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engagement | Jan 13, 2020

The Arkansas Gamble: Can a Tablet and a Print Replica Rescue Local News?

by Mark Jacob | LocalNewsIni

Walter E. Hussman Jr., publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is pioneering a bold strategy to transition readers from print to digital by taking away their daily newspaper cold turkey and giving them a tablet with a daily online replica that mimics the print edition. Hussman’s experiment is make-or-break for the Democrat-Gazette. If successful, it may finally offer an effective way for news organizations to lure longtime loyal readers away from print editions that are expensive...

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engagement | Jan 2, 2020

News Outlets Should Build Customer Lifetime Value Into Subscription Strategy, Researchers Say

by Mark Jacob | LocalNewsIni

What should be news organizations’ top financial strategy? Growing advertising revenue? Growing subscriptions? Neither, say researchers at Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center, who believe there’s a better answer: Growing Customer Lifetime Value. CLV is a common forecasting tool that allows businesses to calculate how much customers will be worth for the length of their relationship. The two most important things that determine the future value of a reader relationship are the amount of profit received...

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engagement | Nov 19, 2019

How News Outlets Can Make Email Newsletters More Effective

by Mark Jacob | LocalNewsIni

Everyone seems to produce email newsletters these days. But not everyone is doing it well. Which is a shame, since newsletters have been identified as a key way to build subscriber loyalty as local news operations shift from reliance on advertising dollars to a customer revenue model. Major data research conducted by Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center and released by the Medill Local News Initiative in February established that readers who visited news websites regularly were more...

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engagement | Oct 23, 2019

Subscriber-only Newsletters Aim to Build Local News Loyalty

by Mark Jacob | LocalNewsIni

Local news organizations, which have long used email newsletters to drive readers to their websites and boost page views, are increasingly offering newsletters as destinations of their own to boost subscriber loyalty. A major data analysis, conducted by Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center and released earlier this year by the Medill Local News Initiative, showed that a primary factor in subscriber retention was regular reader visits. Daily email newsletters are an attempt to replicate the kind...

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