Kicking off INMA’s Subscriber Retention Master Class, Greg Piechota, INMA’s researcher-in-residence and Readers First Initiative lead, asked attendees to list their top three current retention challenges: 68% of attendees said they were battling low engagement after gaining subscribers.

Riske Betten, director of B2C and product for Mediahuis in the Netherlands, said the company’s biggest battle is limited insights and data on why subscribers churn. She also says poor value or low offerings for subscribers is a challenge too.

“We have a brilliant offering in general, but if you look at the offering from a retention perspective, do we have a specific offering we can use to get people back in? I don’t know,” Betten said.

Mediahuis aims to create clear value

In a world where retention is the new gold, Betten said gone are the days where news publishers get a customer in and the two are friends forever.

“I like to say that once people subscribe, they become a part of our family and they will forever be part of the family,” Betten said. “Sometimes you will miss a family dinner, that will happen, but you will be there the next one.”

Subscribers are looking for engagement and clear value once they’re subscribed. They also stay out of habit. The engagement with the brand is a part of their routine or satisfies their needs while they’re waiting at the bus stop. Betten looks at this strategy as tapping into someone’s already existing habits so a publisher doesn’t have to go through the trouble of creating a new one.

“They’re already at the bus stop,” Betten said. “Do we offer the possibility to get a bus stop push notification? Can they actually tell us, ‘At four o’clock every Monday I am at my bus stop and I’d like you to send now?’”

Betten said the publisher doesn’t have to change anything content-wise with this strategy, but you can tap into the habits they already have.

Adding value to a subscription means choosing the right value and adding it at the right place. A good example is instead of making a bundle and offering all these different things on top of the subscription, you could frame it more like, Betten said: “Thank you for your subscription, enjoy our e-book as a free gift.”

“From a forever relationship perspective, we also might want to think about adding value from a more temporary action that’s in place for subscribers who are already there,” Betten said.

The Telegraph creates human connections through comments

In an increasingly AI-saturated media landscape, U.K. publisher The Telegraph is proving that what sets journalism apart isn’t just access to information — it’s human connection.

Arielle Goldstein, community editor, and William Whittington, head of community moderation, shared how The Telegraph has transformed the comment section into an engine for editorial strategy, engagement, and subscriber retention.

“By creating personal relationships between journalists and readers, we can offer a subscriber a valuable sense of community that AI can’t provide,” Goldstein said.

A cornerstone of that strategy is what The Telegraph calls “going below the line” — encouraging journalists to actively engage with readers in the comment sections of their articles. While the concept isn’t new, the newsroom has formalised it with training, expectations, and support to make it consistent and effective.

Goldstein explained that author participation improves the tone and quality of conversations, encouraging thoughtful dialogue and more active participation: “It helps build a loyal, engaged audience. It improves the quality of comments and encourages readers to post instead of lurking.”

More importantly, it works. Goldstein shared that The Telegraph has seen a 44% increase in dwell time and a 109% boost in comment volume on opinion articles where the author engages below the line, Goldstein said: “We’ve seen comments more than double on an opinion piece when the columnist goes below the line.”

The Washington Post focuses on customers’ first 100 days

When a reader subscribes to a digital news outlet, the clock starts ticking. Will they engage, explore, and become loyal — or drift away before the first renewal?

To address this opportunity, The Washington Post has transformed the first 100 days of a subscriber’s journey into a carefully orchestrated campaign focused on retention and loyalty.

“Onboarding is really, really crucial to that entire customer lifecycle,” Adam Frank, engagement manager at The Washington Post, said. “It boosts their long-term engagement retention, really building those foundational habits.”

Understanding that attention is highest in the early days, the team prioritised high-impact messages at the beginning of the journey: “You have people’s attention much more on day one and day two than you do on day 77, or certainly on day 100,” Frank said.

Frank distilled his team’s approach into three clear lessons:

1. Follow the data: “It has been really, really helpful to just know which actions boost retention the most.”

2. Focus on the basics: “Assume new readers don’t know anything about your subscription.”

3. Always personalise: “We want to make sure that if we’re asking someone to take time out of their day, that feels worth their while.”

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