Audience funnel: A primer
Funnel discipline aims to streamline and enhance audience engagement and conversion processes for modern newsrooms, adapting techniques from marketing and sales to the unique context of digital news.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Create a daily focus on watchdog reporting — renewing your newsroom’s sense of purpose and growing your digital audience.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Focusing on newsletter subscriber acquisition will increase your digital subscriptions and donations to help fund your newsroom and editorial projects.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: The Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, N.Y., is attracting new readers in the area’s nine most diverse ZIP codes by transforming its storytelling and moving its engagement into long-overlooked neighborhoods.
What gaps do you have in using audience funnel discipline? Take this quick assessment to find out.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Dedicate time to mapping user journeys with your staff.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: A first impression is important, and these strategies for city guides from Knox News can help turn newcomers into lifelong subscribers.
Disengagement isn’t easy to recover from, but carefully reconsidering content for target audiences might help.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: The Henrico (Va.) Citizen added 9,000+ email subscribers and generated $34,000 in reader revenue in one year.
Launch a pop-up newsletter when you anticipate a swell in a brand-new audience to capitalize on unique news moments.
From favorite diners to long-shuttered dance clubs, readers of all ages love waxing about the way things used to be. Nostalgia is a beat that can work for any newsroom.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: As a public media organization, don’t be satisfied by serving as a pass-through for PBS and NPR national programming. Expand your news reporting team and go beyond radio, creating a more robust website and digital app where people can access the latest news and information, as well as engage with your journalists.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: To grow revenue, work within your means and do things you are passionate about. Hone in on your team’s skill sets and partner with third-party companies to monetize your content across platforms.
To hold onto loyal readers, particularly those who read the print edition, encourage them to activate their digital access to your content including the eEdition, which often has more content than your print edition.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: If you want to maximize your digital subscription growth, you must have a focused plan on not only how to grow your subscriber base, but also how to retain and improve the engagement and loyalty of your current subscribers.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Prioritize digital subscribers over page views, and provide subscriber-only stories on topics that are vital and unique to your community.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Newsday is driving digital subscriptions and engagement with targeted newsletters.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the KPCC-LAist newsroom has invited questions from its audience. Nearly 4,000 people have written in. More than half of them have opted into newsletters, and nearly all have received a personal answer.