Whether you’re launching a paid newsletter, or enticing free subscribers to upgrade to a paid product, emails can be a powerful conversion tool. Bloomberg, Hearst UK and Mill Media share tips to help convert free newsletter subscribers to paying products.
At MediaVoices’ The Publisher Newsletter Summit, a group of leaders in the newsletter space gathered on a panel to discuss what works when it comes to nudging engaged audiences to pay.
Henry Seltzer, Director of Newsletter Operations at Bloomberg, Joshi Herrmann, Founder at the UK regional news Mill Media and Rosie Percy, Newsletter Strategy Director at Hearst UK, joined Chris Sutcliffe on stage to share their experiences. Here are five of the top strategies and tips the panel outlined to increase success with reader revenue.
1: Build relationships, not transactions
Mill Media was early into paid newsletters, seeing the opportunity to build reader revenue through low-volume, high quality local newsletters. It first launched in Manchester (in the UK’s north-west) in 2020, and, following its success building a paying audience there, it has now expanded to five other cities including Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow.
Now, it has more than 10,000 members, paying for journalism across those publications. Herrmann said that one of the keys to that success has been getting readers on board with the publisher’s mission on a personal level: “We have found that trying to set up the relationship you have with your readers as less of a transactional relationship in which they’re ‘buying content’, and more like a relationship where they feel like they are something that they want to be part of. They have a connection to the media company, they have a connection to the brand, and by having a connection that makes their life better in some way, that is a more durable way of getting them to pay.”
Herrmann sees his quality local coverage as something that people really want, and will therefore pay for if it’s good enough: “I think there’s a desire, on a lot of people’s part, to feel connected to the places in which they live.:
Bloomberg is building personal relationships by putting its own journalists front and centre. Writers like Matt Levine, John Authers and Tracy Alloway all have their own newsletter brands, which Seltzer says helps audiences feel more connected.
As part of an overhaul in newsletter strategy, Bloomberg put half its newsletter portfolio behind a paywall in 2025: “We see newsletters as value-add to the value of the subscription itself. So they’re getting all of the Bloomberg subscription and content, plus subscriber-only newsletters.”
Percy shared that Hearst UK also sees audiences responding well to personalities, and developing relationships rather than transactions. She says newsletter professionals need to think how they themselves want to interact with a brand: “If I want to open an email from someone in my inbox, I want it to read like it’s a letter from someone I know. I don’t just want it to be a list of links to a site with nothing extra added. Remember, you’re in someone’s personal space, and build that personal connection to deserve being there.”
Percy also said that this personal approach needs to be considered when working on newsletters in more saturated markets: “What are you offering that’s different and personal to this person that can help you build a relationship?” she advised asking.
2: Get the newsletter right first
Over the last few years, Hearst UK has migrated to a new newsletter platform. Percy said that this has helped it understand how the audience interact with newsletters at a deeper level, with more advanced analytics showing where people are clicking, and allowing better segmenting and targeting of users. She advocates getting the product right first before spending effort to move readers down the subscriber funnel: “We spent time really honing that initial experience before we then push them down the line to bigger investment and bigger commitment, which is purchasing a membership.”
Newsletter quality is also of vital importance for The Mill, where the articles are delivered within the newsletters. Herrmann explained that they couldn’t compete with the perceived wisdom of volume publishing in local news in the hope of converting a few readers: “People will pay for incredibly low volumes of content as long as those newsletters that they get are heavily differentiated, as long as they have an individual voice to them and an emotional connection to the audience.”
Herrmann pointed out that Mill Media and others have shown that there are sustainable reader revenue models in lean teams, simple delivery models and low-volume, high quality pieces.
Bloomberg’s Seltzer said that publishers need to carefully weigh up the point of a newsletter before thinking about conversion: “Think about why the newsletter needs to exist…think about the reader utility here. What are you really bringing to people’s lives, and what is the service that you’re providing, whether that’s curation and saving them time, or whether that’s just building a relationship with people in that community?”
3: Understand what readers love
Once Hearst had built a newsletter product it was happy with, the next step was building an understanding of what readers love and how that can be commercialized. Percy highlighted Hearst UK’s Prima magazine as a brand where the newsletter readers’ habits gave them clues about areas that could be used to entice them into buying a membership: “We knew that the content that’s most popular for Prima readers from the newsletter was puzzles. So we put puzzles behind a paywall with one free to play per day… So it’s identifying what content the readers are loving, still giving them a little something, but upgrading that. We can identify in our platform a user based on their membership status; whether you’re active or not, and what level of membership you are. So if you’re on a trial, if you’re a committed member, we can show dynamic content based on your membership status… reminding people of the services they have available if they are paying, and showing people, here’s what you could have had, with content we know they’ve had a previous affinity with, then moving them up the line to pay for more of it.”
Sometimes, the product may be right but the presentation may not be resonating with readers. Bloomberg tried packaging five of its technology newsletters in a ‘skinny bundle’ behind a paywall. Subscribers were given access to the articles linked within the newsletters, but not a full Bloomberg subscription – with the aim of enticing new audiences.
“It wasn’t as successful as we hoped,” Seltzer admitted. Now, Bloomberg is emphasising the value of the subscriber-only newsletters to the overall subscription offering, rather than segmenting paid offerings.
Dive deep into leading publisher newsletter strategies and network with fellow newsletter professionals at The Publisher Summit 2026.
4: Recognize value in niche audiences
One crucial shift all three publishers have seen is how smaller audiences and more niche topics are valued. It’s not a case of choosing between large and small lists; both have their place.
Seltzer says: “We’re seeing a distinction between the [free] broad newsletters that have a broader base…Then the subscriber newsletters are analysis, in-depth, reporting, original insights that you’re not going to get if you’re not a subscriber.”
Bloomberg has a monthly subscriber-only newsletter, Watch Club, dedicated to horology. The newsletter also gives access to launch parties, collector meet-ups, and brand showcases: “We’re seeing value in a smaller engaged list of paying users, as opposed to large lists. We’re really seeing engagement go up on smaller, subs-only newsletters.”
Hearst has also begun building out newsletters with smaller but highly engaged users. They aren’t charging for these at the moment, but are considering subscriber-only newsletters in the future. Like Bloomberg, newsletter subscribers get access to content and events they wouldn’t get elsewhere.
Hearst’s Esquire magazine brand also has a watch-focused newsletter, About Time. Percy said that this was the second most popular content vertical across Esquire, with hyper-engaged readers: “Even though it has a smaller audience, we’ve been able to sell advertising tenancies in it with watch brands, because people will read a 3,000-word newsletter on watches. Because people on this list are so engaged with that subject, we’re able to then build on that niche subject and the person writing it.”
Mill’s Herrmann said that anyone considering launching a newsletter should create something in a market where there is a clear gap or niche: “There are lots of segments, verticals and local areas where there is a vast under-supply of journalism or content,” he pointed out, noting that it’s easier to create an efficient business if you don’t have 20 global competitors.
5: Follow-up on the story
Knowing when to push subscription or membership messaging is still a pain point for many publishers. Paid products need to be clear and visible for those who might come across brands for the first time and be willing to sign up. But more often than not, it is getting the right message to existing readers which pushes them over the line.
Herrmann said that this can vary hugely person to person: “Some people will only join a paid subscription if there feels like there’s an overwhelming, persuasive reason to do so.”
They see spikes after big stories sent out across Mill Media’s brands. But sometimes the biggest converters can be the follow-up stories from reporters explaining how a key story was broken, the relevant legal checks, and more insight into the investigative journalism process: “There are certain people who will sign up at that moment, but who wouldn’t sign up when the story was published.”
Related to his earlier point about building relationships rather than transactions, it isn’t surprising that Mill Media’s better-performing subscriber campaigns are those which have an emotional value to the appeal, rather than just the intellectual or rational.
But for local news publishers in particular, there is a natural ebb and flow to subscriber acquisition. Herrmann described “big growth moments” when journalists have produced particularly strong work, followed by quieter patches.
Regardless of the type of publication, understanding what readers want and creating a high-quality product are two core pillars of a strong reader revenue strategy. Of course.
As Bloomberg’s Seltzer says:“As we are entering this new environment where SEO is crashing and AI is coming for us, the more we can get readers to be involved and engaged on an ongoing basis, the more sustainable the whole model.”
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