Beyond the Paywall: Your October membership and audience to-dos
Through the end of October our newsletter will highlight sessions for the Independent News Sustainability Summit (which we’re co-hosting!) featuring Hub newsrooms and staff.
We are so excited to see nearly 400 people in Austin next month to learn and share about all things related to revenue, sustainability and operational resilience.
There are less than 60 tickets left – grab yours before we sell out!
A few panels to look forward to:
Planning for growth: Building a vision for your business’s future featuring Alison Go of Chalkbeat and Mary Walter-Brown of News Revenue Hub.
Effecting institutional changes: Moving past inertia to major transformation featuring Chris Murphy of The Capital Times, Josie Hollingsworth of PolitiFact, Lauren Gustus of The Salt Lake Tribune and Paul Cheung of The Center for Public Integrity.
Optimizing the audience funnel: Teamwork and workflows for the user journey featuring Kathryn Juricic of The Narwhal, Kristin Tessman of Montana Free Press and Lauchlin Fields of Mississippi Today.
Now on to your October to-dos!
Stacy Fernández
Marketing & Communications Manager
October Audience and Membership To-Dos
🗳 Elections are coming up – are you ready? With elections a month away, there’s still time to put together a strategy that incorporates your editorial, audience and membership teams. On the editorial side, we know that evergreen election content, like voter guides, are helpful and popular resources for readers. Here are two well-executed examples from Hub newsrooms: this guide from The City and this guide from Montana Free Press.
On the fundraising front, elections are a great time to do a mini campaign. You’re in the midst of showing your readers your newsroom’s value and you should use that momentum to ask for donations. In addition to sending campaign emails, work with your audience team to incorporate election calls-to-actions on all election coverage and in the newsletter.
📊 Check in on your third quarter goals. Take some time this week to compare your current progress to the goals set early in the year. It’s OK for goals to shift throughout the year; what’s most important is that you’re keeping an eye on them and communicating with your team. Having these quarterly check-ins keeps expectations in line with results and provides space to talk through possible strategy pivots as a group.
⛄️ End-of-year campaigns are almost here. The time has come to get more serious about preparing your newsroom’s EOY campaign. One good starting point is deciding the timeline for your campaign. Some newsrooms choose to begin campaigning the first week of November while others kick things off with GivingTuesday, which falls on Nov. 29 this year. Deciding on this timeline now will inform how many emails you plan to send and the cadence, when copy needs to be ready and which team members need to be looped in.
If you want to explore how the News Revenue Hub’s services and campaign support can help you get back on track to reach your goals, learn more here. On average, members see a 68% revenue increase following their first calendar year with the Hub.
Hub Clients: Our end-of-year training schedule
We will offer complimentary, Hub-exclusive trainings every month for the rest of the year. Look out for a message in your newsroom’s Slack channel with dates and registration information. In the meantime, check out the schedule below:
Friday, Oct. 14 at 2 p.m. ET | Year-end campaign prep led by Abbey Gingras, Director of Consulting Services and Lauren Hardie, Business Development Coordinator.
November: What metrics should you care about? – led by Evan Mackinder, Vice President of Consulting Services
December: Last-minute campaign boost – with Will Warren, Project Manager*
*This training will only be available to newsrooms on our premium plans.