“Our ambition for the next few years is to increase the number of digital subscribers, so we decided to search for new audiences,” said Clémence Lemaistre, Les Echos’ digital editor-in-chief during WAN-IFRA’s Virtual World News Media Congress.
“How could we reach them? How could we serve them? And how can we find out what their needs are?” she said.
Les Echos has taken part in Table Stakes Europe, a programme conceived primarily for local and regional news organisations to help drive digital revenue growth by re-focusing on audiences.
Identifying priority audiences
Keeping in mind its characteristics and offer, Les Echos, which attracts about 24 million visits per month, determined which audiences they should target, such as women and young executives, players in the start-up ecosystem or expatriates.
In order to identify priority segments, Les Echos looked at them through eight criteria:
- Subscription potential
- Advertising potential
- Brand equity potential
- Differentiation
- Size of audience
- Editorial expertise
- Desire to serve the target
- Clearly identified early wins
“It’s very important to look at the editorial expertise,” Lemaistre said. “Do you have journalists in the newsroom who can work on stories that are interesting for this audience? Also, is there a desire to serve that target group? If no one in the newsroom wants to do these articles, don’t go for it.”
Setting goals from the start
One audience segment Les Echos identified as valuable were players in the start-up ecosystem.
In June, the organisation created a new section on the website with special subheadings for this audience group, and revamped a weekly newsletter, turning it into a daily and more mobile-friendly product, while making it more varied, conversational, and service-oriented.
“For all that we immediately defined smart quantitative goals, such as the numbers of subscribers we wanted to have, the numbers of subscribers coming from the paywall or opening rates and clicks for the newsletter,” Lemaistre said.
By November, Les Echos had exceeded its goals for subscriber numbers, opening rates and click rates.
Another important audience segment for Les Echos, which has been somewhat neglected by business newspapers in general, are women executives.
“We don’t have enough executive women reading us, fewer than there are in Paris or France,” she said.
“It’s a really common problem for newspapers, especially business newspapers, but we decided to address it.”
For Lemaistre, one way to better cater to this audience segment revolves around aiming for gender equity, both in website images and in content. With this in mind, Les Echos has been trying to increase the number of women it profiles in what they call “the big interview,” published every Friday.
Additionally, Les Echos ran subscriber acquisition campaigns on social media platforms with content that felt more attractive to women users, such as success stories of women, and leadership and management content.
In order to identify which type of content appeals to this group, Les Echos looked at the 100 top performing stories among women subscribers, and analysed a set of articles published last year to see which themes were most of interest to them.
Garnering feedback from readers and non-readers
Les Echos also worked with three focus groups made up of regular women readers, occasional women readers, and women not yet reading Les Echos but with a fitting profile (such as executive managers, senior managers, entrepreneurs).
This gave them insight into their perception of the brand, their news consumption behaviour and habits, as well as the type of content and formats they tend to enjoy.
One main key takeaway from the work with the focus groups, according to Lemaistre, is to refrain from creating a special newsletter or a special section for women.
“You can create a special offer for start-ups but not for women. The way you should address this audience is much more subtle,” she said.