Recently, Marigold Engage by Sailthru’s Allison Mezzafonte hosted a webinar with Stephanie Liu, a leading analyst at Forrester Research, and Rebecca Quarls, Associate Director of Engagement at The Atlantic.
The conversation focused on how media businesses are navigating the fine line between data collection and personal privacy in an age of heightened consumer awareness. How is reader engagement affected? What is being done differently for renewals and audience growth?
Read an excerpt of this webinar conversation below and learn how The Atlantic navigates data collection while keeping true to its mission of delivering independent journalism and thoughtful analysis.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
Hi, everyone. Welcome. My name is Allison Mezzafonte. I’m joined by our featured guest speaker, Rebecca Quarls from The Atlantic. We’ll be talking about data, the role it plays in our lives, the value it brings to organizations like The Atlantic, and how responsible data collection should theoretically be for the betterment of the consumer experience.
Rebecca, maybe you can start by telling us specifically your role at The Atlantic and what you’re responsible for?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
Thanks for having me. I’m the Associate Director of Engagement. I work on the consumer strategy and growth team here at The Atlantic. My role encompasses thinking about engagement across the customer lifecycle.
Not surprisingly, the more you engage with The Atlantic and its many forms – from our website, to the magazine, to the app newsletters and events — the more likely you are to convert, and the more likely you are to stick around once you do. So I’m constantly thinking about how to take all of The Atlantic‘s products and plug them in across that lifecycle.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
And when you talk about subscription, you specifically mean paid subscriptions to the digital and print product, correct?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
The products that I’m thinking about all the time are the website, apps, newsletters, our crossword puzzle, events, podcasts, and the print magazine, of course.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
Tell us a little bit about what The Atlantic‘s approach is to collecting data.
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
We believe that ethically using data to understand our readers and to tailor experiences in real-time is our biggest bet. It’s the most effective means to increase reader engagement and maximize revenue via holistic ad and subscription yield.
Email is one part of that strategy. For us, email is the linchpin making this all work in a transparent way with our readers. Email is something a reader can choose to give us, unlike applying a random identifier without their knowledge.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
What data is being captured? Is there zero-party data that you’re collecting from your email subscribers?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
We collect a lot of that [zero-party data]. We’ve got a robust, human-centered audience research team that regularly goes out into the field to talk to registered non-subscribers, podcast listeners, and other audiences of interest to identify addressable needs.
We conduct qualitative research, including in-depth interviews, surveys, usability testing, and competitive research.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
It’s like a self-fulfilling cycle where the more data you capture, the better the experience is for the reader — which increases the likelihood of sharing more information about themselves.
So, to what degree are you guys personalizing your email marketing with the data you’re collecting?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
We don’t tailor the contents of newsletters to reader interests per se, but we definitely customize email marketing based on reader interest.
When we promote a newsletter, a podcast, an event, or a new editorial series, we curate interest based segments. If you’ve read a certain number of stories from our culture section, for example, we’ll send you an email encouraging you to sign up for our new Famous People newsletter. If you registered for our happiness festival last year, you’re going to be among the first people that we will notify about Arthur Brooks’ new podcast,”How to Build a Happy Life.”
We’re also setting up some new marketing automations using Marigold Engage by Sailthru’s abandoned browse functionality to trigger email marketing based on certain URL parameters, like the site section you last visited.
And in any email marketing campaign, we tailor our calls to action based on your business relationship with The Atlantic. Are you a prospective subscriber, an active subscriber, or a former one? We are always thinking about how we can tailor emails, like say a renewal email, to the motivations that prompted you to step up and subscribe in the first place.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
Have you guys done a lot of testing around that, or do you typically try to stay with the topic that was the original point of interest?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
Great question. We try to strike a balance with some of what we call counterprogramming, like our ”Happiness” or “Dear Therapist” columns. Pieces like that absolutely entice our subscribers to stick around as well.
We’re always trying to strike a balance between reinforcing the value of our hard-hitting, impactful journalism while also promoting aspects of The Atlantic as a general interest magazine. How can we surprise and delight you in a variety of ways?
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
You have 24 active newsletters. Can you explain a little bit about the difference between the newsletters, and the experience for paying subscribers versus those that aren’t? What is the marketing journey as you try to funnel somebody from the free newsletter into that paid newsletter experience?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
As you mentioned, we have 24 newsletters total: one daily product, several weekly, a few twice-weekly and twice-monthly ones, and one monthly note from our editor in chief. This fall, we also launched a suite of subscriber-only newsletters by some of America’s most thoughtful and provocative writers. We like having this mix of newsletters that are accessible for anyone to read regardless if they’re a subscriber, because we’ve seen how crucial newsletters are on the path to conversion for so many readers.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
And are you seeing a connection between newsletter, subscribers, and podcast listeners? Is that something that you’re tracking?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
Only through audience research. I’m sure like many people would agree, podcast data is ever-so-frustrating to try to connect to other parts of our product offerings.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
I was just having a similar conversation with somebody earlier today. It’s less about the medium and more about the topic, right? And so you take a topic that resonates with the audience at The Atlantic, and you can deliver it through a newsletter, or on-site, or through a podcast. And people can consume that content in the medium of their choosing.
And I hear you, that data analytics piece of podcasting is really, really challenging. I think it’s pretty far behind newsletters.
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
But like newsletters, we’ve heard from our audience that engaging with The Atlantic via its audio content gets people to convert and to engage and retain.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
I think it goes back to the value exchange right? People are going to stick around, they will potentially subscribe, provide an email address and other personal information. So philosophically, do you believe ultimately that data collection is good for the consumer?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
Yes and no. The Atlantic is, of course, going to work to collect more zero-party data to make sure we can tailor experiences that make subscribing to The Atlantic as valuable as possible. But at the same time, as an independent news outlet, we are going to continue to make sure that you see the type of journalism that we think should exist in the world, regardless if it’s necessarily a topic you’ve read before.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
What do you think it would take for the general public to become more comfortable providing their personal data? And adopting this mindset that we are collecting your to create a more personalized experience for you that you’ll ultimately enjoy more?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
I don’t necessarily have an answer for that right now because we’ve got our audience research team that is actually going out into the field and talking with readers about how they feel about sharing personal data with The Atlantic. What types of data would they be comfortable sharing with our brand specifically? So with any zero-party data strategy, I think it should very much begin and end with your reader.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
And I think being very explicit and upfront about what data you’re capturing and then what you intend to do with it. I think that is becoming an expectation for consumers.
Let’s change the subject and talk about audience retention before we wrap up. How have you worked to reduce churn in a dwindling market for news readership?
Rebecca Quarls, The Atlantic
A lot of news outlets were riding a wave during the COVID-19 and the election era. So, the name of the game over the past year has been to stave attrition and to not put undue pressure on our acquisition goals.
And what I’ve learned in doing that is that engagement and retention go hand-in-hand.
I can have the smartest marketing automation for people coming up for renewal. But those messages fall on deaf ears if you haven’t been using the product in the lead-up to that renewal moment.
But we send subscribers several engagement-building emails well ahead of them receiving any sort of renewal call-to-action from us. And it’s those types of email sequences that are meant to reinforce the value of The Atlantic’s journalism. Instead of waking up less engaged subscribers at the end of their life with us, we find that we need to prevent them from going to sleep. So we’re looking much earlier in the lifecycle.
I’ve formed a cross-functional work stream that is working to leverage all owned surfaces and experiment with copy and design on those surfaces to get active subscribers to adopt those churn-busting habits, like returning to the website regularly, reading a variety of coverage (versus simply going deep in one subject area), using the app, reading newsletters, etc.
Allison Mezzafonte, Marigold Engage by Sailthru
Rebecca, this has been a terrific discussion. Thank you so much for joining.
If you didn’t have the chance to join our Future-Proof Your Media Brand webinar with The Atlantic live, click here to learn more and watch the full conversation between Allison and Rebecca!