What Fever Pit’ch learned by asking, ‘How do readers want to be approached?’
Marcela Kunova, Journalism.co.uk,Germany-based soccer newsletter Fever Pit’ch started out as a Facebook group and, last year, evolved into a daily email with more than 11,000 paid subscribers and a 30 percent to 50 percent open rate. Much of its success has to do with the familiar, knowledgeable voice of publisher Pit Gottschalk and his commitment to an audience-first approach.
Looking at audience data, Gottschalk figures his readers are opening their emails in the privacy of their living rooms after a long day. Sending a newsletter is akin to be invited into someone’s living room, he says. Once there, he offers them entertaining soccer news and occasional ways to engage, like testing their soccer knowledge against his in a quiz. Publishers “often have the mindset of ‘What can we sell to readers?’” he says. The question they should be asking instead is: “How do readers want to be approached?”
The newsletter is sent each morning to ensure readers have the most important soccer news of the day before Gottschalk syndicates the content; each story generates up to half a million views every day.