The Economist
The Economist
2020
2020
Newsletters are an increasingly important part of The Economist’s digital growth strategy. They help them reach new audiences and increase engagement with all readers. This is mostly due to them being way easier to consume than The Economist magazine itself. The magazine readers felt guilty for not finishing their physical weekly copy of The Economist. This wasn't a new problem (see: the Onion article from 2011 below).
Client
The Economist
Year
2020
Services
User Research, Product Strategy
Services
User Research, Product Strategy
The Economist
2020
(Context)
Research spanned guerrilla interviews at Economist stands, stakeholder listening tours from the CEO to social editors, 2000+ respondent surveys, and workshops across teams. Combined with the executive editor's content strategy and analysis of reader clicking and reading patterns, this gave us enough signal to start identifying newsletter topics with confidence.
Additionally, we collaborated with editorial and commercial teams to shape both content and monetisation decisions, as well as identify opportunities for thematic newsletters based on content gaps and reader interests.
Research spanned guerrilla interviews at Economist stands, stakeholder listening tours from the CEO to social editors, 2000+ respondent surveys, and workshops across teams. Combined with the executive editor's content strategy and analysis of reader clicking and reading patterns, this gave us enough signal to start identifying newsletter topics with confidence.
Additionally, we collaborated with editorial and commercial teams to shape both content and monetisation decisions, as well as identify opportunities for thematic newsletters based on content gaps and reader interests.
[OUTCOMES]
The team started by launching two additional titles: The Climate Issue, a fortnightly newsletter on climate change, and the first of the new thematic launches, and Cover story, a subscriber-only newsletter focused on the cover: how it was developed, from headline to artwork. The concept came from research that revealed how much readers valued feeling closer to the editorial process.
Reader insights also informed smarter commercial decisions around ad placement and sponsored content display.
Specialist newsletters grew the subscriber base by over 25%
Engagement for specialist newsletters doubled relative to daily and weekly editions
A systematic feedback loop enabled continued iterative improvements
The Economist now has a portfolio of over ten well-loved newsletters.
The team started by launching two additional titles: The Climate Issue, a fortnightly newsletter on climate change, and the first of the new thematic launches, and Cover story, a subscriber-only newsletter focused on the cover: how it was developed, from headline to artwork. The concept came from research that revealed how much readers valued feeling closer to the editorial process.
Reader insights also informed smarter commercial decisions around ad placement and sponsored content display.
Specialist newsletters grew the subscriber base by over 25%
Engagement for specialist newsletters doubled relative to daily and weekly editions
A systematic feedback loop enabled continued iterative improvements
The Economist now has a portfolio of over ten well-loved newsletters.
Research spanned guerrilla interviews at Economist stands, stakeholder listening tours from the CEO to social editors, 2000+ respondent surveys, and workshops across teams. Combined with the executive editor's content strategy and analysis of reader clicking and reading patterns, this gave us enough signal to start identifying newsletter topics with confidence.
Additionally, we collaborated with editorial and commercial teams to shape both content and monetisation decisions, as well as identify opportunities for thematic newsletters based on content gaps and reader interests.
The team started by launching two additional titles: The Climate Issue, a fortnightly newsletter on climate change, and the first of the new thematic launches, and Cover story, a subscriber-only newsletter focused on the cover: how it was developed, from headline to artwork. The concept came from research that revealed how much readers valued feeling closer to the editorial process.
Reader insights also informed smarter commercial decisions around ad placement and sponsored content display.
Specialist newsletters grew the subscriber base by over 25%
Engagement for specialist newsletters doubled relative to daily and weekly editions
A systematic feedback loop enabled continued iterative improvements
The Economist now has a portfolio of over ten well-loved newsletters.
Results
Christie's was regularly using 40+ email types across regions, all with slightly varied brand expression and mutliple ways of displaying similar types of content due to lack of consistent rules. This led to considerable inefficiencies as well as an outdated look.