How The Independent Grew Its Email Sign-Ups 750% in 6 Months

In March 2020, The Independent embarked on a journey that has since led to substantial gains in its growing subscription program. The publisher joined the inaugural cohort of the GNI Subscriptions Lab, alongside seven other media companies, in an immersive program that lasted nearly nine months and was led by FT Strategies, the consultancy arm of the Financial Times. While there, The Independent worked with FT Strategies’ managing director Tara Lajumoke and her team of 22 to identify key areas in which it sought to improve, particularly subscriptions. At The Independent, which paywalls very little of its content, a subscription offers an ad-free experience, as well as access to exclusive newsletters and occasionally exclusive content. “What we have found is that, too often, people think of subscriptions as a particular department’s responsibility,” Lajumoke said. “In reality, it requires a collaborative, cross-department effort.” Now, nearly a year after the conclusion of the program, the early results suggest reason for optimism. After applying the insights it gleaned from its time in the GNI Subs Lab, the U.K.-based publisher has seen a 750% increase in monthly registrations (when someone shares their email address to sign up for a newsletter or access content), as well as an 18% reduction in churn and an 87% increase in its conversion rate, compared to the year prior. 3 Reasons Marketers Should Take Note of Google’s Newsletter Effort Ross Wilmot, the head of consumer marketing at The Independent, chalks those improvements up to a trio of factors: creating a bespoke engagement metric; using that metric to measure and sort readers; and expanding and streamlining its email-capturing methods. “Focusing on engagement helped us accelerate growth in other areas like acquisition and retention because they're so intrinsically linked,” Wilmot told Adweek. Creating a bespoke engagement metric Under the instruction of FT Strategies, The Independent crafted a proprietary equation to calculate engagement, which takes into consideration its audience, content offerings and business objectives. The Independent places very little of its content behind a paywall, so its engagement metric weighs more heavily which of its readers were seeking out its premium offerings. It launched its subscription product, Independent Premium, in 2018, and the annual option costs $82.99 before promotion. It also places emphasis on the number of visits over a 30-day period, or “active days,” rather than purely frequency of visit, which can be skewed by a reader who consumes a handful of articles in just one or two days. Categorizing readers by engagement Once The Independent has measured the engagement level of its readers, it uses that figure to sort them into cohorts, grouped on a macro level as Fly-bys, Fans and Super Fans. According to chief data and marketing officer Jo Holdaway, Fly-bys make up 90% of its readership, Fans 9% and Super Fans 1%. Each group then receives distinct marketing prompts designed to elicit different behaviors. A reader with low engagement, for instance, will receive encouragement to sign up for newsletters, which can help them build habit. Those with high engagement, on the other hand, will be steered toward a subscription. “What they're trying to do is understand who is most engaged with their brand and target their marketing activities in a way to progressively drive them,” said Michael Silberman, svp of strategy at Piano, a software and services company. “Then once they do become more engaged, they want to try and push them a bit more aggressively to end up converting.” This same philosophy informs its onboarding process. New readers will be exposed to an array of newsletters, services and subject matter to ensure they have the highest possible likelihood of discovering a product that they find worthwhile. Even then, The Independent continues to monitor their engagement, using prompts to spur activity in lapsed readers and ensuring that voracious readers receive a steady stream of the material that keeps them coming back. The publisher attributes its decrease in churn and rise in conversion rates largely to these efforts. Streamlining email capture When it entered the Subs Lab program, The Independent listed “increasing the size of its known audience” as a key objective. To do so, the publisher experimented with a number of factors involving their process of collecting emails. Multivariant testing led the publisher to discover that it captured emails most effectively by placing newsletter sign-ups in-line, rather than as pop-ups. It also made sure it prominently featured its newsletter landing page and ensured that every major vertical had a dedicated newsletter. Readers are prompted to register before they can read an article, though the language on the call to action stresses that the goal of identifying readers is to better serve them, not charge them. Through these efforts, The Independent saw an eleven-fold increase in the size of its known audience, though Wilmot declined to name the exact size of its email base. “We have our North Star framework, we know our plan for the next few years and now we have a focused path to get there,” Wilmot said.

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How The Independent Grew Its Email Sign-Ups 750%

The publisher worked with FT Strategies through the GNI Subscriptions Lab

Mark Stenberg

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