Medium
Newsletter strategy
The project was successful on both fronts: unsubscribe rates decreased -40% and free-to-paid conversion rates increased +50%.
They weren’t must-read, they didn’t present Medium in its best possible light, and they failed to meet their potential to convert free users to paid subscribers.
To compete in crowded inboxes, they needed to be more timely, newsworthy, informative, legible, beautiful, and (most importantly) human.
- Curating stories around the week’s biggest news for more timeliness and relevance
- Writing orginal editorial to provide more information and context, and improve click-through rates
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Redesigning the look and feel to be more legible, scannable, and elevated
- Introducing a friendly, personal voice to enhance the connection between readers and the Medium team
I started by relaunching two of our four topic-based newsletters, Tech and Business. Health & Wellness and Programming were left unchanged and used as controls to compare peformance metrics.
I personally curated, wrote, and designed Tech and Business weekly for an audience of millions of readers, and shipped hundreds of newsletters during my tenure.
- +50% free-to-paid conversion rate
- -40% unsubscribe rate
More importantly, Medium readers loved them! My favorite part of this project was reading their feedback, opinions, and reactions in the replies every week.