Understanding your audience

Knowing why people subscribe helps you write newsletters they actually want to read. And you can find that out without spending a penny - or much precious time - in these three low-effort ways.

A persona is a research-backed, semi-fictional profile that represents your ideal audience member.

How can we involve our subscribers in our newsletters and why would we want to? Let's start with the why. Here are two useful insights out of many in The Local News Playbook, a new detailed report by FT Strategies into the sustainability of local news media: 1. “Effective audience engagement depends on creating direct, two way relationships that meet people where they are and feel personal, responsive and conversational.” 2. “Newsletters are the most important retention tool

I worked with loyalty funnels a lot when I was leading audience strategy for Reach Plc's North West and North Wales news brands, and found they helped me understand audiences better and what I needed to implement to help them grow. Editorial audiences may have different needs to those of non-profits but the principle is the same - your audience members become more loyal as they move down the funnel. Those at the bottom are worth a lot more to you than those at the top and en

Have you found yourself unsubscribing from lots of newsletters lately, rather than just ignoring or deleting them? Or are you planning a post-Christmas clear out of your inbox to start the New Year with less digital clutter? It’s pretty common for newsletters to see a spike in unsubscribers at this time of year for a number of reasons including: Our inboxes are flooded with promotional emails - sales, gift guides, last-minute shipping deadlines and festive messages - and it g

The reason for starting a newsletter is usually about what you want - you're looking for a new way to increase visits to your website, you're keen to share some of the expertise you've built up over the years, you want the chance to write. Those things are important. Without a clear goal for your newsletter you're likely to fall out of the habit of sending it and you may start to wonder why you began it at all. But equally as important is what your readers want from your news