Apps can be a powerful retention tool for subscription publishers. If they want readers to come back regularly, having enhanced features and added extras like games can be key to building habits and making the app ‘sticky’. But content must always be at its heart.
At the MediaVoices Publisher App Summit in June, Hearst UK’s Product Lead Emma Peagam and DC Thomson’s Stylist Group’s Digital Content Director Felicity Thistlethwaite discussed how their own enhanced apps help retention, their onboarding strategies, and finding a balance between additional features and a simple user experience.
The Publisher Summits covered four product areas across two days in London, from newsletters and print to apps and podcasts, including speakers from The Economist, DMG Media, Reach, National World and Grazia.
You can listen to the full session below, or search for The Publisher Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.
Building retention with games
The power of games in apps is well-documented, from the New York Times’ dedicated Games app and subscription, to those which bake it into the app, like The Telegraph and The Guardian, which has a new Puzzles hub in its relaunched app.
But news publishers aren’t the only ones who can see value from engaging users with games. According to Pugpig’s Media App Report 2025, 18% of publishers currently have games in their app. B2C publisher Stylist, which launched its redesigned app in April last year, saw a fit for gaming functionality as part of the focus on an app to serve its community.
“We looked at the app and everything else we were offering and [looked] to really understand why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Thistlethwaite told The Publisher App Summit. The app now has a VIP area for the top tier of subscribers, varying levels of functionality for other subscription tiers, and both games and site content available in the app for free. It now stands at 25k downloads.
The publisher had decided to offer the games for free as a test to see if it influenced subscription take-up and user engagement. “Games are one of our best retention tools,” Thistlethwaite shared. “More subscribers play the games, which is really interesting, but game users in general are twice as likely to come back to the app.”
She explained that the average app user who played puzzles – both subscribers and non-subscribers – had an 85% greater retention rate over 30 days compared to those who didn’t play puzzles: “When we look at the value of our apps, and the lifetime value of our users who play the games, that’s quite something.”
The games offering doesn’t just encourage retention. It also brings users into a deeper relationship with the written content: “If you play puzzles, you read 68% more articles a week [than a non-puzzle reader],” Thistlethwaite noted.
A common criticism of the New York Times and other publishers which add games is that readers are then engaging with the puzzles rather than the journalism. But Thistlethwaite sees games as part of a person’s journey with the brand. Citing Muj Ali’s earlier app session from the FT, she said that readers come to the publication at different points in the day wanting different things.
“There’s going to be a time and a place to understand the changes to the abortion law that’s coming up this month…and we at Stylist will cover that,” she explained. “There’s also going to be a time and place when you’re on a train and you don’t want to read anything, so we’ve got a podcast for you, or there’s a game. All of these things are there because the women that read our app have told us that they are multifaceted.”
Stylist’s next step will be to try paywalled puzzles within the app. Thistlethwaite acknowledged that she isn’t sure how app users will respond but, given the strong engagement, it’s an obvious place to experiment and test.
Create utility, but keep it simple
One theme which came up throughout The Publisher App Summit was the importance of seeing apps as a utility tool, not just a place for content. But Hearst UK’s Emma Peagam had some learnings to share about striking the right balance as a publisher.
Hearst UK’s apps for its Men’s Health and Women’s Health brands were, for a long time, simple digital edition containers. Peagam noted that they weren’t engaging many users or subscribers, so needed a rethink. Firstly, the team created RSS feeds to easily pull in site content. “We saw a huge uplift there, about 140% in terms of [app] downloads,” she shared.
Then the experimentation began.
On the two brand apps, Hearst introduced integrated training plans for paying subscribers. “It was a really great lesson for us about who we are as a publisher and what we should be offering to our customers,” Peagam explained. “The training plans are great, and offer all of the features that you would expect from training plans within an app. What we discovered, though, is that it’s not necessarily what our customers would want from us.”
She outlined that readers come to Men’s Health and Women’s Health for many reasons; for advice, nutrition, information and community. But there are many competitors who solely focus on training plans, and have app functionality completely geared towards that. Customers came to the Hearst apps saying that the training plans were great, but they had these all in other apps.
When it came to another Hearst brand, Runner’s World, wanting to overhaul their app, Peagam said that the team had learned their lesson: “Instead we thought about: How can we drive a certain level of utility that is bringing users back into the app regularly, as they do when they check content, when they look at our timelines, when they look at their digital editions?”
Runner’s World already had an archive of pdf training plans online, loved by its running audience loved. Instead of creating an app with “whizzy features,” they instead focused on creating a library of these pdf plans which users could easily have to hand on their phones. “[Members] go on this journey where they say, ‘I want to learn to run a half marathon, this is the time I want to do it in, and this is how many runs a week I want to do.’ Then it shows you your plan, and you can download it,” Peagam outlined, noting the shift to personalisation rather than extra features.
The pdf training plan library is exclusive to its Silver and Gold subscribers. Just a few months after launching, the app saw a 35% increase in daily usage. “We’ve seen so much growth from [Gold] users especially,” said Peagam. “We thought our mid to lower tiers would be the ones that would see the most growth, but actually it’s that top level, because they see the value in the full package – that’s what they wanted.”
Connecting to the content
The most important lesson Peagam and Thistlethwaite emphasised during the session was that publishers need to keep sight of what their audience want from them when designing any product or launching new features. “We can’t act outside of the content,” Peagam said. “Everything has to uplift and connect to the content in some way.”
She oversees many different brands in Hearst’s UK portfolio, and explained that different features do well for different apps – as long as content is at the heart. Puzzles have done well in the app for Hearst’s Prima magazine because readers are already used to seeing them in the print magazine and online. Good Housekeeping, similarly, has a podcast that’s directly tied into recipe and other content, so again users respond well.
That’s not to say extra features in apps can’t contribute.
Thistlethwaite is watching carefully how Stylist readers behave with their games, keeping a constant finger on the pulse of their readership: “What we’re learning about our users from this is helping us define not only the content we make, but also our creative and product decisions.”
Whether it’s audio, games, pdf libraries, personalisation or other additional features, the message from both is clear: they must be focused on have audience needs and content. Any company can make a killer puzzle or workout app. But it’s a publisher’s content which sets it apart from the competition.
Thanks to Pugpig and Syno which sponsored the MediaVoices® Publisher App Summit. Listen to Felicity and Emma’s session at The Publisher Summits on The Publisher Podcast above, or on your podcast app of choice.
