Poynter Local News Initiative Program: Table Stakes

Funding support from

Webinar #7:
Benchmarks & Best Practices for Building and
Monetizing an Engaged Audience
March 12, 2019
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shortly after it ends.
- 1
Welcome everyone

- 2
Agenda

1. Why this topic?

2. Matt Skibinski, Reader Revenue
Advisor and Consultant with The
Lenfest Institute
and head of general operations
for NewsGuard
3. Upcoming dates to
remember.

- 3
Back to Table Stake #4 and the funnel
1. Serve targeted
audiences with targeted
content

Audiences
first
2. Publish on the 3. Produce and publish
platforms used by your continuously to match 6. Partner to
targeted audiences your audiences’ lives expand your
capacity and
4. Funnel occasional 5. Mobilize your entire capabilities at
enterprise around lower and
users into habitual,
growing and diversifying more flexible
valuable and paying revenue from the cost
loyalists audiences you build

7. Use the “mini-publisher” concept to drive audience growth, revenue and

profitability within targeted audiences and platforms
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Funnel is also about Table Stake #1
1. Serve targeted audiences with
targeted content

- 5
And Table Stakes #2 and #3

2. Publish on the platforms used by your

targeted audiences

3. Produce and publish continuously to

match your audiences’ lives

- 6
As well as Table Stake #5

Programmatic
advertising

5. Mobilize your
entire enterprise
around growing
and diversifying
revenue from
the audiences
you build

Subscriptions/
membership
- 7
And Table Stake #6

Content

Distribution

Technology

6. Partner to
expand your
capacity and
Data
capabilities at
lower and more
flexible cost
- 8
And Table Stake #7

Owning a slice
of the funnel
from top to
bottom

7. Use the “mini-publisher” concept to drive audience growth,

revenue and profitability within targeted audiences and platforms
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 The Engagement Driven News Organization
Benchmarks & Best Practices for Building and Monetizing an Engaged
Audience—from 500+ Publications Worldwide

- 10
A lot of people are talking about engagement

Slide 11

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But what exactly is engagement?

• When a user views a certain number of articles in a month?

• When a user spends a certain amount of time on your site?

• When a user shares your content?

• When a user opens your newsletters?

• When a user tells their friends about you?

• When a user… [insert one of a dozen other indicators here].

Slide 12

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Context: Ad revenue is down across the news industry

Slide 13

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 Context: To compete in the audience volume game,
publishers chase clicks with cheap, low-quality
content

5X more
volume vs

Source: NewsWhip
Slide 14

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 The Definition of Engagement that Matters:

Engagement is when readers find your content, products and brand

valuable enough that they are willing to pay for it.

Slide 15

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Digital subscriptions and memberships make serving
quality journalism that engages readers your top
business priority.

Slide 16

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Today, we’ll look at benchmark data from 500+ publishers
The benchmarks in this presentation come from over 500 publishers across a range of different kinds of
publications over the course of several years.

Categories Examples

Newspapers

Membership Organizations

Magazines, Digital-Only
Brands, Etc.

Slide 17

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Today, we’ll look benchmark data from 500+ publishers

How to Use How Not to Use Benchmarks

Benchmarks
• To diagnose where your publication falls
relative to the norm.
• To understand where you might want to
focus attention or investigate further.
• As targets in SMART goals and/or as
KPIs to display to newsroom and
marketing teams.
• To predict possible performance on key
metrics in budgeting and modeling
exercises.
• Drawing conclusions too quickly—without
investigation of what might be causing
strong or weak performance.
• As a replacement for more granular
metrics—such as channel-, segment-, or
campaign-specific conversion data.
• Assuming the median or average
performance should be the target on
most metrics—you want to be an elite
player!

Slide 18

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The Audience Engagement Funnel

Occasional
readers

Members / Subscribers

Engaged Subscribers / Members

Slide 19

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The Audience Engagement Funnel
Optimizing the Audience Funnel
Entire Market

Digital Audience
Unique Visitors by Platform // Social Media Audience

Occasional
Readers
One-Time Readers // Occasional Readers

Regular
Readers
Regular Readers // Stop Rate // Newsletter List Size // Newsletter
Engagement // Social Engagement

Paying Users
Total Members/Subscribers // Audience-Member Ratio // ARPU/ARPM
Churn & Retention // Customer Life // Customer/Member Lifetime Value

Engaged Subscribers
Engaged Members or Subscribers // Event Attendance
/ Members
Slide 20

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Or… The Reader Engagement Journey

Awareness Experience Habit Preference Loyalty

Slide 21

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Subscription marketing is about increasing your
readers’ engagement until they’re ready to subscribe

Slide 22

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Profile of a likely subscriber or member
2-3x
5-10x
Lives in your
Reads 5+ articles market area and
per month reads local news

2-3x 5-10x

Reads multiple Subscribes to a

categories of newsletter or has
content provided email

2-3x 4-6x
Accesses your Follows your brand
content across on social media
multiple devices

Slide 23

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Understanding Market Penetration

Slide 24

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The Audience Engagement Funnel

Occasional
readers

Members / Subscribers

Engaged Subscribers / Members

Slide 25

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Audience Engagement: Some Definitions
For our purposes today, I’m looking at audience engagement as a measure of unique article pages
viewed in a given month. You can segment users by this metric into any categories you’d like, but for
benchmarking, we have three key segments:

• One-Time Readers: Users who view one, but only one, article page in a given month.

• Occasional Readers: Users who view between 2 and 5 articles in a given month.

• Regular Readers: Users who view 6 or more article pages in a given month.

Slide 26

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One way to measure engagement is the proportion of
“Regular Readers” viewing 5+ articles per month
Audience Content Consumption
90%
80%
80%
69%
70%

60%

50% 43%
40%
30%
30% 25% 27%

20% 17%

10% 6%
3%
0%
Low Engagement Average Engagement High Engagement
One-Time Readers Occasional Readers Regular Readers
Slide 27

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Most successful digital subscription publishers ask
5-10% of their digital audience to pay
Industry-Wide Benchmarks:
• Stop or ‘Ask’ Rate is a very strong
predictor of overall subscription sales Percentile Stop Rate
95% 8.4%
• The most common cause of a plateau is
Successful pubs 90% 6.0%
not stopping enough users. are here…
80% 4.2%
• This can and should be segmented by
70% 3.0%
platform / channel, but this industry-wide
data set is based on desktop data 60% 2.5%
primarily. Not here! 50% 1.8%
40% 1.0%
30% 0.6%
20% 0.4%
10% 0.2%
5% 0.0%
Slide 28

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Stop or ‘Ask’ Rate Breakdown by Platform
Total Website Mobile
10.89% 12.87% 13.81% Most meter / gateway “stops” driven by
desktop…
8.36% 12.05% 6.75%
7.05% 13.81% 1.60%
5.57% 3.02% 4.03%
…Even as audiences move heavily to
3.99% 7.59% 2.08%
mobile devices!
3.64% 4.34% 2.60%
3.53% 3.03% 3.97% Desktop vs. Mobile
3.20% 5.50% 2.38% Audience
2.61% 5.18% 2.99% 100.00%
2.56% 4.47% 1.21% 50.00%
2.26% 3.15% 1.87% 0.00%
0.28% 0.61% 0.06% % of Total Digital Audience
Desktop Mobile

Slide 29

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Audience Engagement: Membership Organizations
Publication One-Time 2-5 Articles 5+ Articles Key takeaways:
A 2.27% 84.01% 13.72%
B 71.75% 17.03% 11.22% • Average performance is 4.22% of
C 34.13% 56.52% 9.35% Unique Visitors as Regular Readers.
D 74.00% 21.51% 4.49%
• Data from this group closely matches
E 72.56% 23.88% 3.56%
broader data set available.
F 74.95% 21.72% 3.33%
G 76.23% 20.57% 3.20% • Wide range of results within this group.
H 65.69% 31.59% 2.72%
I 74.83% 22.79% 2.38% • Better performance on this metric
J 84.78% 13.76% 1.46% correlates with higher conversion,
K 47.48% 51.25% 1.27% retention, & total membership numbers.
L 47.88% 51.30% 0.82%
M 92.43% 6.80% 0.77%
N 47.77% 51.48% 0.74%
AVERAGE 61.91% 33.87% 4.22%

Slide 30

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Stop Rate Breakdown – Newspapers
Key takeaways: Stop Rate
10.89%
• Looking at large metro dailies in isolation, typical
8.36%
stop rates are substantially higher—with a median
stop rate 2x as high as the industry as a whole. 7.05%
5.82%
• There are different reasons for high and low stop
5.57%
rates—it’s important to understand why your stop
rate is high or low. 3.99%
3.64%
• As a general matter (and unsurprisingly) publishers
with higher stop rates are selling more digital 3.53%
subscriptions. 3.20%
2.61%
2.56%
2.26%
0.28%

Slide 31

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There are two ways to increase a low stop rate:
increase engagement, or tighten the access rules
1
Meter If your stop rate is below the norm, the
Rules first step is to determine whether it is an
issue of your meter rules an issue of
poor audience content consumption.

2 If your meter rules are within the norm,

but your stop rate is low, audience
content consumption is likely the issue Stop or
‘Ask’ Rate

Audience
Content 3
3
Consumption If you have 5-10% of Unique Visitors
viewing 5-10 stories per month, and you
are not catching them, your meter limit is
likely too high.

Slide 32

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Meter Limits – Industry Norms

Meter Limit Distribution

% of Publishers

Slide 33

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In addition to meter limit and content scope,
publishers can experiment with other ‘levers’ of access
control Lengthening or shortening the
Meter Timeframe meter counter timeframe can
increase or reduce your ‘stop rate’
while the number of free articles
remains constant
30 Days

45 Days

Meter Targeting Rules

Geographic Targeting Content Targeting Propensity Targeting

Slide 34

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Once users are stopped by a subscription or
membership message, conversion becomes the focus
Industry-Wide Benchmarks:
• Paid Stop Conversion Rate is an important metric for
understanding sales conversion as a function of content Percentile PSCR
access limitation. 95% 1.93%
• While more granular conversion rates are needed to 90% 1.31%
manage a powerful marketing strategy, PSCR can be used 80% 1.04%
to understand overall performance.
70% 0.83%
• Paid Stop Conversion Rate * Stop % * Total Audience = 60% 0.62%
Monthly New Starts Not here! 50% 0.54%
40% 0.47%
30% 0.40%
20% 0.33%
10% 0.24%
5% 0.21%
Slide 35

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Key Metric For Membership Organizations: Regular
Reader Conversion Rate (RRCR)

Regular Reader Conversion Rate

Regular Reader
High Performer: 4.76%
Conversion Rate
Median Performer: 1.56%
Formula:

Net Monthly New Members Low Performer 0.5%

Monthly ‘Regular Readers’

Average: 2.11%

Slide 36

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Profile of a likely subscriber
2-3x
5-10x
Lives in your
Reads 5+ articles market area and
per month reads local news

2-3x 5-10x

Reads multiple Subscribes to a

categories of newsletter or has
content provided email

2-3x 4-6x
Accesses your Follows your brand
content across on social media
multiple devices

Slide 37

- 37
Email List Size – Benchmarks for Newspapers

Total Marketable Unique Newsletter

Email List Subscribers
5,036,906 1,803,337
2,963,827 1,212,788
1,000,207 382,373
487,970 365422
415,558 288,771
397,800 270,842
345,148 155,000
242477 147,041
123,709 128,516
98,397 104,301
53,306 97,489
50,524 61,580

Slide 38

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Email List Size – Local Membership Organizations
Publication Marketable Emails
A 237,911
B 180,577
C 34,093
D 31,660
E 29,245
F 27,519
G 24,138
H 21,103
I 18,491
J 13,964
K 12,930
L 10,238
M 9,802
N 9,756
O 6,790
P 2,007
Q 1,921
R 1,777
- 39
Percentile Newsletter Subs
A 237,911
B 95,146
C 30,378
D 30,208
E 28,115
F 27,519
G 20,091
H 13,970
I 13,427
J 11,486
K 9,972
L 9,756
M 6,868
N 6,790
O 2,007
P 1,820
Q 1,777
R 362
Slide 39
Newsletter Open & Click-Through Rates
Percentile Newsletter Open Rate
A 43.10%
B 35.25%
C 35.00%
D 35.00%
E 32.00%
F 30.00%
G 30.00%
H 27.00%
I 24.79%
J 24.00%
K 22.03%
L 22.00%
M 13.90%
N 13.30%
O 6.70%
P 1.30%
- 40
Percentile Newsletter Click Rate
A 15.9%
C 16.0%
D 14.45%
E 10.0%
F 10.0%
G 10.0%
H 9.0%
I 7.08%
J 7.0%
K 6.0%
L 6.0%
M 5.10%
N 2.36%
O 1.39%
Slide 40
Publishers should track not only overall open rates,
but also their audience segmented by # of opens
Note: On average, publishers
Weekly Newsletters – Audience Breakdown who provided data are
30% 28%
sending 25 emails to
newsletter readers per
25% month.
21% 20%
20%

15%

10% 9%

5%

0%
Typical Performer High Performer
Open One Newsletter Open 60+%
Slide 41

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Total Audience x Stop or ‘Ask’ Rate x Conversion Rate
=
Monthly Subscriptions or Memberships Sold

Slide 42

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Benchmark: Monthly Retention Rate
Industry-Wide Benchmarks:
• There are many ways to look at churn as an element of
retention. For benchmarking purposes, we use a simple, Percentile RR%
combined monthly rate. 95% 97.0%
90% 96.4%
• Retention Rate can be used to calculate average customer
lifetime and customer lifetime value. 80% 95.8%
70% 95.1%
• We don’t yet have your retention data, so this data is taken 60% 94.8%
from a broader set of publishers.
Not here! 50% 94.4%
40% 93.9%
30% 93.2%
20% 92.2%
𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀 𝑋𝑋
𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅% = 10% 91.3%
𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀 𝑋𝑋 − 1) + (𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀 𝑋𝑋
5% 89.6%

Slide 43

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Because churn compounds over time, small changes
in the rate can have a big impact on revenue over time
Expected Customer Retention After 1 Year - Paid, Monthly Products
100

90
Percent of Customer Active

80

70 64.4%

60
50.1%
50

40 33.5%

30

20

10

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Months After Purchase

90th Percentile 50th Percentile 10th Percentile

Slide 44

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Pricing can affect retention rate—and each publisher
needs to test to find the right set of offers
Price Top 10% Median Bottom 10%
$0 - $2 97.1% 94.9% 92.7%
$2.01 - $4.50 96.4% 94.5% 91.9%
$4.51 - $6.50 96.1% 94.7% 92.1%
$6.51 - $7.50 96.3% 94.5% 91.7%
$7.51 - $8.50 96.2% 93.6% 89.7%
$8.51 - $9.50 94.4%Not here! 92.4% 90.3%
$9.51 - $10.50 96.8% 94.8% 91.7%
$10.51 - 96.7% 93.4% 92.8%
$11.50
$11.51 - 96.4% 94.0% 91.6%
$12.50
$12.51 - 14.99 95.9% 94.1% 90.7%
Slide 45
$15.00+ 96.5% 92.4% 89.2%

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Digital-Only Subscription Pricing: Newspapers
Digital-Only, Digital-Only,
Weekly Monthly
$5.59 $24.22
$3.99 $17.29
$3.79 $16.42
$3.46 $14.99
$2.99 $12.96
$2.97 $12.87
$2.77 $11.99
$2.70 $11.70
$2.48 $10.74
$2.32 $10.06
$2.17 $9.40
$2.09 $9.06
$1.97 $8.54
$0.72 $3.10
Slide 46

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Average Revenue Per Recurring Member (Monthly)
Publication ARPRM Average Revenue Per Recurring Member
A $35.92
B $34.98 • One of the most important metrics to track to understand
C $25.00 your membership business.
D $17.40
E $16.71 • Defined as total revenue from members per time period
F $16.65 divided by total members during time period.
G $16.36
H $12.81 • Often calculated on a monthly basis.
I $12.55
J $11.56
• ARPRM / Monthly Churn Rate =
K $11.37
Average Member Lifetime Value
L $11.36
M $10.48
N $9.15
O $8.63
P $3.26

Slide 47

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But… the key to retention long-term is to engage all
subscribers in your digital products effectively
• Subscriber engagement measures the percentage of active Percentile SER%
subscribers that log-in to their accounts in a given month
95% 90.1%
• The leading 10 percent of publishers have almost 2.5X the 90% 87.3%
engagement rate as the bottom 10 percent 80% 82.9%
70% 78.7%
60% 74.4%
50% 71.0%
40% 64.8%
# 𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆 𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿𝐿 𝐼𝐼𝐼𝐼 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀 𝑋𝑋
𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆 𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸 = 30% 56.2%
# 𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆 𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀 𝑋𝑋
20% 48.3%
10% 36.1%
5% 27.8%

Slide 48

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 Engagement matters: There is a significant correlation
between subscriber ‘engagement’ and retention
Correlational Study: Monthly Retention vs. Subscriber Engagement
100%
90%
80%
Subscriber Engagement

70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
86% 88% 90% 92% 94% 96% 98% 100%
Avg. Monthly Retention
Slide 49

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Retention and price combine to form Customer
Lifetime Value – a key metric for ROI calculations
Industry-Wide Benchmarks:
• Customer Lifetime Value answers the question, “for each
new subscription sold, how much revenue do I generate?” Percentile CLTV
95% $339.98
• CLTV is a function of average price and retention rate.
90% $282.79
• This metric is critical for making decisions about paid 80% $217.18
marketing spend, product investments, and even
70% $186.38
newsroom resource allocation.
60% $157.56
• For example, if I have a CLTV of $140 and I Not
payhere!
$1000 for 50% $137.30
a campaign that converts 100 subscribers, I’ve generated
40% $124.09
$14 in revenue for every $1 spent on marketing.
30% $110.99
20% $93.02
𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴𝐴 𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀 𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆 𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅 𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝𝑝 𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆
𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶 = 10% $72.11
𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀 𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶 𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅
5% $50.75
Slide 50

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Stop Rate x Conversion Rate x Unique Visitors =
Monthly Subscriptions or Memberships Sold

Monthly Sales x CLTV =

Total Revenue Driven

Most successful subscription businesses have

about a 3:1 ratio of CLTV to customer acquisition
cost.

Slide 51

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Key strategies for improving retention
• Understand the source of your churn—including reasons for cancellation, causes of
payment delinquency, and other factors.

• Reach out to canceled subscribers to learn what went wrong—and improve your
products, offers, and customer service as a result.

• Prioritize and reward the newsroom for content that engages subscribers; show this
data side by side with broader traffic leaderboards that might emphasize a different
type of content instead.

• Find common characteristics of users who cancel and begin to model propensity to
churn based on these data points (as well as engagement data more broadly.

• Implement catch-and-save, win-back, and surprise and delight offers for users who are
likely to churn.

• Invest in more of the content that your subscribers love.

Slide 52

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Publishers should target their marketing activities to
focus on users at each stage of the funnel
• SEO & Social Strategy
• External Advertising Grow Audience
• Partnerships
• Word of Mouth

• Content Strategy Build

• Email & Newsletters Engagement
• Site Optimization

• Meter Optimization Maximize

• Marketing & Promotion Conversion
• Price & Message Testing
• Retargeting
Retain
Subs
• Member Benefits
• Billing Optimization
• Win-Back & Retention Marketing
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Publishers who invest in this model fully can build a
subscriber base of 5-15% of their digital audience
Benchmarks: Subs / Web User Subs / Regular Reader
12.00% 14.10%
14 Metro Daily
U.S. Newspapers 11.85% 13.13%
6.98% 5.38%
6.87% 5.11%
6.04% 4.64%
5.95% 4.37%
5.43% 3.48%
5.33% 2.56%
2.43% 2.39%
2.22% 1.86%
1.41% 1.62%
0.43% 0.62%

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Members as a percentage of total audience

Benchmarks: Percentile Member Rate

95th 9.93%
20 Membership 90th 8.20%
85th 5.56%
Organizations
80th 1.13%
75th 0.71%
70th 0.48%
65th 0.44%
60th 0.39%
55th 0.34%
50th 0.22%
45th 0.15%
40th 0.15%
35th 0.14%
30th 0.13%
25th 0.06%
20th 0.05%
15th 0.02%
10th 0.00%
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What Kinds of Content Drive Engagement, Conversion
& Retention?

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Local
• Users who view local news regularly are typically 5-10X more likely to subscribe than
users who view national news, wire sourced stories.

• Publications that produce more local (non-AP) content generate greater subscription
sales—sometimes by a factor of 10.

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Example: Article Scoring Defined as % of new
subscriptions sold for which
this article was in the user’s
“path to subscription” – i.e.,
the user viewed this as part
of their meter count before
Article 1 subscribing.

Article 2

Article 3

Article 4

Article 5

Article 6

Article 7

Article 8

Article 9

Article 10

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Unique / Distinctive
• Publications chasing page views have a
big incentive to produce nearly identical
articles about any popular or viral topic in
the news.

• Digital subscription models increasingly

invest in unique, distinctive content that
provides readers with a perspective,
angle, or reporting that only that
publication can provide.

• As you build up a base of digital

subscribers, you can learn from data and
invest in more of the kinds of content that
appeals to potential and actual
subscribers.

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Relevant to Daily Life
• Potential subscribers subscribe to news as a service. That means, in essence, that
they’re paying for access to information that helps them live better.

• Common topics that are likely to be highly viewed by subscribers and engaged
readers:

• Coverage of public transit, traffic, utilities, and other local resources.

• Information about new businesses, construction, and developments, and

economic changes (especially relating to job availability).

• Information about local politics, especially issues that affect education,

neighborhood development, and public safety.

• Local college & high school sports coverage (beyond scores)

• Local culture and arts news, especially shows and exhibits readers can visit
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Examples: NYT

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Data can tell you what content will resonate with your
most engaged readers
Content that drives new starts vs. Content viewed by subscribers

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Data can tell you what content will resonate with your
most engaged readers
• Four metrics on which to score content:

• % Contribution to New Subscriptions: The percentage of new subscriptions

sold in this time period for which the article was on the user’s path to conversion.

• % Engagement by Occasional Readers, Regular Readers, Subscribers: The

percentage of users in each segment who viewed this story.

• Relative Engagement Per Segment: Percentage engagement by each segment

divided by percentage engagement by all website users.
• >1 = Overperforming with this segment
• <1 = Underperforming with this segment

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From a brand they know and trust
• Don’t underestimate the power of your brand—or the value of spending precious
marketing resources defining your brand clearly in readers’ minds.

• Getting readers to know, trust, and feel connected to your brand is part of
building engagement.

• Newsrooms with rigorous journalistic standards have an opportunity to differentiate

themselves in the market. A 2018 Gallup study found readers were less likely to click
on stories in their social media feeds if they knew the source’s credibility and
transparency practices were sub-par and more likely to click if they knew the source
followed high journalistic standards.

• Brand recognition for news organizations among readers has dropped precipitously in
the past decade. But efforts like The Trust Project, NewsGuard, and others are offering
promising new outlets for quality news organizations to tout their high standards.

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Questions?

Thank You!

Email: matt@lenfestinstitute.org
Phone: 973.818.4698
Twitter: @mskibinski

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Todays session document and recording

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Coming up

Webinars Peer group updates In-person

• Aug 28 • Nov. 28-29 • Sept 5-7
• Oct. 23 • Jan. 29-30-31 • May 21-23
• Dec. 11 • March 26, 2-4 pm ET (Tom’s
• Jan. 15 group)
• Feb. 12 • March 28, 3-5 pm ET (Cheryl’s
• March 12 group)
• March 12 • April 2 and April 3, 1-3 pm ET
• April 16 (Quentin’s group)
• May 7

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