Case Study Tag: VTDigger

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A nonprofit, statewide newsroom that does watchdog reporting on state government, politics, consumer affairs, business and public policy
Location
Vermont, U.S.
Founded
2009
Launched membership
2016
Monthly unique visitors
725,000
Number of members
8,400
Percentage of revenue from membership
22 percent

VTDigger is known for its strong, investigative journalism and its diversified business model. Today, they have a staff of around 25 full-time employees, with Florencio Terra, Membership Coordinator, Libbie Pattison, Campaign Coordinator, and Stacey Peters, full-stack web developer, leading the charge on the newsroom’s membership and audience-input work.   

Underpinning that success is their system of systematically asking for audience feedback and input and using it to refine what they offer readers and members. As Peters put it: “We pride ourselves on asking for little chunks of information wherever we can.” 

This case study shows how a few straightforward surveys, including an automated one running in the background, can be used to continually add to your understanding of your audience segments and help you take steps to serve them better.

Why this is important

Audience research can be a big, daunting survey – or it can be short requests for audience input during a brief moment when you have their full attention. There isn’t anything unusual about VTDigger’s approach to audience research. But their suite of surveys and their commitment to always following up with respondents give the staff a highly useful picture of their audience needs and reassure the audience that they’re being heard, which makes them more likely to respond again in the future.

MPP offers this case study as an example of how a newsroom can begin conducting audience research in a low-effort, high-impact way. 

What they did

VTDigger’s audience research can be divided into three parts: 

  • Its annual, comprehensive reader survey, which focuses on reader’s attitudes toward VTDigger and it coverage, 
  • One-off surveys soliciting feedback on specific products, and
  • Small, quick opportunities for audiences to give input. 

Annual reader survey: VTDigger sends out a reader survey in SurveyMonkey once a year. They began this practice in 2013, a few years after their launch. They distribute the survey by posting it on their site and sharing it via their newsletter list. In order to increase survey participation, they also resend the survey email to anyone who hasn’t opened it after a week. Their goals for the most recent annual survey were to identify the other channels and types of news readers use and pay for, to check their understanding of audience demographic information, and to see how satisfied their current audiences are with their coverage and products.  In other words, this survey mainly serves as competitive landscape research to help them identify coverage and distribution gaps they could fill.  The survey also includes several explicit questions related to VTDigger’s membership program (see example below). Here’s their 2019 survey. 

Courtesy of VTDigger

Survey for product: When VTDigger is refining or about to launch a new product for their readers, they’ll seek audience input on that specific product. Prior to launching their 2020 Election Guide (a roundup for Vemonters about the candidates, how they can vote during COVID, and the latest election news), they wanted to know how to frame reporter’s interviews and write-ups with candidates. They sent out a survey asking readers if what they wanted to hear about from the candidates, and what issues mattered the most to them. Here’s their reader survey for VTDigger’s election guide. 

Courtesy of VTDigger

Small, quick inputs: VTDigger credits Rebekah Monson, co-founder and COO of WhereBy.Us for this one: when people unsubscribe from your newsletter list, ask them why. VTDigger added a field to their newsletter unsubscribe confirmation page asking “Please let us know why you unsubscribed” to gather feedback in real-time. Since their newsletter is a primary driver of membership growth and engagement, they see feedback on this product as a vital temperature check on their membership strategy writ large. 

Courtesy of VTDigger

The results

Annual reader survey:  In total in 2019, VTDigger received 1,747 survey responses from their audience members. Their 2019 survey revealed a big increase in their readers’ interest in local news – in the past, statewide news, especially governance and legislature, was the top interest.

Based on two data points from the annual survey (the high percentage of readers who wanted to see more newsletters, and the topics most of those readers were interested in) VTDigger created new weekly email newsletters based on particular beats: education, environment, criminal justice, health care, and politics. The team then added calls-to-action on stories within those beats, asking the reader to subscribe to the related topical newsletter. Within four months, VTDigger gained between 5,000 and 8,000 subscribers to each of these new email newsletter lists — a clear indicator that they successfully delivered on incorporating feedback from their audiences.

The “unsubscribe” survey: Their single-question unsubscribe question revealed that the most common reason people unsubscribe was “I just get too many emails.” Newsletters are the best way VTDigger gains new members, so they wanted to keep them in some way. They updated the unsubscribe page with an option for users to instead downgrade to weekly summaries.  They have not yet measured the success of this, but plan on reviewing in the coming months.

What they learned

From their “unsubscribe” survey, the team collected data that allowed them to prioritize newsletter reader preferences. VTDigger learned they have a lot of seasonal residents and second-home owners, so they often get unsubscribe messages like this one: “I am away from VT for a while and have so many emails!” Eventually, they would like to be able to offer a “restart” date for their newsletter, to allow these folks to freeze their subscription for a certain period of time. But they haven’t reached a point where the potential impact of this change is worth the effort and cost to implement it. They’re okay with losing newsletter subscribers over this type of complaint for now. 

For their annual survey, VTDigger learned the importance of offering small incentives to bring in more responses from readers. This past year, they offered all respondents a chance to enter a raffle for a $100 gift card to Bear Pond Books, a local bookstore based in Montpelier, Vermont. This helped the team recruit a large set of survey participants. 

VTDigger learned the importance of incorporating new types of survey questions into their annual survey year after year. Instead of keeping the survey format the same, they add new questions depending on their product and membership goals for the upcoming year. For example, this upcoming year they are considering launching a member-only or paid newsletter. They plan on adding a few specific questions to their 2020 Annual Survey that will help them determine if this is a viable product to offer, and if so, how they can cater the product to their members information needs and ideal user experience. 

Key takeaways and cautionary notes

Look for high-attention moments when you can collect small bits of feedback. Even though it was a negative circumstance, asking readers why they’re unsubscribing as they unsubscribe works because you have their full attention. Look for similar opportunities when readers are highly focused on your site and you can ask related questions. 

Audience research is a cultural mindset. VTDigger has prioritized feedback from the beginning. When it launched, it had a way for readers to submit a tip, report an error, or upload documents at the bottom of every story. Today, the newsroom gets between 50 and 100 tips every month and the VTDigger team reads and follows up on every tip that comes in. Some people complain that they spent too much time at the DMV, while others submit tips that lead to VTDigger breaking news. Getting tips like those requires a cultural commitment to always be listening to readers so that they feel comfortable coming to you when they have something to share. 

Audience research needs a clear workflow to be actionable. Over the years, VTDigger has developed clear workflows for creating and acting on audience research findings. For example, every submission via the bottom-of-story tips request gets emailed to their four-member edit desk and logged in a spreadsheet, where editors log their follow ups. The spreadsheet also allows the team an overview so that it can identify patterns across the state. 

Other resources 

Local/Regional Digital native Conducting Audience Research Developing Memberful Routines Adopting a Product Mindset Retaining our Members VTDigger

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A nonprofit, statewide newsroom that does watchdog reporting on state government, politics, consumer affairs, business and public policy.
Location
Vermont, U.S.
Founded
2009
Launched membership
2016
Monthly unique visitors
725,000
Number of members
8,400
Percentage of revenue from membership
22 percent

VTDigger is a statewide news organization committed to providing watchdog journalism to Vermont. Membership has been a key part of their revenue mix for years, and their spring membership drive is one of the most important revenue drivers they have. 

They were gearing up for their spring 2020 membership drive as coronavirus arrived in the U.S., locking down much of the country and causing a tremendous economic shock. They couldn’t afford to skip the membership drive, but they knew they needed to change it dramatically to respect the financial and medical concerns their readers suddenly faced. 

Why this is important

This guide is being published in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The Membership Puzzle Project team has sought to recognize the challenges the pandemic has introduced while focusing on advice and case studies that will remain relevant when people are able to come together again in person. 

While this example from VTDigger is specific to coronavirus, their insights can be applied to launching a membership appeal during any number of sensitive times, such as a local tragedy.  And while it’s not recommended to constantly change your membership program offering, which can get confusing for members and potential members, a time-limited, mission-aligned benefit can give a boost without detracting from the value of the program itself.

Having a sense of what your members and most engaged readers value about you can help your organization identify what types of benefits might resonate and be easy to implement on a short-term basis.

What they did

Although readers can become a member of VTDigger at any point in time, VTDigger focuses heavily on two membership drives a year, typically one near the end of the calendar year and one in the spring.

Their spring 2020 membership drive came up as the coronavirus pandemic was hitting the U.S. They couldn’t afford not to host the drive, but as they saw the economic fallout, it did not feel right to follow their typical template, a celebratory mix of appeals to the importance of local journalism and member benefits. 

They quickly made the following changes to their plan:

  • Put the incentives they typically offer on the shelf (such as a New York Times subscription, raffle drawings, and swag, such as hats) 
  • Switched from a public financial target to a public target for number of donations – 3,000 (this focused it less on money and more about joining a community) 
  • Partnered with a local glove-making company who had switched to manufacturing cloth masks to donate one mask to a local hospital for every donation made

On April 1, they launched the drive with a letter from founder and editor Anne Galloway.

One of the membership appeals published during VTDigger’s spring membership drive (Courtesy of VTDigger)

In subsequent appeals, VTDigger referred to the campaign as a “mask drive,” rather than a membership drive. This put the focus more on how VTDigger was helping Vermont residents, rather than VTDigger’s journalism, which is usually what membership drives focus on. 

In one of their appeals, Galloway also offered further insight into the decision to stop offering many of their benefits in the short-term. 

One of the final messages sent during VTDigger’s spring 2020 membership drive (Courtesy of VTDigger)

The results

It was a close call – they sent out an appeal on April 30 that they were still 450 masks away from their goal of 3,000  – but they reached 3,050 donations, allowing them to donate 3,000 masks to hospitals across the state. In their “thank you” note to donors on May 1, VTDigger detailed how many masks went to each Vermont hospital. 

The drive raised $291,000 – $6,000 more than their goal for the drive they had planned before COVID-19 arrived.

They also noticed a few interesting member behaviors, Peters said. 

  • One member made five separate donations in order to donate five distinct masks
  • They saw a 30 percent increase in members in the southern Vermont city of Rutland, and a sizable increase in members across all of southern Vermont. Many of those new members thanked VTDigger for donations to specific hospitals in those areas.
  • Nearly 40% of the donations came from out-of-state donors. The percentage of donations from out-of-state is usually in the single digits.
  • Readers assumed that swag was still part of the plan and they received messages from new member testimonials “imploring” VTDigger not to send those items 

They applied those learnings to raise funds again later in the year. Back in 2019, they found out that they had been selected to host a Report for America journalist to cover southern Vermont. But to make it happen, VTDigger needed to raise their own matching funds. They designed a membership campaign around that target, asking people to become members or increase their contribution to make reporting on southern Vermont possible. They launched the campaign on June 1 and wrapped it up on June 7, raising the required $11,500 needed in a week, and not just from people living in the southern part of the state who wanted more local coverage. 

What they learned

Swag has a time and place – and this wasn’t it. Offering typical swag like a tote bag would have missed the mark completely and potentially alienated their members and potential members (as evidenced by the requests from new members not to send swag). The mask campaign worked because it met both VTDigger’s needs – finding a way to hold their spring membership drive – and their readers’ needs – the desire to feel like they were doing something to help Vermont during a difficult moment. 

You have more than one chance to pitch your members. Although the average contribution was lower – the average monthly contribution was 20 cents lower than the spring 2019 campaign and the average annual contribution was $48 lower – VTDigger says the most important thing for them is that they are now members. When the economic recovery begins, VTDigger will begin thinking about how to approach those members about increasing their contribution.

Key takeaways and cautionary notes

Read the room. The pandemic caused financial hardship not just for news organizations who lost events and advertising revenue, but for huge swathes of the communities that they serve. If you’re going to design a membership campaign around a negative news moment, you’ll have to get the tone and social contract right – and consider ways that you can do good for the community at the same time.

Other resources

Local/Regional Digital native Designing our Membership Program Growing our Membership VTDigger