Repetition is key to campaign success for membership and subscription campaigns

This post gives you permission to repeat yourself. Why? Because Repeating yourself is how you build reliable, higher converting membership & subscription campaigns.

People who work in the news sometimes struggle with embracing repetition. They want to report what’s new, not what’s already been said. It’s right there in the name: the news!

As I write this post, it’s mid-January. All the year-end email campaigns wrapped up a couple weeks ago.

Looking forward, the Super Bowl is a few weeks away. Let’s say your friend hosts a Super Bowl party every year, where guests bring a dish to share.

Let’s say that you are well-known in this friend group for making the best damn dip for a Super Bowl party.

So each year, the host says you must bring your special homemade dip. This is perfect. You love being The Dip Champion, plus it’s one less thing to worry about.

When you make that dip, you make your special dip the same way you’ve made it each time before. You don’t throw in some corn or double the garlic.

You know your dip is a hit, so you play the crowd-pleaser. Everyone wins.

Do you do this with your membership and subscription campaigns? A lot of publications don’t, but they should.

You should have a Champion Campaign Email that is the cornerstone of your campaigns. This email should be a winner year-in and year-out. You know it’s a great Champion when you can send the same email and get repeat success over time.

For some people, this will sound pretty out there. People have already seen that email, why would I keep sending it? If it works, why aren’t you playing the hits? Something about that email connects with people, and inspires them to take action. That’s really hard to do.

But when you get that champion dialed in, you keep using it. The Wall Street Journal had a direct mail letter champion that was so productive they used it for 28 years. That’s a damn good champion.

You don’t have to go 28 years, though. I had one champion that was a top performer for at least 5-6 years. I know they kept using it after I left, but I’m not sure for how long.

Here’s my task for you: While your year-end campaigns are still fresh in your mind, figure out what the best performing email was. Use it to start building your champion.

Think of all the components that make up your champion email:

• Sender name
• Sender email
• Subject line
• Preview text
• Body copy
• Offer or gift ribbon
• Call-to-Action
• Landing page after clicking the CTA
• PS Line

Start improving your best performing email using one of those pieces at a time. Did you have an email that got great opens but few conversions? Test last year’s champion against itself with that subject line.

This is why running small, experimental campaigns between now and the fall are important. You can test and dial in small improvements to your Champion email before November and NewsMatch comes back around. Year end campaigns are the time to put your best stuff forward. Trying out lots of new ideas in November and December is unnecessarily risky. Try those out in March or June to see how sticky they are.

Don’t fear repeating your successes. Building a durable newsroom means building durable membership and subscriber strategies that you can rely on to keep things moving forward despite headwinds.