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Dallas Morning News shares its strategies for newsletter engagement

By Paula Felps

INMA

Nashville, Tennessee, United States

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At a time when search and social media are becoming less useful for news media organisations, many are leaning into their newsletter strategies to attract and retain subscribers.

During this week’s Webinar, presented by the INMA Newsroom Transformation Initiative, members of The Dallas Morning News team shared how they are using newsletters to grow their audience and create more loyalty.

Katrice Hardy, executive editor at The Dallas Morning News, emphasised the role that newsletters have played in audience development: “Newsletters are the primary way, from beginning to the end, that we can own and control how we connect and engage with our audience.”

However, she noted, it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it situation.

“Our newsletter strategy changes from time to time. You’ve got to think about constantly: how can you innovate, how can you maybe eliminate, and how can you retool your products around newsletters?”

The Dallas Morning News team shared how they use newsletters to grow their audience and create more loyalty.
The Dallas Morning News team shared how they use newsletters to grow their audience and create more loyalty.

Driven by data

At The Dallas Morning News, data drives all decision-making, and Saher Merchant, director of audience development, said that means they constantly test and analyse what’s working. To adapt to the rapidly changing digital environment, Merchant said the newsroom works closely with the newsroom audience team to ensure their learning is up-to-date.

“E-mail is your best return on investment, and it is absolutely in your control,” Merchant said, pointing out that it works on every level of the funnel and is effective in attracting and retaining subscribers because it helps build a daily habit.

“It is a direct relationship from our newsroom straight to our reader’s inbox. And for us at The Dallas Morning News, e-mail is actually our third-highest referral traffic source for all of our readers. And for our members specifically, it’s our No. 1 traffic source.”

By tracking what appeals to readers, The Dallas Morning News has been able to create members-only newsletters that engage subscribers.
By tracking what appeals to readers, The Dallas Morning News has been able to create members-only newsletters that engage subscribers.

By following what readers click on — and what they don’t — the team can see what might appeal to them as a newsletter. One strategy they employed was to create a member-only newsletter, using content and writers that “kind of shines and really resonates with our readers,” Merchant said.

They also have created curated newsletters that provide context to a story from the reporter along with additional links for readers to go deeper. But all the actions are tested.

“We’ve tested day and frequency of sending, we’ve understood exactly when our readers are more likely to read their newsletters and build that daily habit,” Merchant said.

The team also test subject lines and preview texts to see how they appear in an inbox since they only have about five to seven seconds to capture someone’s attention.

“So we really focus on the best way to communicate with them so they know this is what we are going to provide them if they click this e-mail.”

The power of packaging

Content packaging is one way The Dallas Morning News is using newsletters to stand out from “the chaos of the Internet.” For example, it created Back to the Ballot for the upcoming elections, which is a newsletter to help readers stay informed and find the information they’re looking for.

Packaging content based on reader interest around a specific event is one way to keep them engaged.
Packaging content based on reader interest around a specific event is one way to keep them engaged.

“We have content that we would publish anyway, and we’ve packaged it into a format that’s really engaging and interactive but also collects e-mails,” Merchant said. “We created a quiz where you take a few simple questions or answer a few simple questions about what you’re interested in the election.”

That triggers a personalised journey into topics they indicated they were interested in and has successfully retained readers.

News alerts segmented by topic and audience are also effective and helped offset some of the post-COVID traffic declines. By increasing the volume of news alerts sent out each day, the company was able to dramatically increase the number of individual opens and see a 95% increase in the number of clicks driving users back to the site.

“These targeted mini news alerts really helped us. And of course, user sessions then started to increase because we started developing this habit of expecting these news alerts in addition to your newsletter roundups.”

Increasing the volume of news alerts helped offset the post-COVID traffic slump.
Increasing the volume of news alerts helped offset the post-COVID traffic slump.

Putting it into practice

Ashley Slayton, audience development editor, shared how the company was able to roll out its new approach and get all the necessary players on board.

“What has really helped us with our newsletter strategy is continuous training on the metrics,” Slayton said, noting the content team sits down with the consumer revenue audience team every quarter for a deep dive into open rates, CTRs, and audience growth.

“We talk about declines, and we set some goals, then from there, we break it down at the department level to do some stair-step goals to help us hit those targets,” she explained.

Training also plays a crucial role in helping writers shift their thinking from using SEO keywords in a headline to catching the eye of an e-mail consumer.

“There was some technical training involved as well as general training for writing for different audiences and with testing the way we have structured our core flagship newsletters,” she said.

Learning, training, and testing are key elements of successfully deploying a newsletter strategy.
Learning, training, and testing are key elements of successfully deploying a newsletter strategy.

Testing also included A/B tests to find the best time of day to send e-mails, see what alerts performed well, and observe how the alerts performed on the weekend.

“An additional benefit that we found throughout this continuous cycle of iterating on these newsletters was that with the ability to have a more target send, we’re able to help play a role in generating advertising dollars because that breaking alert was so successful that it’s sponsored,” Slayton noted. “That’s really helped with buy-in within the newsroom because the teams that are creating them have been able to see they have a direct impact financially.”

About Paula Felps

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