The essential KPI to track, industry news we're talking about and insightful content...

Originally sent on March 10th, 2022. Receive our next B2B newsletter by subscribing here.

The winter months are behind us, spring is within touching distance and the Poool team have so much to share with you…

The most essential KPI for your strategy provided by our consultant Ludivine, after 3 years working with Prisma Media, industry news we’re talking about, including the INMA subscription summit takeaways, Ask the Experts linkedin live (in English) and insightful content that we’ve dug into over the past weeks.

Let’s go!

🤓 Pocket-Sized Poool Top Tip 🤓

How do you measure success in your reader revenue strategy?

There’s a whole host of KPIs that we could list to answer this question, but one stands out amongst the rest as a vital metric for increasing ARPU… namely Engaged View Rate (EVR).

EVR, wtf? Let me explain…

Engaged View Rate aims at measuring a user’s engagement level through combining time spent per session and scroll depth. When combined, these metrics give you insights into whether a user sees value in your content and offers, which is ultimately what will make them move down the engagement funnel towards higher ARPU.

The point at which a user becomes engaged depends on your strategy, but, at Poool, we consider a user as engaged if they spend over 30 seconds on-page and scroll to at least 66%.

🧮 EVR = (users spending x seconds on content and scrolling to x%) ÷ total users

Why EVR? Because your goal is to increase the quality & quantity of users’ visits, i.e. increase engagement. By doing this, you support ad-based revenues (more page views) & reader monetization through conversion strategies (leading users to convert to members & subscribers).

In short, increased engagement = increased ARPU 😍 … not surprising that it’s used by both Financial Times and The Economist!

Importantly however, this KPI should not only be tracked globally (no. of engaged users vs total traffic) but also per user segment and measured over time, especially when you work on optimizing your content and value proposition. This is what will make your EVR valuable as a metric, giving you valuable insights on your marketing actions and how they impact your engagement strategy over time that you can put to use in informing your business.

Interested in the other essential KPIs to track for digital publishers? Chapters 1 & 2 of our KPI Playbook are out now! Keep an eye out for chapter 3 (& our bonus section) being published next week 👀

🗞 Industry news that we're talking about 🗞

🚀 AOP’s ‘Digital Publishing: Meeting the Future’ report is out - what can we learn from it?

55% of publishers see subscription as having the biggest potential for revenue growth over the next 3 years.

"Developing new revenue streams through product innovation" is considered as the most important priority for businesses, which could include covering wider content areas (just as the NYT is doing by acquiring The Athletic), offering a premium product or even creating a free membership offer.

The deprecation of the cookie is (unsurprisingly) dominating discussions and AOP found that whilst publishers are fairly confident that they’re prepared (6.5/10), solution providers have less confidence in publishers’ preparation for this event (4.9/10).

Find the full report on the AOP website.

🗻 INMA Subscription Summit 2022

The INMA subscription summit took place in February and our friends over at Twipe reviewed the talks to bring you some of the key insights shared at the event! Here are the 3 I found most interesting:

Freemium can drive growth: allowing non-subscribers access to content in order to increase engagement is a proven technique for developing premium strategies. But you can take this a step further by promoting premium content on free articles, sponsoring these articles with ads or, better still, integrating soft conversion steps such as registration or newsletter sign-up to drive engagement (pst we can help here!)
Less is more when it comes to products: sometimes, offering just one subscription package is better for conversion rates. In our conversion funnel analysis, we found that too many options for subscription actually made for a frustrating user experience, especially on mobile.
The endless stream of content isn’t working anymore: users are developing news fatigue and don’t always have the time for endless scrolling. As Charney said in the NiemanLab 2022 Predictions, we have to limit limitless news, ‘moving in the direction of more finite forms of news"

💬 Ask the experts 💬

"How to launch a subscription strategy" Linkedin Live, in English - Wednesday, March 16th, 4pm CET

After the success of the French version, our consultancy team is back to provide you with the 2-steps to launch your subscription strategy and answer all your questions on the subject.

Join Stephane and Anthony, as they share their valuable knowledge after having worked with publishers such as The Economist, The New York Times and Drawn & Quarterly.

👀 Worth checking out 👀

🇺🇦 We couldn’t not mention the horrifying conflict in Ukraine - our thoughts are with anyone affected, and for those who want to support Ukrainian news organizations, our friends at The Fix (who have close ties to the country) have published this article on 5 ways you can help.

6 Inspiring Growth Strategies from Successful Publishers, from What’s New in Publishing.

How The Wall Street Journal is preparing for the cookieless future by using first-party data in their advertising revenue strategy.

Engagement Strategies for Digital Publishers: Benchmarks 2022 to increase reader revenue.

👋 Hey, are you new here?

Let me introduce myself - I'm Madeleine, Content Marketing Manager at Poool and it's my pleasure to welcome you to our B2B newsletter!

I'm an actual human behind the screen, so please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or simply want to say hi! You can email me at madeleine@poool.tech or connect on Linkedin.