This article summarises the session given by Mathias Douchet, Chief Product Officer at The Telegraph, during the Audiencers' Festival in Paris on 16th September 2025. The slides from his presentation can be downloaded at the end of the article.

The Telegraph app in a few words: 
-> Freemium model: a selection of free articles, the rest is reserved for subscribers
-> A 14-day free trial is offered to new app users
-> App usage has increased by 15% in a year
-> 8 more sessions each week vs web
-> 6 percentage points higher 30-day retention vs web

Discussing the topic:

• William Whittington, Lead Community Moderator at The Telegraph
• Birger Soiland, VP Sales at Norkon
• Peter Jackson, Reader Comment Editor at The Times and Sunday Times

Turning community features into developed strategies at The Telegraph

Will is Lead Community Moderator at The Telegraph, managing a 6-person team, leading on their community and moderation strategy.

“Commenting is subscriber-only, and whilst it’s only one of the functions that we use to engage our audience, it’s maybe the foundation of our community model, using this to get readers involved in our journalism.

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

For example, journalists such as David Frost go into the comments section at a specific time each week. This is marketed on social media, on the homepage and app (including push notifications) to encourage readers to get involved.

Best practices that have made this strategy so effective:

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

“Getting journalists involved has helped us show the value of an engaged community to our business model. In turn, this ensures the comments section is not only active but contributing to our journalism.”

Best practice: share the success of your community with the whole organization to bring teams onboard and get them involved in engaging with your readers.

> To read next: From community to reader revenue: lessons to learn from The Independent and Reach PLC

Engaging in different ways

Polling is a way of getting immediate responses from audiences, on-site, in newsletters and on socials. And articles can be produced off the back of these.

“One of the polls following an election debate received 95,000 responses, one of the highest voting numbers ever seen, so much so that Nigel Farage shared it on socials!”

They also have weekly Q&As where readers submit their questions, published in a variety of formats: articles and live.

Gamification for community engagement

Birger joined the discussion from a gamification perspective, sharing how this format can be valuable for community development and activation at all steps in the funnel.

• Acquiring new audiences, including younger readers. For example, one of the publishers working with Norkon found that 40% of players are between 18-35 years old, including more females than their average readership
• Games and competitiveness brings readers back to your site again and again, plus these games can be connected to other engagement formats such as commenting or live blogging so users can communicate with other players and feel part of a community. Articles can also be tied to games to loop back to your journalism
• Integrating conversion steps into games to get more value from these readers. For instance a simple registration wall to ask readers to create a free account in order to continue playing, save their progress and chat with other users

> Dive deeper: How DN leveraged gamification to attract a younger audience, and got almost 35,000 new registered users

Birger also spoke to the value of gamification for advertising revenue. For instance by having sponsors for a live Q&A or game, providing the prize to winning participants.

Reader-led journalism at The Times and Sunday Times

Peter is the Reader Comment Editor at The Times, with a team of 8 Reader Comment Journalists working to increase engagement through community. Whilst the team do moderate comments, they do a whole lot more than that!

“Reader-led articles give a direct voice to our readers, but it also improves our journalism! The piece on the right below came from a call-out at the bottom of an article that got an amazing response from people telling us about how they beat their diagnoses. We ran it as a story and it really humanized the journalism. The other piece came from the simple idea of asking why people were running the London marathon. It pulled very touching stories together, and you could see in the comments section how positive the reaction was. These reader-led articles often bring yet more valued conversation within the community.”

It’s about community members not only seeing other community members as individuals and hearing their stories, but also allowing each reader to imagine themselves in this context, connecting with the brand in a much more human way.

Live Q&A

Live Q&As are another important engagement tool to directly connect The Time’s readers and writers.

“For instance, before the Euros kicked off, we had a dedicated hour where our experts answered questions and offered color on the topic. The quality of the conversation is so high in these cases because our readers have an invested interest. They’ve come to the experience ready to engage and participate. These 1-to-1 conversations with top journalists that subscribers get access to is incredibly valued.”

Like The Telegraph, The Times also works with polls and embedded carousels to elevate comments, but they also feature reader contributions in their journalism, such as “Reader’s recipe”. Peter highlights how this has a positive impact on the brand, showing how The Times values its readers.

Reducing toxicity

Back in 2022, The Times worked on a project to reduce toxicity by reducing anonymity in their comments section. The idea: “people should know who they’re speaking to if you want a high quality conversation.”

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

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

“Our top commenters – not necessarily in quantity but in how their comments are received, liked and replied to – were invited to visit the newsroom, meet our editors and spend the day with us, as a way of saying thank you. We turned this into a piece for the site, allowing other commenters to see how we take community seriously.”

Thank you so much to our panelists for being part of The Audiencers’ Festival!

The Audiencers' Festival in London in October did not disappoint, with 145 digital publishing professionals the afternoon was filled with insightful conversations both on and off stage. To reflect this, we're publishing not just one, but a series of takeaway articles from the event!

Our second panel session of the day: How to make newsletters valuable in a reader revenue model

On the panel: 
- Peter Houston, a third of Media Voices & Host of The Newsletter Awards
- Maire Bonheim, Head of Newsletters at The Telegraph
- Michael MacLeod, Founder of The Edinburgh Guardian

Newsletters are having a serious (and very lengthy) moment in the limelight for digital publishers, not only as a valuable engagement tool but also for monetizing audiences. And with two vastly different use cases to discuss on stage, this panel proved their power for publishers of all shapes and sizes… 

The Telegraph needs no introduction. The subscription-focused British publisher currently has 34 newsletters, 6 of which are reserved for subscribers only, each with their own goal and metrics to track success. 

Whilst Michael, who kindly jumped on a train from Scotland to join us, quit his job at Meta to launch The Edinburgh Guardian, a Substack, hyper-local newsletter, curating content on the life, news, culture and communities in the city. 

“The whole concept grew out of the horrible user experience of having to file through the adverts on publisher’s sites to find the news that’s worth reading. I do this work so readers don’t have to, putting it in a short, curated digest.“

What is it that’s so special about newsletters? 

Maire revealed that, at The Telegraph, they know that if a reader subscribes to their premium product after clicking on a newsletter, they’re 50% more likely to still be a subscriber after 12 months. 

At The Edinburgh Guardian, retention rate is incredibly high. Only 5 people have ever unsubscribed, and one of these had simply moved cities. This is in part thanks to the regularity of the email, sent every morning to fit into a reader’s daily routine. Upon surveying his reader base, more than half shared that they start their day by reading the newsletter in bed. 

This speaks to how genuinely useful newsletters are for building habits and relationships, being in direct contact with a person on a daily or weekly basis. And this is the key point here. Even for The Telegraph, as one of the UK’s largest newspapers, newsletters come from a single editor who establishes a very human, close relationship with their readers, speaking to them in the very personal inbox as if they know them, also leaving the floor open to replies. 

For Michael, the inbox is one of the few remaining “safe spaces” to converse with readers. So whilst it’s incredibly valuable, we should be careful with this trust. It’s a relationship, and there’s expectations and trust in both directions. 

How can you build this relationship? 

In a time of AI and machine-written content, being ‘human’ is a differentiator. And replying to emails – establishing a 2 way conversation – is a useful way to do this in the newsletter space. 

The Telegraph’s subscriber-only newsletter, “Your Royal Appointment”, for instance, answers a reader question each week. These readers are incredibly engaged thanks to the niche topic and will write in with the hope of being featured. The team even goes so far as to follow some of the replies further. For example, during the coronation, one reader wrote in to ask where they should stand to watch the procession. After replying in the newsletter, the team went to meet this reader, interview them and share it back into the newsletter.

As for Michael on Substack, the tool makes it easy to reply to emails and 50% of content now comes from readers. However, as a one-man-team with a growing user base, it’s not always easy to reply. 

“In my opinion, you should keep doing things you can’t scale until you can’t!” So he’s still saying thank you to readers for their replies, sending them the links if their content is published, etc.

But the value of replying is worth the time, hence why The Telegraph still aims to build this relationship with readers, despite the huge scale. 

“It’s a demanding role, running newsletters. You’re not just commissioning or producing but also community building with readers, writing and editing, proofing, design and relationship building with other teams. It’s very cross departmental, a true bridge role.”

Michael added: “Sometimes you have to accept that you can’t reply to everything. But there are smaller ways to engage with people at scale. At Vogue, we would use an emoji to react to comments and pin the top replies on Instagram posts. Even this small interaction makes a difference.”

How can cross-departmental work in the newsletter space? 

Bridge roles were a big talking point at The Festival, and there’s no doubt that newsletters require multiple teams to work together. 

The key takeaway from this part of the discussion was to be part of meetings: 

• Make sure you’re in the room, building connections with and between people 
• If there’s an area you know less of, get yourself invited to their regular catch-ups
• Look for ways to communicate with people in the way they work
• Be responsible for something that you think everyone’s going to use as a way to bed yourself in their work

The context of the newsletter “bridge role” at The Telegraph: 

There are currently 34 newsletters at The Telegraph. But this is in constant fluctuation as they review what’s working and what isn’t, testing and iterating between the editorial, product and engagement teams. 

Last year, they did a huge portfolio review, merging some newsletters that were doing similar things. 

“As much as you want to fill every niche, you also don’t want to spread yourself thin and double up on the same content where it’s not necessary. For instance we merged a few fashion and beauty newsletters into a single, daily lifestyle newsletter.” 

Equally, there’s new launches whenever they see a gap – such as their “Conversations” newsletter…

They noticed that the number of comments under articles were consistently increasing and, very frequently, the top-read articles were on the “Letters to the editor” page. So, they workshopped with the teams who worked on these pages, as well as the research team, to develop a new newsletter based around this interest. This newsletter has gone on to win an award at the Media Voices’ Newsletter Awards earlier this year

In general, decision-making in the newsletter space at The Telegraph is based on editorial judgement and curation, leading with data but introducing some wild cards and experimentation.

“Doing more with less” at The Edinburg Guardian:

Michael noticed that readers clicked most on articles about shop openings, so considered launching a newsletter focused only on that. But when he surveyed people 60% of readers said don’t change it, don’t do anything else. 

The takeaway: don’t follow the data too much. You’ll build an increasingly small bubble around you and keep you from innovating and experimenting.

“If you only follow the data, you’re only going to get what you’ve already got.”

What does the user funnel look like to convert readers into revenue?

As a one-man-team, Michael is very close to the funnel, and Substack has helped him to get started with subscriptions. 

For example, the built-in referral programme means that for every 3 people a reader successfully refers as a free sign up, they get X months free to the premium newsletter. And this is really working for him – ultimately, word of mouth is the most valuable acquisition tool, but it’s not something that money can buy. Referrals from friends not only creates a more trusting relationship from the start, but also gives the referrer a taste of subscription and proves the value of this paid product.

Michael also works to get into local Whatsapp, uni and slack groups, aiming to get into the very personal, local spaces where communities already are, asking readers to kindly share the newsletter around. 

What about metrics to measure success? 

For Maire, the metrics and content formats/treatment of the newsletter depends on its goal.

• Open to everyone newsletters have the goal of forming a habit and developing loyalty to eventually cultivate people who will subscribe. 
• Subscriber-exclusive newsletters are aimed at providing high quality, strong value to keep people subscribed. 

Open rates are still valuable, but of course have to be taken with a pinch of salt given the obvious Apple privacy difficulties. But whilst raw open rates can’t be trusted alone, the data teams have created a model to make better estimations about likely open rates, and this metric is still useful to compare different emails within the same month, such as when they test subject lines. 

But the north star is to provide value to the reader – a curated newsletter that engages the reader in their inbox, something that ultimately leads to more click-throughs and subscriptions in the long run.

Michael is most interested in clicks. 

“From a local point of view, I want to know what to put in the next newsletter, and also make sure I’m not ripping off the local press but actually sending people to those sites, supporting their traffic acquisition. Actually, a quarter of a million clicks through to other sites have come from this daily newsletter, and to me that’s success.” 

So whilst revenue through subscriptions is of course a key goal, he also aims to dive into the hyper-local things that matter in the community, raising interest in local democracy to provide “actionable news”. 

“There’s always more happening in a community than you realize, from the local council to volunteering opportunities, and I’m trying to curate to give visibility to these local conversations.”

Maire adds that, at The Telegraph, subject line testing has revealed “actionable news” often performs well, particularly “how to” wording. 

Driving a commercial outcome

The Telegraph segments sends to target email messaging based on a few criterion: 

• Whether someone is registered, but not subscribed, as well as for subscribers 

• Based on location. For instance some newsletters which are targeted at US readers 
• The biggest newsletter from the editor is also segmented based on propensity and recency, sending in waves 

All this means working very closely with the marketing teams. 

“As a reader, it’s hard to differentiate between a marketing email and a newsletter, they look the same. So we work with marketing to join up projects and look at the overall email that readers are getting, bridging the gap between teams and departments.”

Question from the audience: are young people ‘doing’ newsletters? 

Michael doesn’t collect data on age on Substack, but on Instagram he has a large following from people in their late teens to <35. Edinburgh also has 3 universities so maybe this is specific to his potential audience pool.

The Telegraph core demographic is more mature, which is reflected in the newsletters. But Maire shares that the demographic is wider than we’d expect – the reader who wrote in to the “Your Royal Appointment” newsletter for instance was 19.