Richland Source’s innovative overhaul of its membership program resulted in monumental newsletter list and membership growth, and kicked off a new chapter of long-term sustainability after a decade of serving North Central Ohio with independent journalism. Partnering with industry experts BlueLena and Blue Engine Collaborative, Richland Source focused on optimizing the member experience, implementing a premium content strategy and enhancing data measurement.
The membership relaunch in April 2024 followed a year of strategic collaboration, and features member-exclusive web content for the first time, a revamped member tiering system, and an interconnected tech stack for activation and revenue management. Internally, the team established an effective growth measurement operation, allowing them to optimize and seize opportunities more quickly.
🚀 Four months into launch, Richland Source can report:
- 144% year-over-year growth of total reader revenue (major gifts and members)
- 33% growth of new monthly and annual recurring members
- 15% increase in newsletter subscribers
The challenge
Founded in 2013, Source Media is an independent media company in North Central Ohio covering local geographic news and providing a full suite of marketing services to area businesses. With a digital readership of about 500,000 monthly visitors across three publications – Richland Source, Ashland Source and Knox Pages – its mission is to help find effective responses to local challenges through solutions-focused journalism.
A decade into delivering on its mission, Source Media knew it had significant goodwill with its readership and that the communities it served believed in the journalism provided.
In mid-2023, Source Media CEO Jay Allred realized the voluntary reader membership strategy was losing momentum. The Source Media team recognized there were sizable engagement and revenue opportunities that needed to be unlocked for continued sustainability.
Specifically, the following areas needed to be addressed:
- Establish a philosophy for story and content metering for the very first time
- Connect the end-to-end tech stack for the customer journey across all three publications
- Develop and implement a member tiers program with member benefits
- Design and launch a seamless payment experience for readers
“We needed to upgrade our tech stack, develop a philosophy around a content gate and greatly enhance the value proposition of membership – and we needed to do it all at once,” Allred says.
The strategy
Allred assembled his project team at Source Media, which included Head of Community Investment Leah Gesouras, Head of Newsroom Product Zac Hiser and Head of Revenue Audrey Longstreth. The core group scoped the opportunity, assessed the risks, ran the numbers through various ROI models, looped in stakeholders and enlisted external support through collaboration with BlueLena and Blue Engine Collective.
“With BlueLena, we needed a partner who could understand and connect a complicated tech stack, build effective automations and work effectively with other vendors, all while keeping client experience at the forefront of their work,” Allred explains.
Source Media also leveraged the coaching expertise of Blue Engine for strategic guidance in two key areas: creating subscription and membership journeys, and coaching staff members on a shift toward data-driven decision-making.
The sprint
The project kicked off with a 100-day sprint that included weekly coaching sessions among the internal and external project leads. The team used agile frameworks for quick iteration of ideas and data-driven prioritization of the work.
David Grant, Blue Engine Collective’s Head of Growth, noted that initial sessions focused on the review and refinement of Source Media’s business plan and financial projections for membership. The resulting plan was a crucial resource for the duration of the project, serving as a touchpoint during both the sprint and implementation phases.
“Sometimes, it can feel like decisions are unmoored from the business reality. By starting with a clear business goal in mind, we could make trade-offs clear to senior management and move rapidly toward decisions,” Grant says.
Grant shares three foundational lessons for moving the project forward:
- Identify your values to ground the approach
- Prioritize your values to organize work and build momentum for execution
- Make data front and center for transparency in navigating challenges and fostering new ideas.
“Blue Engine’s coaching of the launch team kept us focused on data, user experience and measurement,” Allred says. “This was exactly what we needed.”
The technology stack
When it was time to shift the project’s focus to implementation, BlueLena anchored Source Media in membership strategy and best practices. After evaluating the existing five membership tiers and associated data sets, the BlueLena team recommended fewer membership tiers to increase internal efficiency and to improve the front-end experience for readers.
“Source Media wanted to introduce a registration system and paid access model for the very first time,” says Megan Wofford, Director of Products at BlueLena. “This was a very different experience for their market, which was accustomed to an open access model.”
The team landed on a revamped member status system of three tiers – Fan, Enthusiast and Leader – with member perks like unlimited story access and local business discounts.
Source Media was already using Newspack’s products within its tech stack, so, BlueLena worked with the Newspack team to implement a federated version of Newspack’s built-in Reader Activation System (RAS). This allowed for optimizing the system for best practices for gating content and collecting memberships, gleaned from BlueLena’s work with other successful paywall and membership programs across its 200+ publisher client base. A seamless integration was then established with BlueLena’s CXA, an all-in-one digital marketing and revenue management platform for media organizations. Wofford used BlueLena CXA’s customizable tagging system to organize and funnel data originating from the three different publications into one clean data system for Source Media’s membership team to manage.
The launch
Once the 100-day sprint was complete and the tech operation was scoped, Source Media began launching the revitalized membership system in a phased approach that included:
- A move to Newspack’s Reader Activation System
- Deployment of a metered content-gate through RAS
- Development of a set of registration prompts based on specific reader behaviors
- Development of a series of automated email funnels based on user status
- Re-development of membership packaging, product and pricing
“Source Media now has a well-functioning paid access system that will hopefully increase their main KPIs, including email list growth, membership and revenue growth,” Wofford says.
On April 24, 2024, Source Media publicly launched its reimagined membership program to its community, with Allred writing an announcement article for readers that detailed the need for the changes and the value for members.
“This journey has taken over a year of concentrated work and effort by our team,” Allred says. “We’re at the end of the beginning and there’s no way we would be where we are without the help of the staff of BlueLena and Blue Engine Collaborative.”
The future
Allred shares that early ROI results are promising and that Source Media is dedicated to the vision they developed in partnership with BlueLena and Blue Engine Collective.
Over the second half of 2024, the core team is working with BlueLena to focus on:
- User experience and the customer lifecycle for membership purchases
- Navigating and implementing reader feedback
- Measurement of quality KPIs that drive ROI
- Dramatically enhancing the value proposition of membership
“What we’ve learned is there’s no one way to make a local news operation stand up on its own,” Allred says. “Every line of revenue matters. Our goal is to make them all work together to create value for the community.”
About BlueLena
BlueLena was founded by an experienced team of publishers, journalists and newsmedia marketing executives to create a sustainable future for independent local media. We do so by deploying world class technology, and delivering the expertise and professional services to build and support subscription, membership and donation models for long-term success.
In the short time since our founding in early 2020, we have quickly grown to support leading community-based media brands coast-to-coast across the United States and Canada, including in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit, St Louis, San Francisco, Boston, Denver, Nashville, Tampa, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Little Rock, Washington, DC and many other markets.
Our 200+ member publishing consortium represents a diverse mix of non-profit and for profit newsrooms, pure digital and print plus digital publications, as well as established and new media brands. Our clients represent membership with Local Media Association (LMA), LION Publishers (LION), the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), the Black Press Association (NNPA), the National Association of Hispanic Press (NAHP) and the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN).
About Blue Engine Collaborative
We are a diverse team of some of the world’s leading experts – all practitioners not theorists – in every area of journalism sustainability (driving digital audience growth and engagement, revenue and revenue diversification, consumer marketing, product development, data and insights, etc.) and in empowering teams to lead successful change efforts (organizational strategy, skill building, performance-driven change principles, etc.) We have been coaching news organizations of all sizes since 2016.
The name Blue Engine is derived from the children’s storybook ‘The Little Engine That Could’ – we believe in helping individuals and teams “get up over the mountain” and doing so with support, kindness, and respect.
We work only on mission-first initiatives that we believe help foster a more equitable and informed society.