How the Met Gala Netted Vogue 100,000 Newsletter Sign-Ups

The fashion and style title Vogue broke site records for traffic, newsletter sign-ups and video views with its coverage of the annual Met Gala earlier this month, offering media companies a blueprint for translating cultural moments into recurring readerships. Rather than focus solely on maximizing traffic, the publisher employed a variety of strategies to capture email addresses, promote its newsletter offerings and move readers down the subscription funnel. With more media companies shifting focus to prioritize revenue per user, publishers will increasingly seek to translate pops of traffic into ongoing relationships with readers. “Of course scale is important to us, but we had some specific offerings this year tied to engagement and registration that are part of a larger goal for us,” said Anna-Lisa Yabsley, the global head of digital strategy at Vogue. “It's not just about subscribers––it's also about known users and readers that we can build a community around, both on the Vogue website and within our larger ecosystem.” Turning fly-by readers into known audience members In the seven-day period beginning with the Met Gala, the publisher attracted 11.5 million total visitors to the Vogue website, according to Yabsley. Of that cohort, 8 million engaged exclusively with Met-related content, an increase of 13% over last year. Its global websites attracted 12 million visitors in the same period. Vogue also used its Red Carpet Gallery feature, in which visitors could view and vote on celebrities’ outfits in real-time, to convert fly-by readers into known audience members. In order to vote, people had to enter an email address. The package, which attracted 2 million unique visitors in the seven-day period, generated 30,000 new registrants for the publisher. Visitors to the Red Carpet Gallery stayed on the page for an average of eight minutes, three times higher than the site average, Yabsley said. As changing privacy regulations render cross-site tracking infeasible, more publishers have embraced first-party data and contextual signals to serve relevant ads to website visitors. By requiring users to provide their email address in exchange for access to the Red Carpet Gallery, Vogue expanded its base of logged-in users, letting it serve more tailored ads in the future. Moving readers down the subscription funnel The influx of traffic also led to a windfall of new free subscribers to Vogue newsletters. In the seven-day period, 100,000 visitors signed up to receive a free newsletter from Vogue, a 100% increase compared to last year, according to the publisher. (This figure is separate from the 30,000 visitors who provided their email for access to the Red Carpet Gallery.) The majority of these new email recipients opted for the flagship newsletter product, Vogue Daily. The publisher also managed to convert a portion of its influx of readers into members of Vogue Club, the membership program it launched in March that costs $25 per month. Although the program is in its infancy, traffic from the Met Gala led to a 270% increase in member sign-ups compared to its daily average—and the day after the event generated the most memberships of any day since its launch. Both of these objectives reflect publishers' increasing focus on maximizing per-user revenue by pushing readers forward in their subscription journey, whether they are visiting for the first time or the fiftieth. Building on its NewFronts strategy with video At the Condé Nast NewFront, chief revenue officer Pamela Drucker Mann touted what she called a surround-sound strategy the media company had embraced. Titles plant their flags into marquee cultural events––the Met Gala for Vogue, the Oscars for Vanity Fair and soon the Super Bowl for GQ––and create a host of content to surround them, including written coverage, photography, videos, social campaigns, podcasts and more. In doing so, the media company aims to reflect the modern way people consume content: on multiple screens, at various times, over a variety of platforms. At the Met Gala, Vogue put the method into practice. The publisher produced 70 videos for YouTube exclusively, including pre-coverage, live reporting and post-event analysis. Across all platforms globally, Met-related video content generated 902 million views, a 110% increase from last year. Vogue also live-streamed the event on its 10 owned-and-operated Vogue websites, a handful of other Condé Nast publishers and across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. In total, the live-stream generated 25 million total views, an increase of 52% from last year, according to Yabsley. Condé Nast Digital Ad Revenues Rise 38% Year Over Year The publisher also shared real-time dispatches from the Met Gala using Instagram Reels and TikTok, which collectively generated 290 million views. Across all platforms, Vogue generated a total of 300 million views––four times more than last year––and gained 655,000 new followers. “We always have to strike the balance of increasing reach while also ensuring that the experience we create for our loyal readers offers something new as well,” Yabsley said. “We are a global company now, after all.”

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How Vogue’s Met Gala Coverage Generated 100,000 Newsletter Sign-Ups

The event attracted 12 million visitors to Vogue sites globally

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg