In 2019, The Guardian made a pledge in service of the planet, making journalistic and institutional climate commitments, including a carbon reduction plan and rejection of fossil fuel advertising. Each year we’ve reaffirmed our pledge and showed supporters how they enable us to continue reporting on the climate crisis.

In 2022, we wanted to reach more supporters and resonate more deeply with them. We created a multichannel campaign to engage existing supporters with Guardian environmental journalism, made particularly timely given the campaign’s proximity to COP27. We wanted to generate sign-ups for our flagship environment newsletter and give highly engaged supporters opportunities to give further financial support.

Reinforcing our supporter-funded model

To sustain supporter engagement throughout the lifecycle, we must reinforce the value of support and relate it to our purpose: keeping the Guardian available to all in perpetuity.

We know the climate crisis is a key concern for Guardian supporters and a common motivator in supporting us. Our messaging aimed to reflect how each supporter plays a role in making Guardian climate coverage possible and directly thank them whilst encouraging them to read the most impactful stories produced during the past year.

This approach proved effective, as we drove close to 5% of global traffic to our impact report page, outperforming our target by 45%.

We implemented personalised messaging across our channels, carefully segmenting cohorts to reach the most engaged supporters on site and the less engaged supporters via email to drive them back to the site and app. We aimed to amplify our messaging by capitalising on name recognition from authoritative voices on the climate crisis, including George Monbiot.

As a result, we saw some supporters respond with unprompted gestures of financial support — these tangible actions are strong indicators of high engagement with the campaign and with Guardian values.

Encouraging insight-led engagement behaviours

Thanks to close collaboration with our data and insight team, we can approach engagement activity with the benefit of in-depth supporter behaviour analysis, providing us with actionable insight on the best levers to increase engagement and reduce churn. When planning this climate campaign, we knew which engagement metrics would prove most impactful for long-term supporter retention and formulated our engagement approach with clear measures of success.

Based on this insight, we know, for example, that newsletter sign-ups are a key engagement action. We outperformed our targets by 39%, and three months after the campaign, over 88% were still subscribed. This retention rate demonstrates how a positive campaign response can extend to year-round engagement, as supporters will go on to receive and engage with these newsletters.

Driving greater value from engaged supporters

Driving increased value from existing supporters is a key pillar of our digital reader revenue strategy. To achieve this, we actively seek compelling opportunities to increase ARPU from our most engaged supporters, with a test-and-learn approach to understand the messaging, channels, and points in the customer lifecycle that provide the best upsell potential.

During this campaign, we’ve drawn on the link between additional forms of support and The Guardian’s coverage of the climate crisis, where both the topic matter and the multichannel messaging approach resonated deeply with supporters. Indeed, supporters were inspired by our more direct upsell messaging to give further to The Guardian (on top of their existing recurring support), leading to a +300% uplift against revenue targets.

These results reflected a staggering display of support for The Guardian’s climate commitments and were made possible by highly personalised, targeted, and insight-informed retention activity.

As we approach a new financial year and future campaign opportunities informed by the news agenda, insights gained from this climate campaign will inform how we activate retention objectives to engage, thank, and drive greater value from our supporters.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .