The UK publisher’s newsletter “Brummie Muslims” features a mix of content from lifestyle to food tips and political news aimed at the diverse Muslim community living in the West Midlands region. Its success has generated numerous learnings about audience engagement, and has opened the door for other possible newsletters for different communities.
Publisher bio: The Birmingham Live website belongs to the British publishing group Reach plc., the largest commercial publisher in the UK and Ireland with 130 news brands.
Birmingham Live is the leading digital publisher covering the Birmingham market, a region with around 1.2 million inhabitants, 2.2 million in the greater metropolitan area.
It reaches up to 18.5 million people a month, including half of Birmingham, with routinely more than 60m page impressions. The team has grown in the past year and there are now more than 50 people in the newsroom.
Reach’s business model is based on the belief that digital news should be free. Therefore monetisation happens primarily through advertising.
Challenge: Engaging the vibrant local Muslim communities
Reach plc. is definitely not your typical Table Stakes Europe team. While most groups in the programme pursue a revenue strategy that relies heavily on paid content – subscriptions or membership models – the UK’s largest local news publisher follows the belief that news should be free online.
This poses a particular challenge for the Birmingham Live team, which is one of the largest at Reach: They are bound by their publisher’s philosophy that rules out paywalls, but still aspire to monetise audiences in ways beyond advertising. While the latter has proven to be quite difficult, the Birmingham team would be a serious contender for a gold medal in the discipline of building audiences quickly.
The team exudes confidence, having built up one of the fastest growing digital sites in the Reach universe since the group underwent a digital revolution in the 2010s. Much earlier than many others, the publisher – formerly Trinity Mirror – had decided that there would only be a digital future and has pursued it vigorously since. “We do what we know very, very well”, Chief Audience Editor David Higgerson said at the beginning of the coaching process, “but we also know our limitations”.
This “very, very well” can be expressed in numbers: it accounts for eight of the UK’s top 25 websites by page impressions in the latest data. While headquarters sets strict KPIs for the entire publisher, the local teams are free to experiment in order to grow a variety of audiences.
Brummie Mummies has been one such example in Birmingham. The effort that was launched in 2015 targets young parents – as the name demonstrates mostly mothers – with a newsletter, podcast, and on several social media platforms.
Building on this success story, the team – while participating in the Table Stakes Europe programme – was ready for yet another challenge. They decided to tap into the potential of Birmingham’s vibrant Muslim communities. The opportunity arose when trainee reporter Anisah Vasta gladly took on the challenge to engage with them on a deeper and more consistent level. Customer Editor Christina Savvas, who drives the audience efforts, supported her, along with Birmingham Live Editor Graeme Brown and Audience and Content Director Anna Jeys, who together formed the TSE core team.
Decisions: Creating a communication channel for the community
In April 2022 Brummie Muslims was born, a newsletter launched at the beginning of Ramadan. It was created to offer a mix of content from lifestyle, for example street food must-haves and the best clothes shops to get Eid outfits, to fly-tipping (illegal dumping of waste) being a blight on communities, and the lasting impact of the “Trojan Horse affair”, a controversy involving an alleged conspiracy to “Islamise” the local school system.
“Brummie Muslims is a product we’re really proud of”, Christina Savvas says. “We hope it substantiates our commitment to representing and writing for the diverse Muslim community in our region.”
Since the launch with a bit of a slow start, hundreds and hundreds of people have signed up and Brummie Muslims has been the fastest growing newsletter across Birmingham Live’s offerings. In September 2022, Brummie Muslims had more than 4,000 subscribers, with an average open rate of 37%. It was the feedback from members of the community that had galvanised the team to continue the great work and seek more collaborations, Savvas says.
In the autumn of 2022, Birmingham Live sported 22 newsletters, among others one for the fans of the TV series “Peaky Blinders” and one for people eager to save money in times of inflation. While the TSE team hasn’t found an overall valid recipe for success, they distilled some lessons to be of particular value.
First, there needs to be a committed individual driving the effort, ideally belonging to the potential audience as in the case of Brummie Muslims. Second, a more personal style of writing proved to be more engaging than automatically generated newsletters.
Third, the audience needs to be given careful thought. It makes a difference whether the product targets younger or older groups, for example, even when dealing with the same topic.
With the Brummie Muslims audience, Christina Savvas found one thing to be particularly important. “We always encourage readers to get in touch with our writers directly. Rather than being a one-way newsletter, Brummie Muslims offers a communication channel for Muslims across the West Midlands to connect and tell us about the incredible things they are doing in their communities.”
Outcome: Newsroom inspired to connect with other communities
According to Savvas, the team regularly receives very positive feedback with regard to how the newsletter helps to tackle inequality. A particularly encouraging comment came from one local politician, she recalls.
Councillor Waseem Zaffar said: “I think it was one of the best media projects I’ve come across. The Muslim community is under attack, and through this initiative, the wider community has been able to get a better understanding of Muslims and their practices through excellent journalism.”
Birmingham Live aims to further grow Brummie Muslims, to seek more collaborations, and to invite members of the community to contribute. There has also been another positive effect: The project has inspired young journalists in the newsroom to bring forward other ideas for newsletters, including a newsletter targeted at the Sikh community.
Savvas is very excited about this: “It would be great if we could create newsletters for different communities and create an event where people are brought together to celebrate different foods and cultures,” she says.
Building diverse audiences and then connecting them – there is not much more that a programme aimed at strengthening local journalism could ask for, except for one thing: economic sustainability.
Achievements during TSE:
In addition to the success with the Brummie Muslims newsletter, Reach spread the entrepreneurial spirit within the company, adopting a test-and-learn approach with new initiatives. They successfully expanded their Brummie Mummies audience, as well as starting newsletters about the TV show Peaky Blinders and money saving, and launching the brand “Couriously” for young audiences.
Key learning from TSE:
“Table Stakes offered us an opportunity to step back and think. We are obsessed with audience and growth, but constantly in the moment. It was great to be able to incubate a project, focusing on things we need to get better at, in an environment where we could share thoughts with others.”