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Can you text your way to a long-lasting relationship with a reader? — www.niemanlab.org

Keeping churn to a minimum is the priority for all subscription services, and that's no less true for newspapers. Many of the big names go for various approaches to retain customers, from using AI to source them stories most relevant to them to making the process to unsubscribe impossibly difficult (naming no names). This article for Nieman Lab explored why the text-based platform might help alleviate that issue:

"It also allows users to get to know and form a bond with the journalist or personality on the other end of the line. The bond can be strong enough that some people feel bad unsubscribing." To what extent that's because texting is historically a very personal way of communicating is unclear, but that level of engagement is exactly what most publishers are looking for now.

The article makes it plain that there are still limitations that come with the format - not least the fact that texting isn't exactly the best format for longreads and creating context. Another trade-off is that, while you have that direct connection, actually gathering accurate user data and analytics is extremely difficult. And speaking of analytics...

WordPress VIP acquiring content analytics company Parse.ly — www.axios.com

I was surprised by the level of engagement this got when we tweeted it out yesterday - the parent company of WordPress VIP is acquiring Parse.ly to integrate it more fully with its CMS and web tools. Seems like a lot of you are interested in the future of the open web as opposed to the walled gardens of Google and Facebook. And speaking of Facebook...

Using AI, The Telegraph boosts Facebook engagement by 205%, driving subs growth — whatsnewinpublishing.com

The Telegraph's foray into AI is paying off, with its increased engagement on Facebook driving more growth in subscriptions. That's a solid achievement, one that proves that papers can maintain some control of the pipeline that comes with publishing to social platforms. And speaking of AI and subscriptions...

Deepnews.ai's focus on subscriptions — mondaynote.com

We're always interested to see what's coming out of Deepnews.ai. Any attempt to objectively score the quality of a piece of news is interesting purely because of how it seeks to return value to the undifferentiated news landscape. Now it's changing course slightly - and proving quality articles lead to an uptake in subscriptions. And speaking of quality...

This week's podcast:

Quartz CEO Zach Seward on charting a new course for the business lifestyle brand — voices.media

This week Zach Seward, CEO of Quartz, explains why he bought the business lifestyle brand from Uzabase. He tells us how it all started and how it’s going, about memberships and advertising, and the Quartz mission to make business better.

Media Voices Conversations:

Pugpig’s Jonny Kaldor discusses the state of the digital publishing market — voices.media

In our latest Conversations episode, Peter was joined by Pugpig founder and CEO Jonny Kaldor to discuss what’s been happening in the world of digital publishing, and what to expect from 2021. Great response to this one so far, do give it a listen!