Tuesday 9th January: Newsletter portfolios shrinking as publishers look to consolidate reader engagement

Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Esther.

Social media has never provided a secure foundation for publishers, but as platforms pass over publisher content or simply implode, newsletters have claimed their place as a much safer bet for audience development.

But despite the renewed hype for the decades-old format, this year has actually seen some publishers choose to slim down their portfolios with the aim of deepening engagement with existing content, and not spreading resources or readership too thin.

Of course, not everyone is cutting back. Publishers like Mill Media, the Financial Times, Reach and The Telegraph among others have still launched plenty of newsletters over the past 12 months. If you want a big-picture piece on everything that’s been going on in the world of publisher newsletters, here it is!

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Talking of newsletters, here’s one from the Washington Post about how they researched and set up email triggers to increase engagement and conversion. Yes yes it’s all very well if you’ve got the resources of WaPo, but there are still some steal-able ideas here. I especially like favourite author triggers, and content diversity triggers: showcasing breadth and depth of coverage to readers who are solely engaged in one section.

Digiday used to do fantastic publisher-specific deep-dives like these all the time, which I’ve missed in their more recent coverage. So it was nice to be able to read this about niche football publisher Mundial on their post-acquisition publishing strategy.

The price of a digital news subscription has risen by 19% on average in the UK over the last year, according to Press Gazette analysis of 23 leading paywalled publishers. That's well ahead of inflation, which is around 5% in the UK. Noted though that this doesn't include discounts. Looks like 2024 will be the year of increasing average revenue per user (ARPU) rather than subscriber volumes.

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