorrow.

El País and FT Strategies confirm the pattern at a broader scale

L’Équipe’s data is specific to sports media, but the pattern holds across other publishers.

El País shared at a 2024 INMA conference that subscribers who use editorial newsletters churn 24% less, app users churn 15% less, premium newsletter users churn 29% less, and loyalty scheme users churn 30% less. Each one of these is a micro-conversion that happened after subscribing, and each one reduces churn by 15 to 30%.

FT Strategies ran some very complementary work, analyzing the impact of each product feature on engagement vs. the percentage of subscribers who actually use it. The features with the highest impact (multimedia, interactive content, games) are also the ones that fewer than 30% of subscribers use. The gap between impact and adoption is where the biggest opportunity sits.

What happens when you get the micro-conversions right: lock-in effects

When the micro-conversion sequence works well over time, you eventually reach a point where leaving becomes genuinely hard for the subscriber. This is thanks to long-term engagement and relationship-building.

But of course, there are other strategies to keep your subscribers retained, ones that can be used in conjunction with the micro-conversions detailed above. When combined, they’re powerful for developing loyalty.

During our benchmark, we saw three main types of lock-in across the 100 businesses:

• Personalization – we talked about Spotify in episode 4, but the principle applies to any product that gets smarter with use, adapting the product to the user
• Multi-accounts – Netflix profiles, Blinkist’s partner account where you sometimes keep the service for the other person
• Bundling with external services – Canal+ with Netflix, Amazon Prime combining shopping, streaming and delivery, Walmart+ bundling grocery delivery with Paramount+

(You can read more about lock-in effects here)

Funnily enough, each of these is really the result of many successful micro-conversions accumulated over months and years. The lock-in is earned, not imposed.

Anti-churn: necessary, but it’s the safety net

And then there’s anti-churn, which is what happens when the micro-conversion sequence hasn’t worked well enough and the subscriber is about to leave.

L’Équipe has been methodical about this too. Their cancellation form (which handles two-thirds of all unsubscriptions) was redesigned through A/B tests: they added an intermediate screen summarizing the benefits the subscriber would lose (+2% retention), and tested personalizing the message with the subscriber’s first name and a specific discount percentage (+1.2 points on conversion). Small changes, but measurable impact at scale (source).

Unidad Editorial took a different approach by building a churn propensity model that predicts which subscribers are about to cancel, triggering personalized actions before they reach the cancellation page. Result: a 25% reduction in churn in three months.

These are well-executed tactics. But in the broader picture, they’re the safety net.

The real strategy is everything that happens before the subscriber even thinks about leaving: the onboarding, the feature discovery, the newsletter signup, the app download, the habit formation. All of those micro-conversions that, together, make the product too valuable to walk away from.

What you can take away from this (and test tomorrow)

Map the post-subscription micro-conversions you want your subscribers to make. Newsletter signup, app download, podcast discovery, games, alerts configuration, etc. based on their value. Then ask yourself: do you have a sequence designed for this, or are you hoping it happens on its own?

Focus on the first 3 days and the first 30 days. L’Équipe’s data shows that each paid article read in the first 72 hours reduces the following month’s churn by 5 points, and a completed onboarding with an action reduces churn by 20 points at M+3.

Check the gap between feature impact and feature adoption. FT Strategies’ framework is a useful lens: if your most impactful features are also the least used, that’s your biggest opportunity. And El País data shows that each additional touchpoint is worth 15 to 30% less churn.

Treat anti-churn as a safety net, not as a strategy. If the majority of your effort goes into save campaigns for subscribers who are already about to leave, you’re fighting the battle at the wrong end of the timeline.

And if all of this sounds like a lot to orchestrate (because it is): that’s exactly the kind of problem we’re solving with Poool and Darwin CX. From onboarding sequences to engagement actions to anti-churn triggers, across web, app, and print. Orchestrating micro-conversions at every step of the subscriber journey is what we do. If that resonates, or if you’re currently looking at your subscription platform options, let’s talk.

Next week, episode 6, the last one: toilet paper, Japanese snack boxes, razor blades, wine, and genealogy. The most surprising subscription models we came across, and what they confirmed about engagement (because at this point in the series, I think you already know what the answer is going to be).

The post The first 100 days: why most of what we call retention is really just micro-conversions (again): episode 5 appeared first on Audiencers.

In this guide, we share the various ways that publishers can segment their audience to develop a dynamic paywall model, with examples for each type of segmentation: 
> By content type: free vs premium, user needs, date of publication...
> By user profile: level of engagement, user status, location...
> By acquisition channel: Google, social media, newsletters...

Some quick definitions: 
> Audience segmentation: grouping users based on their profile or context, i.e. data that could impact their behaviour, inform us on what could convince them to subscribe or make them more or less likely to convert in that moment
> Dynamic paywall: a paywall that adapts for different audience segments. This could be in terms of the paywall design, messaging or even the journey itself (e.g. seeing a paywall or not). Note that "dynamic" doesn't necessarily equate to AI-driven. It's often rule based - i.e. a user reading a "politics" article sees a different paywall to a user reading a "sports" article.

There are 3 main buckets of audience segmentation with the goal of increasing conversion rates:

• By content type
• By user profile
• By acquisition channel

In each of these cases, the form of segmentation dictates who sees or experiences what. For instance, if we segment based on location, someone in Germany might see and experience something different than someone in the UK.

What can change based on the segment, in terms of the conversion strategy?

• The fact that the article is blocked or not
• The conversion journey (e.g. how many articles for free before the paywall, the use of a registration wall)
• The wording on the paywall
• The design (colours, image, etc.)
• The pricing and subscription offers pushed

Let’s dive into these 3 buckets of segments, with examples for each:

1. Segmenting by content type

For many publishers, this is the simplest starting point. It allows for extensive testing to discover what content converts best without risking overall traffic. It also helps to put editorial teams in control (to an extent) as the paywall strategy is based around their work instead of a user’s profile. This can be valuable when first launching a dynamic paywall to get buy-in from these teams.

This form of segmentation can take various forms:

• Content divided into free (often general news or commodity pieces) and premium (generally longer-form, investigative articles which can’t be found elsewhere)
• Format-based: e.g. articles vs games vs videos
• Topic- or tag-based: sports, politics, news, lifestyle
• User needs based: update me, give me a perspective, etc.
• Date of publication: e.g. articles published more than 30 days ago

Free vs premium

Organising content based on its value:

• Free content: keep open to maximize reach (often focused on ad revenue)
• Premium content: close to convert readers into subscribers

Some publishers are developing this a step further by adding 2 additional segments:

• Grey content: sometimes open, sometimes closed (based on editorial decision)
• Super Premium Content: with a hard paywall

This segmentation is often driven by two business goals: advertising and subscriptions. However, the articles used for advertising revenue (which aim to gain page views) can also serve the role of engaging audiences to move them through the funnel toward subscription.

A good place to start is a matrix analysis, placing articles in different buckets based on their “strengths”. A goal can then be established for each bucket, making the most of each article.

For instance, Mather suggests the following matrix:

• Mass appeal / top of the funnel: advertising revenue focus, so left open
• Premium content / bottom of the funnel: subscription focus, so behind a paywall
• Mission journalism: often left open
• Under-performers (that require further analysis)

A slightly more complex approach is illustrated by FT Strategies below, who established 4 categories based on topic popularity vs willingness to pay:

The post Guide: how to segment audiences for a dynamic paywall appeared first on Audiencers.

In Fall 2025, Les Coops de l’information, a collective of six Canadian media outlets (Le Soleil, Le Droit, Le Nouvelliste, Le Quotidien, La Tribune, and La Voix de l’Est) launched an innovative subscription drive named internally as the “Pay what you can project”.

Designed to coincide with the 2025 Municipal Elections, the campaign aimed to lower the barrier to local news while reinforcing the value of independent, cooperative journalism.

Results were beyond their expectations:

• 4.2% increase in subscribers
• Despite the minimum amount being $1 per month for the first three months of subscription, the average amount paid was $3.12 per month. This increased to $3.50 after increasing the suggested price

Principal Director, Audiences and Platforms, Marc Gendron shared how this strategy boosted subscriber growth and increased ARPU for those on this offer.

> Les Coops de l'information, a cooperative of six Quebec news outlets, let readers name their own price for the first three months, timed to the 2025 municipal elections. Subscribers rose 4.2% in five weeks

> Against a $1 minimum, the average paid was $3.12 a month, and some new subscribers chose more than the regular subscription price

> The suggested figure in the price field did the work. Suggesting $5 lifted the average to $3.39 and suggesting $6 lifted it to $3.50, with more people simply taking the suggestion each time

> 84% of the new subscribers had never subscribed before, which is the number that matters most for a local publisher wondering whether it has exhausted its market

> Their own caveat is worth repeating: the resulting ARPU still came in below their fixed-price promotions and well below regular rates. Get stakeholder buy-in first, and manage expectations, including your own

“Pay what you can” strategy

The core of the initiative was a flexible pricing model for the first three months of a new user’s subscription.

“We wanted to make an audacious promotion that would be too good to ignore! It shouldn’t rely solely on a heavy discount, but also on our unique value proposition at a time when it’s more relevant than ever.

Our gamble was: we know that there will be more interest towards our local politics content during the municipal campaign, so let’s surf on that wave and make sure our new promotional subscribers get the most out of their plans, that they feel that they are getting much more than what they are paying for. Instead of opening up access to our elections coverage, or setting up a fixed promotional price, we wanted to give more power and autonomy to users by letting them choose their price.”

Key components include:

• Democratic access: The campaign was rooted in the belief that a strong democracy requires exhaustive and impartial electoral coverage.
• Price autonomy: Prospective subscribers were invited to “fix the price” for their initial three-month period.
• Transparency and trust: Using the slogan “Un média qui vous ressemble, un média qui nous rassemble” (A media that looks like you, a media that brings you together) the group highlighted its status as an employee-owned cooperative.

“Our goal was to increase the total number of subscribers, between 3.5% and 4.3% of total subs. 

We mobilized everyone we could in order to achieve these targets. The new features we needed to implement, flexible pricing mechanics, everything was put on the development roadmap early in 2025. Our collaborators from Wizeline, who take care of all our platform development projects and Arc XP integration, worked tirelessly to have every feature ready for the fall campaign.

We also got the help of Drakkar Digital (renamed deRabane since), our long-lasting marketing partner, in order to create the visuals, copy and plan the delivery of all the marketing messages.

The editorial team was mobilised too, because the success of the campaign relied heavily on their capacity to deliver unique, useful and original content during that specific period.

Finally, our small digital growth team (including the IT and customer service team) operationalized the whole process.“

Feature gating: creating a product worth paying for

Of course, a promotional project is only as good as the product you’re selling! Les Coops has worked on developing strategic “feature gating” to build a subscription worth paying for, with clear value and strategic steps through registration towards subscription: 

Interactive engagement: Features like the “Question of the Day”  required users to be connected to vote and view live, constantly updated results.

Bookmarking across devices: Registered users gained access to a bookmarking feature, allowing them to save their favorite articles across web and app platforms.

Premium audio: Audio versions of articles were restricted to “All-inclusive” and “Ultimate” subscribers, serving as an upsell for basic plan holders.

Access limitations: To maintain account integrity, the platform limited simultaneous access to four devices, automatically disconnecting the oldest session when the limit was reached.

Premium content: Chroniques (articles written by columnists) and archives (articles published more than 30 days ago) have been hard paywalled as a key part of their subscription value proposition 

Marketing across site

As with any campaign, design and messaging needs to be consistent across the website and platforms, including the paywall. 

Dedicated paywalls: Les Coops d’Information built dedicated “Pay what you can” paywalls in Poool, including a live countdown to create urgency.

Subscription landing page: To ensure continuity of messaging through the user journey, dedicated subscription landing pages were also created in Poool, highlighting the value proposition, sharing subscriber testimonials and providing reasons why users should subscribe. 

Multi-channel promotion

The campaign was supported by an intensive five-week marketing blitz:

Email campaign: 72 unique emails (12 per media outlet) were delivered, each utilizing different angles and value propositions.

Targeted ads: The group targeted known non-subscribers through Google Ads, StackAdapt, and Bing Ads

In-app and newsletters: Non-subscribers were greeted with dedicated “Pay what you can” headers in free editorial newsletters and pop-up messages upon opening the mobile app.

Results 

“The final results were pretty impressive. By the end of the five weeks of promotion, our total subscriber base had increased by 4.2%, more than our targets and very close to our most optimistic forecast.

What was the most interesting though was the fact that, despite the minimum amount requested being 1$ per month for the first three months of subscription, the average amount paid was 3.12$ per month. This average increased to 3.39$ when we suggested 5$ in the price field and to 3.50$ when suggesting 6$. Each time we changed the suggested amount, we saw an increase in the number of users choosing to go with the suggested amount.

There are even some new subscribers that paid more than the regular price of a subscription!

Another really encouraging fact: 84% of these new subscribers had never subscribed before! This is probably one of the most encouraging findings of this adventure. It means that there is still room for us to grow.”

What’s next?

“This kind of campaign is a little more complicated than one with a fixed set of promotional prices. But the results we got were pretty impressive.

The fact that the user sets the initial price does add a layer of interactivity however, and it lowers the entry bar to a level where they feel comfortable. The core of the challenge remains though: to convince newly converted subscribers that our offer is worth the regular price.”

What should another publisher make sure of before testing this same project? 

“They should immediately get the buy-in from all important stakeholders as the impact on ARPU can be unpredictable. In our case, we feel that we were quite lucky to get an average ARPU of more than 3$ despite the fact that the minimum amount required was 1$. But that is still below the average ARPU we got with fixed price promotions and way below our regular numbers. Make sure that you manage everyone’s expectations. Even your own! 

That being said, as we have been galvanized by the nomination we got for this project at the INMA Global Media Awards, we will reactivate the Pay what you can promotion for two weeks in order to see if we can get similar, or even better, results this time around.”

The post Les Coops de l’information “Pay What You Can” Campaign appeared first on Audiencers.

Spektrum der Wissenschaft, a leading German science journalism publisher, embarked on a multi-phase journey to optimize its digital subscription model, Spektrum+. Facing the challenge of engaging a broad audience with “deep, heavy, nerdy science content,” and understanding the limitations of resources, the publisher turned to a rigorous, data-driven testing strategy to build a product based on actual user behavior rather than internal assumptions (what a crazy thought, I know!).

At Audiencers’ Festival in Hamburg, Ann-Kristin Ebert, ecommerce Manager at Spektrum, shared their two phases of getting started with segmentation. 

> Spektrum der Wissenschaft, a German science publisher, tested its way into segmentation rather than assuming it. Phase one was testing everything to prove segments behave differently, phase two was testing only where it mattered

> A free trial banner moved conversions far less than a blocking wall, in every group. On the wall itself, a single offer performed worst everywhere while three offers with a highlighted "Best Offer" won

> Switching Facebook referrals from formal "Sie" to informal "Du" nearly doubled click-through. Most segments also preferred shorter copy on the offer page, except print magazine subscribers, who converted better with more detail

> The device finding mattered more than the winning variant. "Unlock article now" beat "Continue reading with Spektrum+" on desktop for both clicks and purchases, but on mobile it lifted clicks and lowered purchases

> With a small team, they work in three to four month OKR cycles and accept the limits. As ecommerce manager Ann-Kristin Ebert puts it, "we can't bake big pretzels with tiny ovens"

Phase 1: “Testing Everything” (test like Darwin was watching!)

In the initial phase, Spektrum adopted an exhaustive testing philosophy, described as “testing as if Darwin was watching”. The goal wasn’t necessarily to find a single winning variation immediately, but to build a comprehensive understanding of how different tests performed across diverse user segments.

Strategy and implementation

Spektrum focused on rapid, lightweight tests at the beginning of the purchase funnel to gain quick-win insights while minimizing cross-team dependencies. They initially targeted user groups they already knew well or could reach directly.

Key learnings from phase 1:

• Free trials: A banner promoting a free trial across all user groups had a significantly smaller impact on conversions compared to blocking walls in any usergroup. This led Spektrum to shift its focus toward testing its “hard paywall”.

• Contextual messaging (Facebook): Testing informal vs. formal language for Facebook referrals revealed that informal messaging (“Du” instead of “Sie”) nearly doubled click-through rates (CTR) for these audiences.

• Paywall design: Spektrum tested walls with one, two, and three offers across the 4 engagement groups defined in Poool’s dynamic paywall dashboard. While a single offer proved least effective across all segments, a three-offer wall with a central “Best Offer” highlight emerged as the strongest performer for the general audience.

• Text density: On the subscription offer page, most segments preferred shorter, concise text. However, a notable exception was print magazine subscribers, who converted better when presented with more detailed information.

Ann-Kristin shared that this first batch of testing proved very helpful for understanding the behavior of different segments, convincing the team that dynamicity is essential, and that they should start adapting to actual user needs, not just team assumptions.

“Evolution is a perfect way for the perfect adaptation for everyone – if you have some million years of time (spoiler: we didn’t).”

Phase 2: “Testing What Matters” (Test as if Marie Kondo could knock on your door at any time)

Recognizing that they lacked the “million years” required for total evolutionary adaptation, Spektrum moved into a more focused phase: “testing what matters”. This phase prioritized high-impact user groups rather than every possible variation for every segment.

Priority segments

Spektrum identified four key segments for prioritized testing:

• Biggest Group: currently “Volatiles” on mobile devices.
• Most Overall Conversions: currently “Volatiles” on desktop devices.
• Best Converting Group: currently newsletter subscribers.
• “Hidden Gems”: High-potential audiences, a segment that’s hard to identify. Ann-Kristin described this as like playing poker! At the moment, they think these audiences are those receiving mailings already

Device-based segmentation

A critical finding in Phase 2 was the difference in behavior between desktop and mobile users. While an “Unlock article now” prompt outperformed “Continue reading with Spektrum+” on desktop (raising both CTR and purchase rates), the same prompt on mobile increased CTR but dropped the purchase rate. It wasn’t so much the variations that were important here, but simply the proof that mobile and desktop users need to be treated differently. 

Operational framework and final lessons

To maintain this rigorous testing loop with a relatively small team, Spektrum implemented several organizational priorities:

1. Alignment through OKRs and RACI: They used three-to-four-month Objective and Key Results (OKR) cycles to define focus and RACI matrices to establish clear accountability for who is responsible, consulted, or informed for every task.
2. Data visualization: Spektrum emphasizes that seeing user segments visualized (e.g., in donut charts) makes it impossible to ignore the importance of the largest and highest-value groups.

3. Pragmatism over perfectionism: The team adopted “Zen mode,” accepting that “we can’t bake big pretzels with tiny ovens”. They focused on what could be accomplished immediately rather than future ideals.

Spektrum concludes that there is no “final version” of their product, only the next iteration, as user behavior and opportunities constantly evolve.

The post Spektrum’s evolution of audience segmentation and testing 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.

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

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

Key takeaways to copy & share Copy

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

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

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

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

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

1. Humanizing the newsroom

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

The “Authenticity Wins” email strategy: In late 2025, the team tested two types of acquisition emails. A polished, promotional version was pitted against a personal, storytelling email written by a team member. The personal version drove 3x more conversions and saw significantly higher open and click-through rates.

Visible experts: Field reporters like Francis Farrell are the “faces” of the brand, appearing in trench-side YouTube videos and personal newsletters that provide a “behind the scenes” look at reporting under fire.

2. Radical transparency and participation

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

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

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

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

3. Hyper-local geotargeting

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

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

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

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

Relationships at the heart of the business model

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

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

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

ViewDownload

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

Poool, the leading dynamic journey builder (owner of Audiencers), is proud to announce that we have signed a definitive agreement with Darwin CX to provide publishers with a unified, end-to-end subscription platform for media companies.

By combining Poool’s front-end expertise with Darwin CX’s back-end capabilities, the two together make a powerful single reader revenue platform, built specifically to help publishers manage engagement, conversion, and retention in print and digital, subscriptions and donations.

What does this mean for Audiencers and this community? 

We're accelerating our mission further than ever!
> More operational case studies, insights from industry experts and benchmarks than ever, to help you make more informed decisions
> The industry leading B2B community to connect you with fellow publishing professionals facing similar challenges as yourself
> New tools and directories to equip your teams with everything they need to succeed

End-to-end subscription management

Historically, publishers have had to manage the subscriber journey through fragmented tools. This partnership solves that challenge by merging two essential sides of the subscription lifecycle, adding a layer of insights and expertise to help media teams make informed decisions and act on them.

-> The Front-End (Poool): Targeted experience on-site and on-app, including engagement (newsletters, app downloads), conversion (dynamic paywalls, registration walls), and retention (onboarding, cancellation flows).

-> The Back-End (Darwin CX): Everything behind the scenes to manage and grow revenue, including subscription management (billing, renewals, fulfillment), authentication, a centralized user database, and advanced analytics and reporting.

-> The Expertise (Audiencers): Proven strategies, industry benchmarks and actionable data from leading publishers worldwide, powered by a community of >15,000 digital publishing professionals sharing their daily challenges and figuring out, together, how to better engage, convert and retain their audiences.

Together, this integration offers publishers a single platform to manage all direct reader revenue, whether through subscriptions, donations, print, or digital, with total control over the reader experience at every stage.

“We built Poool to give media teams full autonomy over their audience strategy. Engagement, conversion, retention, without depending on developers. Over the years, we realized the market needed more, a unified platform, from the first page view to subscriber renewal. That’s exactly what we’re building with Darwin CX. A complete platform, combined with the benchmarks and expertise from Audiencers, so that media companies are truly autonomous in piloting their subscription strategy. Media companies don’t need more tools. They need less, more autonomy and real expertise. That’s what we are offering here.” Maxime Moné, CEO, Poool 

More than just a tool

In addition to the technology, the partnership leverages Audiencers, the leading B2B media and community already gathering 15,000 media professionals, to support them in better engaging, converting and retaining their audiences. This brings an unmatched layer of value to the platform, offering industry benchmarks, directories, and best practices to go further in their reader revenue model.

“Audiencers is accelerating its mission to help media professionals thrive by bringing them together at a greater scale, sharing what actually works to reclaim audience relationships, and equipping teams with practical intelligence, benchmarks and new tools to make better decisions.“ Marion Wyss, Publisher, Audiencers

All Poool and Darwin CX clients now have an Audiencers’ subscription included in their license. If you haven’t yet activated your access, please contact your account manager for more details. If you are already an Audiencers subscriber, you will continue to enjoy full access to all content and community features as before.

What does this mean for Poool and Darwin CX clients?

For existing Poool clients, the current setup remains unchanged, but you will gain immediate access to new capabilities from Darwin CX and an expanded roadmap for future innovation.

Darwin CX clients will gain access to Poool’s suite of engagement and conversion tools, leading to stronger growth capabilities and a more unified product experience. Not to mention full access to Audiencers’ content and community.

For those evaluating new solutions, this partnership offers a single integrated platform that replaces the need for multiple disparate tools, resulting in faster deployment and better performance across the entire subscriber funnel. For more information, book a demo with our team.

About Poool

Poool is a conversion and retention platform trusted by over 250 media companies across 25+ countries, including L’Équipe, Le Parisien, Irish News, The Kyiv Independent, and Hello!/Hola.

About Darwin CX

Darwin CX is a subscription management platform for publishers, membership organizations, and media companies. Headquartered in Toronto with offices in New York, Hamburg, and Northampton, Darwin CX serves 185+ customers managing over 25 million subscribers worldwide. 

Contact information: 

-> To hear more about how you can benefit from Poool x Darwin CX’s all-in-one reader revenue platform, contact hello@poool.fr

-> If you have any questions related to Audiencers, contact team@audiencers.com 

The post Darwin CX and Poool unite to build end-to-end subscription platform for publishers appeared first on Audiencers.

This article summarizes the session given by Fabien Mulot, Marketing Director at L’Équipe, at The Audiencers’ Festival in Paris on September 16, 2025.

> After the acquisition spike from the Paris 2024 Olympics, L'Équipe built 12 retention projects around four lifecycle moments: onboarding, stimulating usage, retention and re-subscription, each with its own indicator

> The number that drove everything: every additional paid article read in the first three days cuts month-one churn by five points. Onboarding now pushes new subscribers to read two

> That onboarding loop shows what the subscription includes, prompts personalisation through alerts, newsletters and favourites, then serves paid content matched to those stated interests

> The cancellation form was rebuilt through A/B testing. Adding a summary screen and showing personalised discounts both improved retention

> An RFV engagement score adapted to L'Équipe guides every decision, with a strategic threshold of 100. Two-thirds of subscribers sit above it

How can subscribers be retained once the Olympic Games are over? For L’Équipe, the challenge is immense: transforming the momentum of a global event into lasting loyalty. Fabien Mulot shared the methods implemented in 2025, which he summarized as “12 projects” organized around four stages in subscribers lifecycle: onboarding, stimulating usage, retention, and re-subscription:

Each stage has been assigned its own performance indicator:

1. Onboarding: the crucial first 3 days

Data analysis showed a strong correlation between immediate consumption and retention. Reading at least two paid articles within the first three days significantly reduces churn M+1.

This is the core of L’Équipe’s new onboarding strategy: a web and app loop that showcases the benefits of subscription, encourages users to personalize their experience (alerts, newsletters, favorites), and then prompts them to immediately read paid content tailored to their interests.

The post L’Équipe: 12 projects to retain subscribers following the Paris Olympics appeared first on Audiencers.