Tags containing: "newsletter"

How one publisher turned newsletters into a digital growth engine

July 30, 2026 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

For Rough Draft Atlanta, newsletters aren’t just a distribution channel. They’re the engine powering its digital reinvention.

Recognizing their value, publisher Keith Pepper rebuilt editorial workflows, audience development and advertising around a newsletter-first model. The result is a digital business that has grown from 2% to 28% of company revenue while maintaining a profitable print operation.

As publishers search for durable sources of digital growth, Pepper’s approach illustrates how treating newsletters as a core business strategy transforms them into a platform for audience growth, premium advertising and digital revenue—offering practical ideas for publishers looking to strengthen their digital business.

A focus on digital opportunities

Pepper acquired Springs Publishing in 2020 when the previous owner was looking to retire. “I saw an opportunity,” he shared, outlining that the otherwise profitable company had virtually no digital income. Shortly after, the publisher’s first daily newsletter, Rough Draft Atlanta launched. It has since become not just the flagship newsletter, but the primary way news is produced and consumed for the publication.

Pepper explained that the idea for a daily local newsletter came about partly because of his own desire to have a product which served him as a local. “I wanted to read a [local newsletter] every day. And we also needed a way to engage with advertisers and readers in between those print dates,” he outlined.

There was also very limited competition back in 2020, just before Axios Local formed. “There were a handful of local media companies that had an RSS feed newsletter, but there was no personality-driven newsletter like a Morning Brew or the Daily Skimm here in Atlanta.,” Pepper pointed out.

Pepper’s instincts are increasingly being echoed across the industry. The New York Times recently announced The Local, a new newsletter initiative in the Twin Cities designed to deepen reader relationships through locally focused journalism and serve as a model for future markets. While the Times’ goals differ from those of an independent local publisher, both strategies reflect growing recognition that newsletters can become a primary product for building audience habits and direct relationships, not just a way to distribute stories.

Print is still vital to Rough Draft Atlanta’s business, and Pepper credits the revenue as giving them breathing room to experiment with what worked in digital. “Even today, our revenue is 70% print,” he shared. “Being a digital-only publisher is difficult, so this [revenue] means we can try things others of a similar size wouldn’t.”

Still, Pepper’s bet that newsletters are the new morning paper seems to have paid off.

At Rough Draft, newsletters showcase the best content from the day. But that’s not simply a case of rounding up what’s on the website. “Everyone’s daily tasks are to get the newsletter out – that’s the most important thing,” said Pepper, emphasising the whole team’s newsletter-first ethos. “People love to set habits. They love repetition and predictability in the mornings.”

The newsletters then form the basis of the monthly print editions, with issues from writers in specific verticals like food and entertainment translating into columns.

Almost six years later, Rough Draft Atlanta has a portfolio of a dozen newsletters. Flagship daily newsletter Rough Draft goes out every morning six days a week. The rest, covering topics from art and food to LBGTQ+ and books go out at various times across the week in the afternoons.

It’s unusual for a smaller hyperlocal publisher to have topic-specific verticals in this way. But Pepper pointed out that print papers contain everything from local news to film reviews and recipes. So he sees the newsletter verticals as a way to then feed into the print product later on.

Rough Draft is formulaic, with the aim of giving readers an overview of everything from key local and national headlines to the weather and events. The others are more tailored in format, centering key writers and personalities.

“In Atlanta, the food scene here is like a sport,” Pepper explained, highlighting that they were able to attract EiC Beth McKibben over from national media company Eater to come and lead Side Dish. “In her old role, she was sending out a five-day-a-week newsletter that was just clickbait. Now, she’s sending out a narrative newsletter twice a week which gives her a chance to tell her stories.”

The publisher’s most recent vertical is in health and wellness. The Reset, edited by Laura Scholz, explores current health, wellness and beauty topics. “It’s a huge industry in terms of all the money that people are spending on health and wellness and longevity, so I’m excited about scaling it,” said Pepper, explaining the reasoning behind the launch.

Notably, having a newsletter-first mindset is also leading to some interesting experiments on social media. The publisher’s newsletters all now appear as Reels, with short clips and narrations summarizing the day’s key developments.

Not only does this offer a way to showcase the newsletter and its primary functions to younger audiences, but it opens up additional revenue opportunities. Daily Reel editions of the newsletter can be sponsored within the content itself, rather than relying on revenue shares with Meta or other platforms.

A premium ad offering

Local newsletters have historically been trickier to monetize than general news. Ad slots have to be budget-friendly to local businesses, but selling such ad space is often not worth the time of dedicated salespeople.

Rough Draft has been helped in this respect by having a strong base of print advertisers. But Pepper pointed out two areas they have also focused on to help drive demand. The first is having a self-serve portal for clients where they can upload, schedule, and see clicks and impressions in real time. This takes an administrative burden off sales and marketing teams, and also allows easy rebooking.

“We’ve had really great success with renewals,” Pepper added. “We’re completely transparent in what we give [advertisers], which I think for a local media company is pretty remarkable.”

However, Pepper has also refused to run programmatic advertising on either the website or the newsletters. “We just wouldn’t make any money,” he said, noting low CPMs which devalue the space. “It’s a much better user experience all round that all of our ads are local companies.”

The newsletters themselves have limited inventory. This drives up value and also makes for a better experience for readers. Pepper said that Rough Draft is getting more inbound leads from local businesses than ever, and their newsletters are sold out months in advance.

Digital revenue now accounts for 28% of overall revenue, up from 2% in 2020. This is a mix of branded content, newsletters and digital display, which is difficult to separate out as some is sold as packages.

Quality over quantity

Although growth is a priority, Pepper said that maintaining quality, engaged users is vital to keeping advertisers happy, as well as maintaining control over costs.

Rough Draft Atlanta has nearly 50,000 subscribers to its newsletters, with a 48% average open rate to its flagship daily edition. Clean lists are a priority, with people who haven’t opened in a few months put through a re-engagement cycle. If they continue to not open newsletters, their email address is archived.

Pepper also encourages the team to go out in-person to encourage newsletter growth, including engaging with festivals and local events. “We’re out at the Farmer’s Market on the first Saturday of every month, collecting email sign-ups there,” he explained. They also see some success with referral campaigns, and QR codes to the newsletters in their print product.

In the short term, the greatest growth potential for Rough Draft is in reader revenue. All its content is free, including the papers and newsletters. But the publisher has managed to increase reader revenue significantly year-over-year.

“We’ve already eclipsed what we did all of last year, and that’s running a little over 2% of our total revenue,” Pepper said. He now wants to explore member events, and adding more value for those who contribute.

Pepper said that he was figuring much of the strategy out as he went along. But he had the benefit of coming to the business at the ideal time. By 2020, it was clear that most national brands wouldn’t win the scale game, let alone a local organization. As a result, he’s never attempted programmatic or many of the other ‘quick win’ traps others fell into.

But he also spotted early on that there is still a demand for a concise, daily summary of news that matters to people’s lives. As publishers increasingly seek to leverage their audience relationships as the basis for digital growth, Pepper’s centering of this need in a newsletter product strategy has transformed them into a platform for growth, premium advertising, and digital revenue.

Industry-Research | Research | Revenue

What paid newsletter economics reveal about subscriber value

July 28, 2026 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

Publishers continue to expand paid newsletter businesses as readers show a growing willingness to pay for specialized content. But long-term success depends on more than attracting subscribers. It requires converting readers into paying customers and keeping them engaged over time.

Beehiiv’s latest benchmark report analyzes thousands of paid publications on its platform to identify the characteristics and performance benchmarks of paid newsletter businesses. The report examines subscription pricing, conversion rates, churn, subscriber lifetime, and lifetime value across industries, audience sizes, and billing intervals.

Pricing reflects content value, not audience size

Subscription pricing shows remarkable consistency across the market. The median price is $10 per month or $100 per year, unchanged since 2024. While pricing varies significantly by content category, it changes little by publication size. Newsletters with a few hundred subscribers charge prices comparable to those with audiences exceeding 100,000. Rather than scaling prices with audience size, publishers appear to price their newsletters based on the perceived value of their content.

The benchmark also shows that readers place different values on different types of content. Investing newsletters command the highest median monthly subscription price at $27, while travel newsletters have a median monthly price of $7.

Conversion rates reveal wide performance gaps

While the typical publication converts fewer than 1% of free subscribers into paying customers, conversion rates vary dramatically by category and by publisher performance. Sports records the highest median conversion rate at 1.93%, compared with 0.84% for investing and 0.78% for finance.

The gap between median and top-performing publications is even more striking. Within the investing category, the median publication converts 0.84% of free subscribers, while the top 10% convert 18.69%. Finance shows a similar pattern, with median conversion at 0.78% compared with 20% among the top 10%. These differences illustrate how widely publisher performance varies, even among newsletters covering the same subject matter.

Retention determines subscriber value

Retention rates varies as widely as conversion. Estimated subscriber lifetime ranges from approximately six months in the money category to nearly 20 months in food and drink. News also ranks among the strongest-performing categories, with an estimated subscriber lifetime exceeding 18 months and a monthly churn rate of 5.47%, second only to food and drink.

Billing frequency also plays an important role in subscriber retention. By mid-2025, annual subscriptions overtake monthly subscriptions as the primary source of subscription revenue on the platform. Annual subscribers churn significantly less than monthly subscribers, extending subscriber lifetime and increasing recurring revenue.

Subscriber lifetime value brings together the report’s core performance metrics. Subscriber lifetime value reflects the combined effects of pricing, conversion, and retention. Median lifetime value ranges from $83 per subscriber in the community category to $230 in investing, highlighting how subscriber economics differ across content categories.

The report also benchmarks several retention practices used by higher-performing publications. These include introducing annual subscription options early, implementing structured onboarding, recovering failed payments, and presenting retention offers during the cancellation process. Rather than measuring success by subscriber counts alone, publishers should benchmark the health of their entire subscriber funnel.

Publishers can improve their odds of newsletter success by focusing on the factors that have a significant impact on subscriber value. The real opportunity lies in improving performance throughout the subscriber relationship. That means treating conversion as the beginning rather than the finish line and investing in onboarding, annual plans, cancellation offers, failed payment recovery, and other operational practices that support retention.

Success will also look different across content categories, so publishers should evaluate strategies in the context of their own audience and subject matter rather than applying a single standard across finance, politics, entertainment, and other verticals. As paid newsletters become an increasingly important consumer revenue stream, long-term success will depend landing that initial conversion, but on maximizing the value of every subscription.

Audiences | Featured Post

Publishers weigh Substack opportunity and risk

August 28, 2025 Charlotte Henry – Independent Media Reporter

Since its launch 2017, Substack has gathered momentum and attention across the media – both from independent journalists building their own newsletters, but also from big publishing brands seeking out new audiences. Several successful startup publications have developed on the platform, not least Hollywood b2b outlet The Ankler, and Bari Weiss’s The Free Press. Pre-existing mainstream publishers now use it to distribute email newsletters. Notable among these is Reach, which publishes the likes of The Mirror and The Express in the UK, and the Daily Mail.

Substack is easy to use and has developed its own network. Authors and publications recommend one another, which helps drive audience growth. And, importantly, subscriber data, notably email addresses, can be exported, for free, at any time. However, there are concerns that all Substack newsletters look the same, which may dampen brand affinity. And, more significantly, some worry that publishers are being dragged into yet another dead-end platform relationship.

An effective email tool with revenue benefits

Dominic Ponsford, editor of Press Gazette, moved his outlet’s daily newsletter onto Substack. He says there are various benefits to doing so: “Number one, it’s free. If you’re not selling subscriptions through it and just using it as an email delivery platform, it’s free.”

However, if you do sell subscriptions, Substack takes 10%, with payments processor Stripe taking an additional cut.

Ponsford adds that Substack is “extremely good at sending emails,” by which he means his content generally gets whitelisted, arriving in inboxes as it should. This is not necessarily the case with other email distribution systems.

The daily email is free “because it’s sort of top of the funnel, especially since we started charging for the website,” explains Ponsford. The fact that it doesn’t rely on newsletter subscriptions does not prevent Press Gazette from monetizing its emails on Substack though. The publication sells newsletter advertising directly, from which they keep all the revenue.

Doomberg is one of Substack’s success stories, regularly appearing in the top 10 finance newsletter leaderboard. The writers are anonymous, appearing publicly only as a wide-eyed green chicken. The voice behind the avatar tellsDCN that “we saw early on, through our consulting in this space, that that Substack had a winning product.” (Indeed, the Doomberg team have such confidence in the product that they invested in the company during an author-led funding round.)

They charge a high subscription fee: $300 a year for the standard tier, $1,200 for the pro tier. This means they turn a significant amount of money over to Substack. However, the team are not looking to leave. They feel a sense of personal loyalty to the company through which they have built “life-changing wealth,” and still have “have an 85% operating margin business,” when all the subscriptions are processed.

Audience growth from the network effect

One key feature that both Ponsford and Doomberg highlight is the network effect within Substack. Writers can recommend other newsletters, meaning that when someone signs up to one, they can easily subscribe to those that are recommended too, fuelling growth.

Ponsford says that while most Press Gazette sign-ups come from its website, a meaningful amount also come via Substack. Doomberg says that even as that publication launched, Substack was “winning the network effect for Internet writing, and they were offering good discoverability tools”. This can be of huge benefit both to startups and traditional publishers losing traffic as a result of Google changes.

This may explain why Reach has chosen to publish a number of newsletters using Substack. The company, which runs both national and local outlets, has around 450 newsletters, both paid and free on Substack. Some are by named expert writers, others cover specific topics.

In June, Jenna Thompson, audience and content director for secure audiences at Reach, told The Publisher Newsletter Summit that the free newsletters help build a relationship with readers. “We’re demonstrating to the readers who are signing up for that, that actually we are providing all of the best information that there is to know about this topic,” she said.

The Royalist newsletter from The Daily Beast is now on Substack, as is some content from the Daily Mail.

Not everyone is as keen to embrace Substack though. When he left CNN to start his own newsletter, media reporter Oliver Darcy chose to use rival service Beehiiv. He explains that he chose Beehiiv “because I wanted Status to have its own unique individual identity, and Beehiiv’s tools allow you to create an entirely custom website, an entirely custom newsletter that has its own unique identity and feel… every Substack looks the same.”

This is not something that concerns Ponsford from Press Gazette . “You’ve got the Press Gazette masthead on there… people are probably overthinking an email… if it’s got headlines and words and photographs in it… that’s all good” he says.

Access to advertising might be another key factor for a publisher debating how to do newsletters. Substack currently has no advertising network, although “I suspect we’ll see ads on Substack,” Darcy tells DCN.

Other platforms, including Beehiiv and Kit, already have such functionality. Programmatic advertising and sponsorship opportunities are extremely helpful for independent writers (like me), though, probably less so for a major publishing seeking a newsletter platform.

Substack: Just another platform?

Over time, Substack has gone from being an email, podcast and subscription management tool to something far broader. Substack has long offered the ability to publish podcasts as well as words, but it now has video tools too. On the back of a $100 million funding round last month, it is reportedly looking into launching its own advertising network too, making this an important moment for media companies of all kinds to assess its value to them.

Substack also offers chat functionality, and a Notes tool akin to Twitter. When combined with its app, it’s all starting to feel rather like a social network.

According to Ponsford, who keeps a close eye on such things: “The big brands, I think they just see it as another platform to be on, to spread their bets, like Twitter, Facebook… I think it’s sudden it’s got big enough now that they feel it’s something they need.”

Substack undoubtedly has a lot to offer publishers of all sizes, whether they use all its functionality or just send emails. While publishers can access crucial user data, they must be wary of launching any products built on a third-party platform, given the ever-gr owing importance of having a direct relationship with your audience. Media companies need to understand how best to leverage platforms to reach new audiences alongside building brand loyalty, and not risk diluting it at the hands of another platform promising to solve all their problems.

Audiences | Featured Post | Revenue

How MIT maximizes editorial value with newsletters

April 3, 2025 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Media Reporter

For subscription-driven publishers, newsletters can be a valuable way of building relationships with potential paying readers. But it can be a challenge to effectively promote newsletters and justify the extra work required to create them. However, MIT Technology review has seen success with a portfolio of editorially-driven newsletters published across the week. Key to their growth strategy is effectively reusing the newsletter content online to drive sign-ups, and maximizing opportunities to promote the newsletters across all MIT activity.

“Once someone has signed up to our newsletters, they’re two or three times more likely to become a subscriber,” said Niall Firth, executive editor, newsroom at MIT Technology Review.

With newsletters forming a key part of the publication’s subscriber funnel, promotion and growth of these products is a priority. Here’s how MIT Technology review structures its newsletter portfolio and promotes sign-ups to begin building those vital reader relationships.

Using the editorial to go deeper

MIT Technology Review has a variety of editorial newsletters in their portfolio. The Download is a daily weekday newsletter that features short, snappy summaries of key stories. It also includes a quote of the day, links from around the internet, and a throwback to a feature story that was published during the last year.

MIT also offers a selection of weekly “beat” newsletters. AI newsletter The Algorithm publishes every Monday, led by AI and hardware reporter James O’Donnell. Energy and climate newsletter The Spark comes out every Wednesday, and The Checkup, focused on health and biotech news, is released on Thursdays. Editor in Chief Mat Honan then publishes The Debrief, an analysis of the biggest tech news story, every Friday.

In terms of editorial strategy, these newsletters begin with a full editorial piece of around 700 words, which can be used for scoops, analysis, or context around bigger stories. “These are written from scratch every week,” Firth explained. “[The writing] that goes in there is in there first, so if you sign up to a newsletter, you’ll get to read it before it appears anywhere else.”

The second half of these beat newsletters is used for other relevant links, news and bite-sized updates, as well as subscription upsells and event promotions.

Each beat newsletter is led by a named editor, as they find readers connect better with a person or expert. Editors are encouraged to be conversational. “They’re like your smart friend guiding you through [topics]. So, if something is complicated in the world of your beat, your reader can rely on them. They’re going to lay it all out to you and tell you what’s important, which bits you can ignore, what you should be aware of,” said Firth.

It also offers the opportunity to go behind the scenes in a way web-first articles don’t. Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review’s senior climate reporter and writer for The Spark newsletter was at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit recently, a conference dedicated to energy technology. For the newsletter, she wrote about what it was like to be there, and the undercurrents around emerging technology and climate change. “The vibes were weird,” she reported, using a more explanatory and informal tone than would normally be used for an article.

Publishing newsletters as stories

One of the key drivers of MIT Technology’s newsletter growth strategy is effective use (and reuse) of the content. Although newsletter articles are written first and foremost for the inbox, they are then republished the following day as a story on MIT Technology’s website, with a note pointing out that newsletter subscribers saw the story first.

This achieves an often tricky balance between offering newsletter readers exclusive content. It offers an exclusive window to subscribers, yet allows MIT to promote articles to as wide a readership as possible.

“Once they’re on the site, they get treated and promoted like every other story,” Firth said. He also pointed out that sometimes these newsletter-first stories do as well as, or even better than, standard web-first pieces.

When newsletter articles are published online, they appear with multiple notes about originally being published as newsletters, with sign-up boxes to capture interested readers. This also provokes a bit of FOMO (fear of missing out), and highlights that the value of the newsletter is in being the first to get relevant news.

MIT’s newsletter-first strategy lets the editors go deeper on stories that have already been published, as well as smaller or more timely scoops. Firth explained that there may be a big story from earlier in the week with off-cuts or reporting that didn’t fit into the story, but can be used as a whole new story for the newsletter. “That does double-duty: It’s cool to read an interview with a researcher on a topic that only got a line in the main story but is worthy of a whole separate interview. But then it calls back to the main story, and all fits together,” he said.

Although newsletter stories contain multiple calls-to-action (CTAs) for the relevant newsletter, Firth also noted that contextual newsletter sign-up boxes are promoted on relevant stories throughout MIT Technology’s site. Energy stories will have a promotion for The Spark, AI stories for The Algorithm, and so on. This means site visitors are given visible and frequent opportunities to sign up to newsletters, even on a first visit.

Another tactic which has seen success in driving audience growth is visible promotion of newsletters at MIT events. The publisher has a stable of large-scale conferences and focused gatherings, from their flagship EmTech emerging technologies summit to digital leadership “classroom,” Future Compute.

“At all of our events, we have these massive boards in the lobby of the event. They have QR codes for all the different newsletters, with a specific UTM so we know it came from that event for that newsletter,” Firth outlined.

He explained that both new event registrants or new subscribers to the brand get a dedicated email about the newsletters they can sign up to. For example, a registrant for their EmTech AI conference would also get an email from James O’Donnell, newsletter writer for The Algorithm, showcasing their weekly AI deep dive.

Relevant newsletters are also promoted at online events, including webinars and live streams.

Other growth tactics

Firth outlined a number of other strategies used to grow their newsletter audiences. MIT Technology Review has a hard paywall for around a third of the stories on the site. But for stories promoted on social media platforms, the team will offer access in return for signing up to a related newsletter.

“On Instagram, if we have a new big feature around AI, we do Instagram Stories where the ‘front page’ of the story would be the article, and the second page is a sign-up box to The Algorithm to get access to it,” said Firth.

The team has seen success using this tactic with some more surprising platforms like Reddit, too. Firth noted that Reddit attracts people who want to go particularly deep into various topics, rather than surface-level technology coverage; an audience their newsletters suit well.

Last year, the publisher experimented with exit intent popups – banners that appear when a user looks like they’re about to click off the page. Firth shared that these drove 4,000 new sign-ups over the test period last year. They are hoping to roll out a wider test of exit intent popups this year.

In October last year MIT launched a free six-week limited series newsletter, Intro to AI. Newsletter courses like this can be a good way of letting potential readers sample work without committing to a more regular newsletter. Each newsletter in the course takes the opportunity to promote the Algorithm.

Chief Executive Officer and publisher Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau told A Media Operator that since launching, the course had attracted 17,000 subscribers with an average open rate of 57%. Now, the publisher is looking at other complementary areas to its regular beat newsletters, like healthcare.

MIT Technology review has also been experimenting with newsletter promotion swaps as part of its growth strategy. Axios and Semafor have been early partners for this, with newsletters exchanging ads for the other publication to attract interested audiences who are already engaged with newsletters.

Crucially, all newsletter promotions make it as simple as possible to sign up, with readers being asked for just their email address.

There’s no silver bullet or one tactic that will result in sustainable newsletter growth. MIT Technology Review’s approach is to ensure that beat newsletters are consistently promoted across relevant pieces online. Every opportunity is taken – from events to social stories – to funnel audiences into topical newsletters. It is this combined, holistic approach that fuels MIT’s success.

Audiences | Featured Post | Innovation

Four newsletter strategies from leading publishers

August 22, 2024 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Media Reporter

Despite the challenges thrown at publishers by obfuscating metrics or deliverability changes, newsletters continue to grow in importance. Media companies increasingly use email newsletters as a key tool for maintaining relationships with audiences away from social media, finding new readers, building habits, and opening new revenue streams.

At The Publisher Newsletter Summit, publishers came together to share strategies, advice and case studies on everything from newsletter monetization to audience growth.

Here are some of the strategies that they shared:

1. Don’t be afraid to center personalities

The role of journalists with followings has grown more complicated than ever in recent years. One theme that emerged at the Summit from a number of the sessions was that – if managed right – individual members of your team can serve as an incredible audience-building tool.

Women’s membership and community publisher Black Ballad started a newsletter from founder Tobi Oredein as a way to create a bond with the reader, because people build connections with humans, not brands. “Social media is very noisy,” Oredein outlined. Given that Black Ballad has paywall, she finds that “there is a barrier with people who can’t afford a membership. The newsletter is free, so everyone that’s signed up with their email gets that newsletter every week. So it’s a way to create that personal relationship.”

Leaning into this has also opened up revenue opportunities, although Oredein said that she chooses partner organizations very carefully. A recent campaign with the Founder’s Letter newsletter saw Black Ballad work with Maltesers around maternal mental health as Oredein was about to give birth to her second child.

“I wrote this newsletter on letting go of the Superwoman complex as a mum, second time around,” she explained. “It all came together and the newsletter opened the partnership; we had an editorial video that went alongside the essay, and it just went nuts. People loved the partnership. We realized that my personal newsletter opens up partnerships. Now the newsletter stands alone as the most requested advertising channel and is the most popular source of revenue for Black Ballad.”

There are risks with building newsletter audiences around individual journalists, but these can be managed. It’s an issue UK news brand The Telegraph faced when a big-name writer for their political newsletter left, and the team had to decide what to do next.

“We’ve grown [the newsletter] substantially since then,” Head of Newsletters Maire Bonheim said, explaining that they gave another political journalist a chance to fully front the newsletter. “He’s in your inbox at exactly 1pm every day. He’s really passionate about it, and he gives it his own edge. People have built up a habit and a relationship with him.”

2. Prioritize newsletters for retention and conversion

Special interest publisher Immediate Media monetizes many of its brands like Good Food and Gardeners’ World through subscriptions. Head of CRM and Customer Retention Matt Nash sees newsletters as playing a vital role in their subscription strategy, especially for long-term relationships.

“One of the big reasons why we’re so focused on newsletters from a subscription capacity is that 25% of our app subscribers received or read a newsletter before going on to subscribe,” he said. “So on average, there’s about 18 months between someone registering on Good Food and then converting to an app subscriber.”

“We also find that conversion from trials – mainly we run free trials going into paid subscriptions on the app – is around 10 percentage points higher for people that have previously been on our newsletter base before converting to a subscription.”

Nash shared that they have a two-part email strategy for pre- and post-subscription. The first half is focused around getting eyes on the website, showcasing the product and the subscription offers. “Every newsletter we send is an opportunity for us to try and convert someone if they look like they’re likely to subscribe,” he explained.

Once someone has converted, the focus switches to the “core readership phase,” where newsletters are part of a multi-channel tech stack optimized to try and get existing users to continue their subscription. The publisher uses a range of personalization options, from content type to send frequency and time to hit the readers at just the right frequency for them.

3. Consider repackaging content for educational courses

A number of publishers offer newsletter “courses” with a clear start and end point as an alternative way of engaging audiences. As part of its newsletter strategy, Pew Research Center launched an email course, which allowed them to leverage their reports and blog posts on U.S. Immigration. More recently The Guardian released a five-week email coaching plan called Reclaim Your Brain, which has attracted over 140,000 sign-ups.

Seeing examples like these, Ruth Hardy-Mullings, Head of Content at Community Care, a publication for social workers, wondered if newsletter courses could help solve some of their challenges. Their biggest driver of traffic was their weekly newsletter. She was also aware of the friction readers faced finding time to log onto the website and proactively seek out training content. A course delivered straight to their inbox would be a good way to prove value.

They launched some test courses in March 2021, delivering six emails a week over a three week period. “We took the content from longer guides and hosted it within the body of the email itself, so it solved that problem of having to go and log in on the site,” Hardy-Mullings explained. “Someone was able to open up their email, read the content and get that learning wherever they are, whether they’re in a car before they go and do a home visit, on their commute home, making use of those small amounts of time that people do have.”

Each email had a recap section at the beginning, a progress bar to keep people motivated, further reading links, and a reflective exercise at the end. Hardy-Mullings noted that signing up for a finite period of time was helpful for professionals who get thousands of emails. “The general feedback was that people really loved the convenience of the course and that format of learning, a good way that could genuinely fit into their working week,” she said.

Email courses may not suit every publisher. However, they can be a strong way of repurposing evergreen content, reducing friction points for membership organizations, or giving samples of journalism for paywalled publications, to name a few use cases.

One of the most revealing sessions at the Summit was Maire Bonheim and David Alexander, Head and Deputy Head of Newsletters respectively at The Telegraph. They talked about how to turn around an underperforming newsletter, and noted that they often have to use different tactics across almost 40 newsletters in their portfolio.

Alexander was keen to emphasize that although metrics have a place in your newsletter strategy, they need to be the right ones. “If you put all your effort into getting a massive list, and you trick people into signing up to your newsletter, they’ll get it. But no one will care because they didn’t mean to get it in the first place,” he explained. “You’ll have a massive list, and over time, your email provider will think it’s spam, and they’ll just put it in everybody’s junk. Pursuing vanity stats is a fool’s game. Massive lists are not the aim. You want people to read your stuff.”

Clearing lists and pursuing slower, more genuine engagement is a braver path to take, especially with other commercial and business pressures publishers face. Bonheim said that they have different time periods for list cleaning different newsletters. “If a newsletter is a daily send, then we wait a shorter amount of time before we list cleanse, whereas if something’s weekly or even monthly, we wait longer,” she explained.

The Telegraph was also facing an issue where when some marketing emails were sent to editorial newsletter segments, readers were getting confused and newsletters were ending up in the promotions tab.

“As a whole at The Telegraph… the volume of emails had gone up hugely, and we needed to get smarter about our overall email strategy and cleverer about who we segment and target,” Bonheim said, explaining that they send warnings about removing readers from lists if they don’t ‘Click to stay’. “So to combat that, we became much more stringent with our list cleanse emails, and that seems to be having a positive impact.”

The takeaway

These strategies may not work for every publisher, and one theme which emerged strongly from the Publisher Newsletter Summit is that newsletters can be used for a wide range of different purposes. The key is to be very clear for each newsletter what its purpose is, and how that will be measured.

“[Key metrics] are so different across all our titles,” said Alexander of his work on The Telegraph’s newsletters. “I’ve worked on newsletters that have had almost 1,000 words in them, and people want to read them more than anything. I’ve also looked after newsletters where it’s all about getting people through to the site. You have to be really clear on what’s important.”

Whether it’s exploring the potential of short email ‘courses’ or letting editors take a personal lead, there are plenty of ways to freshen up a newsletter strategy. But whether this is through iterative changes, pivots or launches, keep the newsletter’s purpose front and center.

4 media revenue strategies for 2024 (that don’t involve AI)

January 18, 2024 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Media Reporter

2023 was yet another rocky year for publishers. From the ad market slowdown to economic pressures affecting everything from hiring to subscriptions, there was plenty to write about for Media Voices’ annual report, Media Moments 2023.

AI was, of course, the headline trend. It has the potential to impact almost every aspect of the media business, and many commentators have speculated on how it can and will shape the coming years. There’s not a media executive out there who isn’t actively watching AI, if not experimenting with it. But AI isn’t the only trend influencing day-to-day publishing operations. Here are four more surprising things some of the industry’s most successful media brands are doing, all of which are covered in more detail in the Media Moments report.

Consolidating newsletters

Wait, aren’t newsletters the current big thing? Aren’t we supposed to be launching lots to make up for the impending death of social media and search traffic? Not necessarily, as some publishers have demonstrated. As with so many things, it turns out that less may deliver more.

The New Statesman is one such publisher. They consolidated their portfolio of economics, culture, politics and world news newsletters into just two: a daily and a weekend edition. “Instead of having a whole buffet of different newsletters and cutting the brilliance up into little segments, we just decided to give [the audience] one that we thought they’d like on Saturday and have the power of a big audience through one newsletter,” head of newsletters Harry Lambert told Press Gazette.

News publisher The Telegraph has a whopping 34 newsletters. However, head of newsletters Marie Bonheim told Peter H o uston that their portfolio is under constant review. Despite the urge to “fill every niche” there is a danger of spreading your newsletter efforts too thin. “You also don’t want to double up on the same content,” she explained. “We merged a few fashion and beauty newsletters into a single, daily lifestyle newsletter.”

Undoubtedly, streamlining does more than reduce the amount of products that need to be produced, it may also serve to improve reader numbers for the remaining products, which can in turn drive revenue.

(Re)launching print magazines

Mass market magazines have continued to battle decline, with just two news and current affairs magazines in the UK posting circulation growth; satirical fortnightly Private Eye and political monthly Prospect. But for more niche titles, publishers are seeing an opportunity in low volume, high value print runs.

We saw multiple stories of print revivals and launches in 2023, from fashion title Elle Australia and music magazine NME. A piece in the Sydney Morning Herald showed that readership of popular titles like Vogue Australia and Marie Claire had increased between 2022 and 2023. Jane Huxley from Are Media, which publishes Elle, said that there were two main factors behind the renewed interest in print; the enduring brand strength of these magazines in tough economic times, and a consumer reaction to the “digital deluge.”

Advertiser interest in print appears to be on the rise too. Recent research suggests a strong preference for print advertising among consumers, with readers far more likely to pay attention and trust it in contrast to online advertising.

But the approach of newly launched or relaunched magazines will be different. Copies are more expensive and printed less frequently. The new NME will be £10 every other month, and not available on newsstands. “Rather than print thousands upon thousands of copies and try to shift them at the newsstand in bulk, we’ve changed that model up and have taken inspiration from industries like fashion, where you see the value in scarcity,” Holly Bishop, of NME Networks told New Statesman.

Print isn’t going to be right for every media company. But it can be effective as a higher-priced premium product; something special to deepen relationships with super fans.

Paywalling podcasts

As the frenzy for podcast launches finally dies down, publishers are looking long and hard at the most effective ways of monetizing them. For The Economist, that involved taking the bold decision to put a paywall in front of its entire portfolio bar one (the daily flagship podcast The Intelligence will remain free). The rest of their 18+ shows will be available as part of a full Economist subscription, or as a standalone Economist Podcasts+ offering for $4.90 a month.

Claire Overstall, SVP, Global Head of Customer at The Economist told DCN in October that they had moved the podcasts to a paid offering in keeping with their belief that subscriptions should be the way they fund their journalism.

“Paying for journalism was one of the things that we led with very early; The Economist has been doing that a lot longer than many of our peers,” she said, acknowledging that although paid podcasts aren’t commonplace, the reasoning is understood. “So that’s well-embedded in people’s minds, the way that we’ve articulated how this is supporting our journalism.”

It’s a risky move for a publisher with millions of listens across its podcast portfolio. But as tools to make the subscription process for podcasts smoother and more aligned with publisher sites improve, it’s likely we’ll see more premium brands give paywalled podcasts a shot.

Paying for podcasts may take listeners time to get used to, so companies trying this shouldn’t expect instant results. But paying for good content is increasingly normalized and (grudgingly) understood by audiences. So, it’s worth thinking about how paid podcasts could fit into a long term strategy.

ARPU over subscriber numbers

It’s hard to point to a subscription service which hasn’t raised its prices over the past 12 months. Even Spotify, which had kept its pricing the same since 2011, increased the monthly cost by $1-$2 across its tiers. In the publishing world, the price of a digital news subscription has actually increased an average of 19% in the UK.

There are multiple intertwined reasons for this trend. News fatigue and economic pressures are contributing to a subscription slowdown. In addition, after a rush to subscriptions during the pandemic, many publishers are hitting a natural plateau anyway. Inevitably, attention is now turning to retention and reducing churn.

“Subscriptions are a forever business,” wrote The Rebooting’s Brian Morrissey. “Everything in publishing takes longer than you would think. And building a subscriptions business is the ultramarathon. After early wins, subscriptions become a grind, with optimization tactics coming to the forefront.”

The Atlantic’s CEO Nicholas Thompson noted back in 2022 that he was less interested in getting a million subscriptions than he was getting to $50 million in reader revenue. “You can get to a million subs pretty easily – you can massively discount,” he said. “If you set a goal solely on subscribers, it can move you in some harmful ways.”

Defector was a good example of this more sustainable focus this year. In their third annual report, they listed a subscription revenue increase in 2023 of just 4%, when compared with 20% a year earlier. But they also managed a 90% retention rate when half of their subscribers came up for renewal.

It’s tempting to get sucked into the race for big numbers, many of which are achieved through hefty discounting. A longer-term, more sustainable view is definitely focused on metrics like retention and engagement, and making sure subscribers are satisfied with what they’re paying for.

Going forward

This isn’t to suggest that you should be immediately scrambling to reduce the number of newsletters sent, or to start flatplanning a magazine! As we found from the Media Moments 2023 report, many of the biggest challenges and opportunities publishers have faced this year have been iterations of what we’ve seen in previous years.

These trends point towards something AI cannot replicate: creating valuable content that (human) readers will be willing to pay for. Whether that be in cycling, cooking, fitness, politics or B2B, doubling down on quality and looking at ways to increase the value of what you’re producing is a winning strategy for 2024 and beyond.

AI | Industry-Research | Video

Publishers focused on audience, automation and video

June 13, 2023 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

In today’s fast-paced digital world, media companies face intense competition across many different platforms. Echobox, a provider of social media management tools, offers new research, “Publishing Trends 2023,” highlighting media businesses’ priorities, challenges, and opportunities. The top three priorities for content companies include finding new audiences (53%), automation and AI (50%), and video content (47%). Staying ahead of the Facebook algorithm (53%), declining traffic (47%), growing digital subscriptions and diversifying revenue streams (both 34%) were commonly cited challenges.

Echobox surveyed a targeted sample of 32 leading media companies across the world. This global perspective includes respondents from 20 countries in Europe (67%), the Americas (20%), and Asia (13%).

Platform usage

Instagram emerges as a vital channel for publishers in 2023. In fact, the study shows that 66% of respondents believe Instagram will play a more significant role in their business this year. Publishers recognize the value of leveraging Instagram’s visual nature for content promotion and audience interaction.

TikTok is also gaining prominence, with 59% of publishers turning to this platform for video content distribution and audience engagement.

Media brands recognize the importance of capitalizing on the visual nature of TikTok and YouTube. By investing in video production and distribution, the report suggests that media companies can enhance their content offerings and attract a wider audience.

However, challenges persist on platforms like Facebook, primarily due to its lack of algorithmic transparency. Approximately one-third of media companies view Facebook as vital, and they want to maintain visibility and reach on this platform. Unfortunately, the opaque evolving nature of the platform requires publishers to constantly adapt their strategies, remain vigilant of algorithm changes, and seek alternative avenues to engage their target audience.

Embracing newsletters

Newsletters remain an area of growth for many media businesses. The report highlights that 56% of respondents plan to expand their newsletter offerings or start producing newsletters in the coming year. Publishers understand the value of direct communication and engaging subscribers in off-platform vehicles. By crafting compelling and personalized content in newsletters, media businesses can establish stronger connections with their audience and help drive traffic to their websites.

AI attraction

The report indicates that 63% of media companies acknowledge the growing importance of AI for their businesses. AI-powered tools and technologies offer immense potential to streamline operations, optimize content distribution, and enhance audience targeting.

Publishers can leverage AI to automate repetitive tasks, personalize content recommendations, and gain valuable insights into audience preferences. Media companies using AI can unlock new efficiencies, improve engagement, and achieve better business outcomes.

Ending third-party cookies

When thinking of the impending demise of third-party cookies in 2024, less than half of the respondents foresee a significant impact on their business. Specifically, 31% do not anticipate any effect and 13% state that they don’t rely on third-party cookies. Of the 50% of publishers anticipating significant impacts, half report they are prepared while the other half are not.

The Echobox report does highlight that, though the growth of newsletters has slowed, the first party data insights they provide does provide a means to offset the loss of third-party cookies.

Future focus

The results of Echobox’s 2023 publisher survey does show a certain amount of continuity from last year, as traffic remains a concern along with Facebook, while newsletters continue to demonstrate value. This year did see significant economic impacts as well as uncertainty around the role Twitter will play for media companies and advertisers. The report finds that publishers are investing resources in a wider array of social platforms in an effort to diversify their own audience demographics and to position themselves for increased adaptability to weather the evolving social landscape and consumer consumption trends.

Why the FT chose to deliver its new MBA course via newsletter

March 30, 2023 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Media Reporter

As publishers look to take advantage of the newsletter boom, news is not the only thing on their minds. Email offers a direct delivery method for all sorts of content and the FT is among those leveraging newsletters as a way to offer educational content to inform and engage audiences.

The Financial Times launched its first newsletter course last month; MBA 101. The free six-week email series, which starts whenever a reader signs up, is aimed at anyone interested in applying for a Masters of Business Administration. It is written by Global Education Editor Andrew Jack and Content Editor Wai Kwen Chan, and guides participants through the process of applying for an MBA, from choosing the right course to getting funding.

Engaging younger readers

A free newsletter course may not be an obvious starting point for a publication which has one of the hardest paywalls in the industry. But part of the reason why the FT chose the MBA admissions topic for their first course was because it aligned with their existing successful MBA rankings program.

Although the top-level rankings are available to view for free, prospective students can register for a profile to compare programmes they are interested in, as well as see key statistics on diversity, career progression, course tuition fees and more. Signing up to the MBA 101 newsletter course also creates a registration for an MBA rankings profile, which keeps the link between the two products strong.

Ultimately though, the end goal is to convert MBA rankings and MBA 101 registrants into full FT subscribers. Because the majority of the target audience for this course are likely to be students already–or soon to become students–each of the newsletter editions also contains a link to the FT’s heavily discounted student subscription.

Emily Goldberg, US Newsletter Editor for the Financial Times led the new project. “We know that newsletters boost engagement among our readers, and that they’re a really great way to promote retention,” she said, explaining why they chose to go with email delivery. “Since the course is available for free, it has the potential to reach new readers, draw them into the FT and then keep them engaged and involved.”

Balancing information delivery

Given the expectation of internet users that information is available instantly, the idea of releasing a course in stages via email is a strange one. The team thought carefully when they were putting the course together about what made most sense for this particular topic.

“We ultimately decided that a weekly cadence would promote habit, which is what we want with a newsletter,” Goldberg said. “This is also a very action-based and practical newsletter. So by spacing things out weekly, we thought it would give readers a chance to engage with the content, read the content, figure out how they might be able to apply it to their own lives, which strategies work best for them, and give it a try before we send them the next piece of information. It means we don’t overload them, and give them a good balance.”

Breaking the content down into chunks also helps meet one of the FT’s key aims of the project: making the course practical. “It’s a much better learning experience to do something like this in chunks,” Goldberg commented. “Otherwise we could just throw a textbook at someone.”

The course is primarily text-based and has been designed with mobile readers in mind. This is particularly important when reaching younger people, who Goldberg says are far more likely to read course content on their phones. “Anything that we can give people that they can consume in a digestible way is definitely something we thought about in putting this course together that’s clear and action-oriented,” she said.

There are, however, plenty of links to other content, including recordings of an event that Global Education Editor Andrew Jack ran with other FT journalists and admissions professionals working at business schools. One part also includes a template that students can use themselves in networking outreach, reinforcing the practical nature of the course.

The importance of evergreen content

The FT is not the only publisher to have courses delivered by newsletters. The Wall Street Journal has a range of ‘Challenge’ series, from the ‘WSJ Money Challenge’ newsletter to the ‘WSJ Healthy Habits Challenge’ which range from four to six weeks each. The Washington Post also has a selection of limited-run courses delivered via email. ‘A Better Week’ runs for just seven days and aims to help participants free up time, while ‘Bold School’ releases smart advice on how to approach life after 50 with two emails a week across 12 weeks.

For other publishers looking to deliver courses via email, the subject area is crucial to get right. “One of the qualities that you need for a good course is that it needs to be something relatively evergreen,” Goldberg noted. Unlike traditional daily or weekly email newsletters, these courses will start and finish at the same point whenever the participant signs up.

Where next for the FT’s newsletter courses

Engagement is a key success criteria for the MBA 101 course. The early signs are positive for the publisher. “We’ve already seen success with the open rate and click-through rate in these emails which is above average,” Goldberg outlined. She explained they use a verifiable open rate to combat the challenges presented by Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, and are seeing an almost 60% open rate of the initial welcome letter, which is sent a day after someone signs up for the course.

Longer-term success criteria is ultimately more subscribers to the FT. If younger readers and students take out the student subscription and the course is able to boost awareness of the FT with a younger demographic, then it will have been a great success.

As part of this, registrants are encouraged to reply to the business school email address throughout the course if they have any feedback or questions. They also send out a survey halfway through the course and at the end of the course so readers can share their experience.

MBA 101 is just a month old, so the newsletters team will be carefully evaluating the results to see what they can optimize and improve. The course is not directly monetized at present, although the team are exploring sponsorship opportunities. It’s a model that Goldberg could see transferring easily to other topics across the FT, as well as potentially standalone paid newsletter courses.

“Anything that is actionable and that our reports can provide as an area of expertise [would work for a newsletter course],” she said. “That’s what made this course such a success is that the writers of the course, Andrew Jack and Wai Kwen Chan are talking to admissions professionals and university administrators all the time. So I think anytime that we can teach our reader something and they can take action off the back of would be a good fit.”

Newsletter courses are a straightforward enough concept. They capitalize on a trend which ultimately drives habit, quality and loyalty. But the subject area needs to be carefully aligned with a publisher’s brand. In the FT’s case, there are so many potential topic areas which they could expand into, this will no doubt not be the last course launch from the team.

Featured Post | Industry-Research | Perspectives

7 critical media trends to factor into your strategy

December 8, 2022 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Media Reporter

It’s been another breakneck year for the media industry. Every year at Media Voices we round up the biggest moments from the past 12 months, and explore how they impact publishers. This year was certainly not short of industry-defining events, and Media Moments 2022 summarizes these across 10 chapters, from advertising and subscriptions to newsletters and emerging technology.

Stepping back from the big moments of cookie delays, Twitter takeovers, and bumpy ad markets, there have been a number of developments this year which have the potential to shape publishing strategies in 2023 and beyond. Here are seven key themes from the report that will inform your approach moving forward:

1. Adblocking has returned to an all–time high

The days of adblocking causing sleepless nights for publishers seemed to be long–gone. Between the demise of third–party cookies and vigorous blocklists costing huge amounts of revenue, executives in the ad department have had plenty of other things to worry about.

Unfortunately, adblocking needs to move back up on the agenda. It has returned to levels last seen at the peak of the phenomenon in 2018, with 290 million web users actively blocking ads worldwide, according to the 2022 PageFair Adblock Report. This is an average of 21% across all geos and verticals. Solutions to tackle the problem are in short supply, and are likely to remain so unless it is prioritized again.

2. Streaming accounts for the majority time spent with TV

In August, streaming officially topped cable as the most popular method by which people in the U.S. consume television content. According to Nielsen, which runs a monthly Gauge study of TV consumption, streaming now makes up more than one–third (34.8%) of all television consumption, overtaking cable (34.4%), and far ahead of broadcast (21.6%).

Unsurprisingly, streaming powerhouses like Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ are leading the charge. However, this is a notable milestone for streamers across the board. It marks a major shift in how audiences – especially younger people – engage with what we’ve traditionally thought of as television content. This opens more opportunities for publishers in the video space to get well–told stories in front of audiences. But it also means that the video landscape is more fractured than ever.

3. Local news can be profitable on just reader revenue

The past five or so years has seen local news start–ups grow all over the world as access to publishing and revenue tools has opened up. Some have shown real promise this year, offering tantalizing glimpses of a sustainable future for local publishers.

In the U.K., The Manchester Mill, a Substack–based local news publisher, reached profitability last month with just 1,600 paying subscribers. The two–year–old brand says they are profitable off annualized subscription revenue of around $164,000. Founder Joshi Herrmann has launched two sister titles off the back of its success: the Liverpool Post and Sheffield Tribune, which are at 650 and 900 paying subscribers respectively.

For local news to truly thrive, we will need to move beyond models of just one or two reporters per city. But the early green shoots of success are encouraging.

4. There’s no sign of subscriptions decline…yet

Following Netflix’s Q2 subscriber tumble, many analysts have forecast a downturn in subscriptions. As economic pressures begin to bite, almost 30% of consumers polled by Toolkits and the National Research Group said that they planned to reduce the number of online subscriptions they hold.

But the second half of 2022 has shown that the subscriptions market is resilient. Netflix saw a spectacular bounceback in Q3, adding 2.41 million new subscribers and beating its own and analyst expectations. Publishers are seeing continued growth too: AOP members reported digital subscriptions growth at almost 15% over the last 12 months. Some have reported record performances, from the New York Times’ 9 million subscriber milestone to The Economist posting its most profitable year since 2016 on the back of 1.2 million subscribers, and total subscription revenues accounting for more than 60% of its revenues.

We may yet see a downturn depending on how pressures on consumers play out over winter. But for now, people are happy to pay for content they find valuable.

5. Email newsletters are an unexploited revenue opportunity

Email may be one of the oldest forms of digital communication, but as a revenue driver it is still very under–used by mainstream publishers. Despite the wave of Substack–led paid newsletter creators over the past few years, few publishers have attempted anything similar themselves.

A recent report from WAN–IFRA highlighted the opportunity gap around email newsletters. 48% of publishers they surveyed did not monetize their newsletters. Of those that did, advertising and exclusive sponsorships were used by 32% and 16% respectively. Significantly, newsletters were used as part of a subscription bundle rather than standalone offering were used by 30% of publishers.

Quartz is one publisher who dropped its paywall entirely this year. Interestingly, they still kept the membership scheme, and instead have a suite of premium emails they send to members. “We found that 75% of Quartz members read us primarily through email, so we’ve been putting more of our best stuff directly in their inboxes,” said CEO Zach Seward.

When it comes to advertising, I wouldn’t wish the ad tech that plagues the rest of the internet on our email inboxes. But the tech to improve the advertising experience in email via personalisation and segmentation is getting there. Now, we just have to behave responsibly with it. Newsletters have a reputation as a premium engagement method for a good reason.

6. News headlines are in a negative spiral

Following the headline findings from the Reuters Digital News Report about the growing issue of news avoidance, there has been much discussion this year on how to rebuild trust with audiences. As publishers compete for attention online, they have found ways of standing out and getting readers to click and share content. But this isn’t necessarily positive.

One study in particular from PLoS ONE showed just the extent to which media headlines have become increasingly negative over the past two decades. The research showed headlines expressing anger were up 104% since the year 2000, fear, 150%, and sadness 54%. This isn’t because the world has got worse, even if “permacrisis” is the word of the year for 2022. Rather, negative and emotionally–arousing headlines are more likely to attract clicks and attention, which in turn means more revenue for publishers.

It’s a difficult cycle to break. The sheer amount of competition for attention means that it’s understandable publishers have to find ways of breaking through the noise. But the long–term effects of stoking outrage and despair on a near–constant basis are just beginning to be recognized.

7. Some emerging tech is good to jump on early. Others, not so much!

Publishers who tried early experiments in NFTs have been richly rewarded. From digital covers to archive images, NFT projects have generated millions for brands like TIME, The Economist, Forbes, and Playboy over the past few years.

However, the bottom has since fallen out of the NFT market, driven by the tough year cryptocurrency has had. NFT trading volumes collapsed 97% between January and September this year. So it’s not surprising to see publishers like CNN wrapping up their NFT marketplaces and projects.

Caution in other areas, however, is wise. Apart from a couple of publishers like Vogue testing metaverse experiences, it has been mainly consumer brands rushing to the space.

Audiences so far have not followed. Meta had aimed to have 500,000 monthly active users for its flagship platform Horizon Worlds by the end of 2022. By October, they had revised that figure down to 280,000, although the current tally is allegedly less than 200k. Other metaverse platforms are also struggling; audits on Sandbox and Decentraland have shown that user numbers are small. Platforms seeing success like Roblox are primarily built for gaming. As yet, there is little justification for publishers to lever themselves into the metaverse at great expense.

Trends and strategy

What is more evident when compared with previous years is how quickly things can crash. We suspected when authoring last year’s edition that, for example, that the NFT bubble would burst. We couldn’t have foreseen that would happen just months later.

Instead, innovation – whether that be audience-building, revenue generation or product – is to be found in formats that have been around for decades. Podcasts, newsletters and apps have been used by publishers of all shapes and sizes this year to deepen relationships and reduce churn. The key is to be where your audience is with a product that they need. And so far, you won’t find them in the metaverse.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Featured Post | Innovation

Explore newsroom innovation with USA Today and Axios

July 7, 2022 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

DCN’s editorial director Michelle Manafy interviews Nicole Carroll, the Editor-in-chief of USA Today and Aja Whitaker-Moore the Executive Editor of Axios on Newsroom innovation: What’s the future of storytelling at the Collision conference, which was held in Toronto, Canada June 22-24, 2022.

[Full transcript below.]

WATCH/LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

One year later: Who won the pandemic newsletter boom

June 23, 2022 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

The newsletter gold rush is well under way. Media companies large and small are focused on their newsletter strategies. And the frontier towns of Substack, Revue and Ghost are packed with hopeful writers and journalists hoping to strike a rich vein of subscribers. But—as with real world gold rushes—there will be big winners and a wider array of also-rans, whose grand plans didn’t pan out.

Just as we are progressing from web2.0 to web3, the editorial newsletter has moved to the next level, driven in part by the emergence of integrated platforms. While the email inbox is still the destination for the final product, the ability to integrate sign-ups across social platforms and dedicated newsletter ad tools have propelled the medium to its next stage.

Between the development of those new tools and the recognition that completable, digestible news formats have value in the constantly updating nature of digital news, it’s small wonder that so much time and effort is being poured into newsletter strategy. And, driven in part by the pandemic, last year saw a raft of newspapers and magazines doubling down on newsletters for community development and revenue purposes.

The revenue models

Paid subscriptions to Substack’s newsletters exploded to more than one million late last year. Mid-2019, that number was closer to 50,000. And it isn’t just the newsletter platforms that have reaped the benefits of a bumper year for sign-ups.

The New York Times, which has around 17 million subscribers to its newsletters, announced last year that it is to make a third of those subscriber-only. Its decision around which were to be paid-for products was based largely on which newsletters it saw as being better for discovery and which had revenue potential. Its editorial director of newsletters Adam Pasick attributed that potential to growth in newsletter sign-ups from people desperate for news about the pandemic and the U.S. election.

Of course The New York Times is not alone. Organizations like The Financial Times and Axios also so their investment in newsletters pay off during the pandemic.

Perhaps the best measure of the maturation of the space is the level of experimentation that has gone into newsletter revenue strategies. Mel Magazine, buoyed by subscription success, launched a trio of paid-for newsletters in March 2021. In January of this year, the newsletter Dirt launched DirtDAO which allows its subscribers to use branded NFTs to vote on and commission stories for its writers.

On the other end of the scale, the Manchester Mill is a local newsletter published to a few thousand people in a Northern UK town. Its founder Joshi Hermann told me that 2020 and 2021 outpaced his expectations for signups: “In the first year, we’ve picked up just over 1000, which is really promising, probably slightly more than I expected given the notorious difficulty of building up subscriptions in the first place for massive content and stuff. So, I’m really delighted with that.”

Beyond paid-for newsletters, ad-supported formats are increasingly popular. Andreas Jürgensen, CEO and co-founder of newsletter ad platform Passendo, said: “There’s… a whole resurgence of publishers who are email first, and are basically building strategies around email. Then web becomes secondary, or might not even exist in the mix for them. These guys have seen the light, in regards to this as a trusted channel of the future.”

But that gold rush can’t last forever. There is increased competition amid a range of newly launched newsletters from individuals and newspapers alike. With a potential impending economic crunch, sponsors and advertisers will have to cut spend, and the public won’t necessarily prioritize newsletters. So while publications might be looking to newsletters for post-Covid revenue growth, they will have to contend with growing headwinds.

However, as bad as that might be for major publishers, it will be far worse for individual newsletter creators.

Squashed by the giants

Larger publications have the resources to keep newsletters going through a slump or take the time to transition the strategy, such as for discovery over direct revenue. Individuals who have launched newsletters will be first to feel the pinch.

Neal Freyman is managing editor of Morning Brew, which preempted much of the discussion around newsletters as an editorial product when it launched in 2017. He explains: “I think it was a bit of a pandemic blip kind of thing, as we’re seeing a lot of the pandemic winners kind of fall back to Earth.

“It’s an insane amount of work to put out a newsletter every day. So, I do think you’ll see the level of individual newsletter creators fall back down to earth and realize that you know, a support system is really needed. You might see some of these writer collectives start forming, but then you’re basically looking back at a media company, again, with sales and all that.”

One early piece of evidence for that was the closure of a long-running freelancer-focused newsletter in the UK. In the announcement, the sole creator Anna Codrea-Rado noted: “There are lots of reasons for this difficult decision, but they can be summed up quite simply: it’s just not working. Most pressingly, the maths doesn’t add up anymore. The number of paying subscribers isn’t high enough to make this one-woman newsletter business sustainable anymore.”

Some of that pressure comes from the fact that the majority of consumers who choose to be informed through newsletters signed up via major publications rather than individuals. According to the latest Digital News Report only 16% of that cohort are signed up to newsletters run by individuals. Meanwhile, 53% are signed up via “mainstream media organizations.”

The Report also notes that, to some extent, the newsletter boom is a US-centric trend: “The ‘Substack revolution’ for news is still primarily a U.S. phenomenon and it is not guaranteed to catch on elsewhere, especially given the difference in market size and context.” It is notable that most of the non-U.S .publications that launched paid-for newsletters did so with modest aspirations in terms of subscribers: Mel Magazine’s three paid-for newsletters had a goal of 10,000 subscribers within their first six months.

The outlook for individual-based newsletters, then, is iffy and exposed to volatility in the wider economy. But for bigger publications, newsletters are set to retain their primacy as a tool to entice readers into their ecosystems. There might the massive market for subscription newsletters the industry might hope fore. However, newsletters still offer unmatched value as a way to connect with audiences and add value for subscribers.

The newsletter boom: capitalizing on the intimacy of the inbox

October 21, 2021 Micaeli Rourke – Independent Media Reporter

When it comes to building direct relationships with readers, newsletters boast a superpower: intimacy. In addition to being a direct avenue for relationship-building with readers, newsletters are also major drivers of revenue diversification and provide insights from first-party data. As such, they have become an all-purpose survival tool for publishers.

“There are so many ways technology has helped email newsletters become a replacement for the newspaper and magazine as people’s view into the world and how they get news and information,” says Kerel Cooper, CMO of email service provider LiveIntent. “It’s in your inbox. It’s there almost on-demand when you’re ready to consume it.”

LiveIntent’s Industry Pulse Survey, published in July, found that 87% of publishers and marketers were actively investing in email and 94% were prioritizing scaling their email programs this year.

“Prior to the Covid pandemic, we were seeing newsletters trending in a very positive direction. People were spending more than five hours a day between their personal and work emails,” Cooper explained. “With the pandemic and everyone being home, that growth accelerated.”

The FT’s newsletter machine

Sarah Ebner, Head of Newsletters at the Financial Times, agrees with Cooper that newsletters were already “having a moment” before Covid struck.

“Newsletters have been ‘the big thing’ and then ‘not the big thing’ for probably a decade,” says Ebner. “[In] the last year, with the pandemic, because many people found themselves in a situation where they were stuck at home and hungry for information, newsletters became a very big tool. People wanted information and news sources they could trust.”

To quote journalist Faisal Kim, “What could they deem more trustworthy than emails they’d chosen to receive in their inboxes?”

Currently offering 32 curated newsletters and counting, FT was early to embrace the newsletter distribution channel. Way back in 2019, shortly after crossing the 1 million subscriber threshold, they began using newsletter polls to increase subscriber retention.

“We know that the engagement rate is very high for FT subscribers,” Ebner explained. “It’s even higher if they’re newsletter readers, which is a really good thing.”

According to Ebner, readers on a trial are 134% more likely to be retained if they subscribe to a newsletter. “[Newsletters] drive traffic and engagement. They also definitely enhance loyalty and create habits and they really can push people to subscribe and donate,” Ebner told me. “You can also promote events or other newsletters through them. So, they do a lot of things in a really simple way.”

The personality-driven future of newsletters

Again, given the intimacy of the inbox, it isn’t a surprise that readers develop a relationship with newsletter authors, not just the publishing brands behind them.

Last April when David Leonhardt was appointed to lead The New York Times’ flagship morning newsletter, he was given the title of “writer, host, and anchor.” For a newsletter that reaches the inbox of over 17 million subscribers, Leonhardt has the equivalent audience of some primetime news programs. “Host and anchor are the language of TV, which I’m sure isn’t accidental,” wrote Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton. “Morning shows have used the personal connection between anchor and viewer, reinforced daily, to build extraordinarily profitable businesses.”

Independent publishing platforms like Substack are leveraging this connection and luring top writers from newsrooms like salaried moths to a self-employed flame. In response, publishers have begun to embrace the personality-driven content structure more boldly in their newsletter offerings.

“One of the amazing things about newsletters is that you build up that direct relationship with the writer and you trust them,” FT’s Ebner said. “When we relaunched Brussels Briefing as Europe Express, I spoke to [Britain After Brexit newsletter author] Peter Foster and asked him, ‘Can you mention it?’ Because he wrote it in his own words, saying ‘This is really good and you should sign up for it,’ it didn’t look like it was from an advert. That was the most clicked-on link in his newsletter that week.”

Publishers are not blind to the power of personality-driven newsletters. In fact, many are embracing it. Just last week, The Atlantic announced it would be hiring independent newsletter authors to write under their brand (and behind The Atlantic’s paywall). Still remaining semi-autonomous, newsletter writers will not be full-time employees and “will have some light oversight from Atlantic editors.” They will earn base pay and additional incentive payments if their readers convert to Atlantic subscribers.

“When you think about how brands and publishers want consumers to spend more time with them, the more of a direct relationship you have, the more you can understand who the users are and their likes and their intent, the better you are in a position to provide them services to continue to stay engaged with your brand,” said LiveIntent’s Cooper.

“It’s definitely part of the strategy to have a strong anchor to many of these newsletters,” said incoming VP of Audience at Axios, Ryan Kellett. “You’ll notice that some of them come from teams. And some of that is the sustainability of the newsletter. It is very very hard to write a daily newsletter.” Kellet joined Axios last month after over a decade at The Washington Post. He most recently worked as Senior Director of Audience where he oversaw digital strategy and subscriber growth.

Axios Local’s rapid expansion

While some publishers like The Telegraph have recently chosen to embrace the “less is more” newsletter strategy by offering “fewer, more focused newsletters,” other leading media organizations are maximizing their newsletter model by replicating it in local markets.

Late last year, Axios launched a free-to-readers newsletter model for local news markets called Axios Local. According to Axios, “The daily morning newsletters cover the most consequential news and developments unfolding in each of the cities.” Their editorial model embraces personality-driven content by recruiting the most prominent writers from each of those local markets to “anchor” Axios Local’s newsletters.

Kellett cites Axios Chicago’s Monica Eng and Justin Kaufmann, two veteran reporters and “former pillars of public radio in Chicago,” who began co-anchoring Axios Chicago’s morning newsletter in August, as examples of how personality-driven content is integral to the success of certain newsletters. However, speaking on broader terms than just one company, Kellett emphasizes the challenges of newsletter writing that often go overlooked.

“It is often underappreciated how hard it is to put out [newsletters] on a day-to-day basis and do a number of other things like attending community events, actually reporting stories, engaging on social media…” said Kellett. “Obviously, we want to have the strongest writers and the strongest personalities to be the anchors. But part of it is thinking about sustainability and the teams that are required to feed some of those newsletters as well.”

First launched in Charlotte in December 2020, Axios Local has expanded to morning newsletters in 14 cities across the US in less than a year, with plans to expand to 11 more during the first half of 2022, according to Kellett. Axios Local is forecast to make at least $5 million in newsletter revenue this year, with $2 million alone expected to come from its Charlotte newsletter.

Leveraging first-party data in a cookie-less world

Source: LiveIntent’s Industry Pulse Survey

Apart from the outward benefits of fostering engagement and revenue, the email address itself has become all the more valuable with regard to first-party data collection, especially considering the impending death of the third-party cookie. According to LiveIntent’s July survey, “99% of survey respondents believe that the email address is vital to the future of identity resolution after the third-party cookie’s demise.”

LiveIntent’s Kerel Cooper supports this position strongly by saying, “Third-party cookies have been a staple of targeting and monetization for a very long time in our space. As a publisher or brand, you have to think, ‘Okay, if this data set, this foundational element that I’ve used to build my business is going away, I need to replace it with another data set.’ First-party data and first-party audiences are going to be super key to that transition.”

“The email channel has already operated in the same manner in which the browsers have been wanting to get to forever,” Cooper continued. “There’s no third-party cookies. You have to opt-in or in some cases double opt-in to receive content from publishers or brands. And there are heavy privacy rules and regulations. Think CAN SPAM. It’s an environment where browsers already want to go.”

However, the value of email addresses may prove to become even more coveted, given Apple’s recent rollout of the iOS 15 update, which introduces Mail Privacy Protection to Apple Mail users.

As AdWeek’s Ronan Shields explained, “Mail Privacy Protection will prevent brands from knowing whether a user opens one of their emails and hide IP addresses so that senders can’t link that action to other online activity or determine a user’s location.” The jury is still out on just how detrimental this change will be to publishers existing strategies for leveraging first-party subscriber data.

As our digital sphere barrels forward to 2022, newsletters rightly serve as a powerful multi-purpose survival tool for publishers. Now that the churning momentum of independent newsletter platforms has gained the attention of tech giants like Google, Twitter, and Facebook, each of whom has announced plans to “get in the newsletter game,” publishers must plan to keep this particular survival tool very sharp. At the same time, while exploring all of a newsletter’s advantages, they must never forget the simplicity of the medium and its eternal superpower: intimate, welcomed, and frequent access to readers’ attentions.

TREE KEY ‘C’S FOR NEWSLETTER SUCCESSES

Newsletter expert Ryan Kellett outlines three basic tenets to foster reader loyalty in newsletters:

1. Create high-quality content on a frequent and regular basis

“As we all know, that email address is very valuable. You want to really try to deliver as consistently and as best as you can and at as high a quality as possible on a day-to-day basis.”

2. Consistency yields dependability yields loyalty

“Consistency is really important in developing that relationship so the reader trusts that you’re there on a certain cadence, be it daily or weekly or bi-weekly…I think one of the reasons why daily works so well is because it says ‘Every day at 7am, that [newsletter] is going to be there for you consistently.’ You could have anything happen in your life and it will be there.”

3. Community-building capabilities

“I think with newsletters being so intimate, oftentimes it can be a little bit tough to say ‘newsletter community.’ It may or may not actually exist. But I think with really great newsletters, you are building a community there, despite it sort of being a one-to-one experience…It just depends on the medium… Podcasts, websites/comments sections/forums, and newsletters all have their own type of community.”

A focus on digital opportunities

A newsletter-first business

From a daily newsletter to a portfolio of personalities

A premium ad offering

Quality over quantity

Pricing reflects content value, not audience size

Conversion rates reveal wide performance gaps

Retention determines subscriber value

Effective newsletter retention

An effective email tool with revenue benefits

Audience growth from the network effect

Substack alternatives vie for market share

Substack: Just another platform?

Using the editorial to go deeper

Publishing newsletters as stories

Linking newsletter strategy with events

Other growth tactics

1. Don’t be afraid to center personalities

2. Prioritize newsletters for retention and conversion

3. Consider repackaging content for educational courses

4. Prioritize list-cleaning for a healthy newsletter strategy

The takeaway

Consolidating newsletters

(Re)launching print magazines

Paywalling podcasts

ARPU over subscriber numbers

Going forward

Platform usage

Embracing newsletters

AI attraction

Ending third-party cookies

Future focus

Engaging younger readers

Balancing information delivery

The importance of evergreen content

Where next for the FT’s newsletter courses

1. Adblocking has returned to an all–time high

2. Streaming accounts for the majority time spent with TV

3. Local news can be profitable on just reader revenue

4. There’s no sign of subscriptions decline…yet

5. Email newsletters are an unexploited revenue opportunity

6. News headlines are in a negative spiral

7. Some emerging tech is good to jump on early. Others, not so much!

Trends and strategy

WATCH/LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Michelle Manafy

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Aja Whitaker-Moore

Michelle Manafy

Aja Whitaker-Moore

Michelle Manafy

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Aja Whitaker-Moore

Michelle Manafy

Aja Whitaker-Moore

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Aja Whitaker-Moore

Michelle Manafy

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Aja Whitaker-Moore

Michelle Manafy

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Nicole Carroll

Michelle Manafy

Aja Whitaker-Moore

Michelle Manafy