The power of direct connection in audience monetisation: a Guardian Media Group case study with Chief Supporter Officer Liz Wynn

0:03Hello and welcome to the Leaders Worth Knowing podcast, the sports industry show from Leaders where we talk to the people worth knowing in the business of sport this week. I'm James Emmett, the editorial director here at Leaders and we've got something a little bit different on this week's show. We are going to be talking to Liz Wynn, who is the chief supporter officer revenue at the Guardian Media Group. She's had a background across media and technology. She's worked for Orange EE and spent almost eight years working at Sky as well before joining the Guardian in 2023. The reason we've got Liz on the show, obviously a non-traditional guest for our Sports Industry Show is because she spoke at our Leaders Meet Innovation event back in March, which is our private invitation only event for the C-Sweep from across sport.

1:10It's Chatham House Rules. But Liz delivered a presentation at that event, which received rave reviews. And so we thought if we could we would get her on the podcast um to relive as much of that as possible for a broader audience because there are lots of transferable lessons there the presentation um was about uh monetizing digital audiences uh basically audience monetization the power of direct connection and basically as an insight into what the Guardian has been able to do to spectacular success in recent years. As of this past financial year 25-26 the Guardian actually generated digital reader revenue of 125 million pounds of which represents around about 44 percent of the total 280 million that revenue is a mix of subscriber revenue and supporter revenue and lives obviously central to the growth of the supporter program um and there's all sorts that goes into this um the power of making an ask where when how um gathering reader data uh working out what behavioural psychology triggers are likely to move people towards the idea of supporting.

2:50So lots in this one, definitely worth listening. Here, without further ado, is the Chief Supporter Officer of The Guardian, Liz Wynn. Okay, Liz Wynn, thank you very much for coming in to the Leaders Studio to reflect on the glory not only of your recent marathon um endeavors uh but also the real glory of a fantastic presentation that you um gave for us a recent leaders event as we're speaking uh this is almost two months ago um you spoke about your job basically liz didn't you audience monetization and the power of direct connection. It's an unusual podcast, this one, in that basically what I want you to do is try to remember as much of your presentation as possible because it got rave reviews at our invite-only behind-closed-doors event and we would like to, as much as possible, let as broad an audience hear that as we can.

3:56So maybe let's start from the top. what was it that we asked you to talk about?

4:03Liz Wynn:Thanks James I'm really glad to be here because it's just an amazing story to be able to share about The Guardian and its transformation so yeah the story we told really was you know how audience and community and purpose can come together to drive you know direct and sustainable revenue streams and I think from the discussion in the room and around it, it was quite clear that there are some incredible parallels between our journey, if you like, and the challenges that many sports organisations face. Yeah. So give us a bit of background, give us a bit of context to set this up. You are, nominally, the Chief Supporter Officer at Guardian Media Group.

4:48How long have you been doing that and what does that mean?

4:50Liz Wynn:Yeah. So I've been in that role for two and a half years now. And, you know, what it means is I'm responsible really for all of the direct consumer efforts. So the marketing and the subscription growth and sort of product revenue from consumers, readings, our audience globally. And so that spans, you know, a range of sort of print products, but increasingly digital revenues. And I mean, we'll get into that and talk about it later. But, you know, The Guardian is largely funded by its readers, nearly two thirds these days. across print and digital. And it's been at the forefront of a quite radical transformation in our business model.

5:32Yes. And that's what we want to dig into. So a few figures. The Guardian has been on this journey, I think it's fair to describe it as, that has seen in recent years fairly explosive growth in digital reader contributions, digital reader revenue, either through traditional-ish digital subscriptions you know you're paying for the product but also the area um that you're going to focus on um supporter contributions it's kind of a new-ish model um in digital media and uh i think the last uh the last time we looked and i think these are have been published 125 million pounds uh across the year the last year that accounts were done for from digital reader revenue either supporter or subs a third of the total revenue so

6:33Liz Wynn:that's right so it's been an incredible decade of growth from you know pretty much um you know very very small contribution to the overall sort of revenues of the the business so you know one 2 % up to now nearly 44 % actually over 44 % of our total revenues coming from you know what we call digital reader revenue so it's supporter revenue be that as contributions or subscriptions and really with The Guardian it has been an incredible transformation and the organization itself has you know had a long and storied history so it's sort of 205 years old on Monday in fact and it It was founded in Manchester as the Manchester Guardian became national in sort of the 1950s.

7:19Liz Wynn:And, you know, with the advent of the internet really, sort of Guardian Unlimited around the millennium, suddenly it was catapulted from being like the ninth largest UK paper by circulation to suddenly being the fifth largest global news publisher, you know, in English worldwide. And it was through that sort of willingness to embrace the digital transition at the time that the business was able to really sort of transform itself. And, you know, with it, you know, at the time, the digital publishing model was relatively favorable in that advertising revenues really followed reach. And so there was, you know, the alignment of our mission as an organisation and the revenues that could follow from it, you know, was fairly straightforward.

8:10Liz Wynn:And the Guardian is quite a unique business. So it's owned by a trust. Scott Trust owns it. So we don't have a billionaire owner. We don't have shareholders. that the trust is charged with securing the flourishing of the Guardian in perpetuity, its sustainability and its ability to continue to offer the sort of fearless, independent, global perspective that our readers really appreciate. And it means that our business model makes us quite unique as an organisation. So, as I said before, we have incredible reach. We have 120 million readers every month globally. More than two-thirds of those are outside the UK.

8:55Liz Wynn:And so The Guardian is a very global business. It's open to all – and that aligns very strongly with our mission, but it's also an incredible sort of marketing platform for what we do. And I can go and talk about that in a bit more detail later. And because we've recognized a changing in our business model, You know, it's had this incredible sort of community built up around it. And that has enabled us to be directly funded largely by that community now. And that's increasingly, you know, important. It was important, you know, 10 years ago, we made the transition then, but it's becoming increasingly even more so as we see the disruption in consumer behavior with AI and the sort of platform dynamics and so forth.

9:44Liz Wynn:And really, we're supported by 1.4 million supporters worldwide. Over 60 % of those are outside the UK. Our revenues are growing very strongly, as you alluded to. And that growth was a story of several phases of evolution, if you like. So we started out in the sort of the late noughties. The Guardian's always had this incredible community around it. And our readers have told us that they seek a sense of connection with the journalism, which even back then sort of manifested itself in a real thriving events program. Very London-centric, right? It was very much in-person events. And from that, a nascent membership scheme grew.

10:37Liz Wynn:Now, it was small and really beautiful and totally unscalable. But that was the kernel of the Reader Revenue Programme that came to be. So you'd become a member. You'd be in and around London, a Guardian reader. You would quite fancy going to an event where Yota Matolenghi might speak in the Guardian offices. You'd go along, you'd think, yes, I quite fancy coming to more of these. You'd become a member. Yeah, exactly. And it was five pounds a month and you had priority access to all of that. So it was small and beautiful. But at that time, so in 2010, and it's quite well documented, right? There are some beautiful sort of cartoons in Private Eye and whatnot where you can see some quite sort of surprised sort of people within the industry looking at the sort of innovation that we had to sort of reach for at the time.

11:32Liz Wynn:because we had a moment of what can only be described as near crisis. The Guardian at the time was losing a significant amount of money, so over£80 million in the year. And the resources of the Scott Trust really couldn't have sustained that level of loss for very much longer. We were looking at a runway of five to six years survival. So things needed to change and they needed to change rapidly. And it became apparent at that point that advertising wasn't going to be the only game in town. It couldn't be. Print was in structural decline and started to be even back then. And so we needed to find another way.

12:13Liz Wynn:And at the time, we had a very clear understanding of our audience. And we noticed this sense of sort of support and real sort of desire amongst our readers. They were quite horrified to hear that, you know, we might not exist even in such a short timeframe. frame. And so at the time, we had a number of Americans in the commercial teams. And they said, guys, guys, you got it all wrong. Where we come from, there's a whole thriving not-for-profits media sector, which is supported by effectively contributions and donations. It works there. Why don't we give it a go? And with the support of Catherine Biner, who just became our editor-in-chief at the time.

13:00Liz Wynn:I mean, she said, right, we just got to try this. You know, let's go for it. And they did. And, you know, somebody in the newsroom wrote a little sort of piece at the bottom of the article. We got given what we now call the epic, which is the space, you know, and it follows the journalism. It's a beautiful thing, which has the ask, the explanation of what we do, why we're unique and why our readers would want to support us. This is the thing at the bottom. The thing at the bottom with the yellow text. Yes. So if ever you see that, I mean, we call it the epic. And it said, you know, please, we need your help.

13:32Liz Wynn:If you value what we do, please contribute, help us sustain it. And it was remarkably successful. So there have been many sceptical voices internally and externally per the Private Eye cartoon. But it's remarkable how success has many fathers. And as it started to work, everybody sort of came in line. And so for a while, between 2016 and 2020, you would see on The Guardian, support The Guardian, you have an option to contribute and you'd have an option to subscribe. because our membership scheme, meanwhile, had continued to evolve into a digital subscription business with ad-free reading and other feature benefits around our crosswords, for example.

14:16Liz Wynn:So that was a period of explosive growth and really opened our eyes to the possibilities of the model. And then from there, world events have been coming out as a pace, right? So from the days of Brexit in 2016 to Trump's first election to COVID, the pandemic in 2020 and onto this current era. with that global, simple proposition and the messaging sort of tied into the journalism, wherever we were read, people could see our mission, see what we're about and had the opportunity to contribute. And so the period between 2020 and 2024 saw a real global expansion in the model. And then the last few years, I would say from 24 onwards, have been about you know adding depth to our offering and getting if you like closer to our readers and our community you know really developing essentially our first party data program as well as the subscription products but we can talk about that in a sec.

15:29So the breakthrough it seems to me was the realization that you can ask and you should perhaps ask but then I think there is lots there's clearly lots that's gone on to refine how you ask when you ask where you ask etc and something that really struck me um when i heard this presentation first um but even more so now is the geographical spread that you talked about 1.4 million digital um uh recurring supporters around the world most of them are in the US right um and and I presume that is not because necessarily the Guardian is um most consumed in the US it's simply because the giving environment is most kind of redolent there is that right yeah I mean look one thing I'd say so the UK is still the

16:26Liz Wynn:largest single um territory but I know the US is a big big market for us and you know we have you know, risen to a really strong position in the US over time. And it's not been easy. I mean, there are many media organisations, British media organisations who've looked at the US market, which is vast, and has a, you know, a terrific propensity to pay for news and value it. And, you know, attempted entry into that territory. You know, the Guardian's been there for 20 years, you know, and has kept plugging away effectively. And in the recent years, we've certainly come to a greater degree of prominence.

17:08Liz Wynn:So we're regularly read, you know, in the top 10 of sort of media brands in the US. And we offer something quite distinct there, which, you know, we've done quite a lot of work to understand what is it about that US audience? What are they getting from this sort of British heritage sort of publication. And really, it comes back to these common sort of themes of the independence, you know, particularly as the US media landscape has changed over the last couple of years. You know, we stand in a more distinctive place on that than we ever have. And the second thing is the sort of objectivity and clarity of the global perspective.

17:50Liz Wynn:And so we're often told that, you know, we help Americans understand the US with greater perspective because we can see a world outside the US. And what having that presence in the US means is that we can also help the world understand the US better. And we have this incredible sort of 24-7 round-the-clock model between our Sydney operation, which actually only started about 12 years ago, London and the US. So if you have late breaking news in the US, and there's a live blog going on, which often there will be, it'll very often be started by the person who's woken up in Sydney. And then they hand it on to London, and then it goes back to the US.

18:32So it sort of enriches the coverage through having that what we call multiplier effect between

18:38Liz Wynn:the locations. I wonder what you can say about the work that you've done and probably continue to do to understand, you know, what gets your audiences going, what motivates them to support, because it does strike me that, you know, we're living in a, in an, yeah, in a, in a fractious era at the moment. And I recall Trump's first presidency, anyway, the first sort of campaign. He had this vast email list and it was all just about raising money, right? As all US presidential elections seem to be about. And the messaging in that email that he would send out was so basic and so provocative so obviously kind of binary like you need to donate now to stop evil um but you know clearly clearly he had a really good understanding of what motivates his supporters to uh get out there and and pay him some some money i doubt that the guardian is quite as um you know stand up against evil give us money um but what is the work that you've done to kind of understand what pushes the buttons of your audience.

19:57Liz Wynn:Yeah. And we do think about sort of, you know, our strategy in a nutshell, if you like, is, you know, firstly, you know, to drive motivation to support. And that is underpinned by, you know, a real, you know, comprehension of our model, why we're different and the impact we make in the world. And then secondly, we see that that is not alone. That's not enough alone. And we need to develop, you know, a direct connection with our reader as and moreover daily habit because frequency you know adds to the relevancy of what you're saying and then finally we we talked about the product mix but we want to have really compelling um sort of products if you do want to support us that will you know sort of reward and thank people for that support and so when it comes to the motivations i mean the early days was quite straightforward you know we talked to people you know we had physical events we would be chatting to people, we do focus groups.

20:54Liz Wynn:And these days, we do less of that, we do more market research. But of course, you know, that gives us a really firm pulse on, you know, motivations to support. And we've been tracking this for, well, five years, at least the same survey. And we see a very consistent set of 10 motivations, they stay the same. I mean, the top five, you know, number one is I want to protect the free press. The second, I want to protect the Guardian's editorial independence. The third, I want to support investigative reporting. Fourth is I want, you know, to continue to enjoy trustworthy, factual, high quality journalism.

21:32Liz Wynn:And the fifth is I want to support the Guardian to hold power to account. So it's very much rooted in the fearless independence of the journalism. And, you know, what's more, we, you know, as we've developed the program. And when people are now making a contribution or subscribing, we give them the opportunity with a free text field to tell us, you know, why did they support us today? And it is the most, you know, wonderful task, you know, of anyone in the team is to read those supporter testimonials, because it's an incredibly rich and evolving set of cues and clues. And of course, these days, you can do a fabulous analysis on that with natural language processing and so forth.

22:16Liz Wynn:But, you know, the consistency of those messages, you know, really echo back. The third thing we do is we always, you know, we have data. Yeah. And we've got, you know, incredible volume of page views and visits and conversions. So we can spot patterns. We can see which themes are eliciting support, you know, where the spikes come, you know, and that, you know, again adds to the qualitative sort of understanding with more quant which can then be used you know for example if we see a set of articles you know trending up in terms of conversion we go okay that's going to be a good email series let's take it out and you know if it's a real blockbuster it becomes sort of more brand messaging so there's a real sort of arc if you like to to the messaging development.

23:03I was wondering where that link was between sort of understanding motivations to support, either through the specific ask that you're making or through the general theme of the journalism and the product. You know, people read about this and then they are more likely to then respond to a support message. And I wonder where that sort of Chinese wall is between the fundraising team and the editorial team in The Guardian.

23:35Liz Wynn:Yeah. And so, I mean, the reader revenue team and the editorial team work incredibly closely together and it is very helpful. And I think this model would not work if the brand purpose and mission wasn't the organization's core DNA. And so every day, everybody in the building turns up really to do the job that we tell our readers we do. And so we rarely, you know, we're rarely out of lockstep, truly. And so, you know, the job of our brand team is to develop branding and messaging and campaigns that talk to our global perspective, our independence, and to do so in an arresting way. And, you know, the journalism, you know, is driven by editorial standards, and the editor in chief is free to direct that, you know, as she will.

24:25Liz Wynn:And then we have a really quite key role that supports us so our supporter editor um who helps us to craft the messaging and the emails so it has to speak from the journalism has to be incredibly authentic um and that that is how we managed to make the link yeah back to the conversation in just a moment but first some exciting news about leaders week london leaders week london the global gathering for senior decision makers in sport has a new home for 2026. We'll be landing at Stamford Bridge with our brand new host partners Chelsea Football Club on the 7th and 8th of October. And working closely with the team at Chelsea our goal is to make Stamford Bridge the home of international sports business for the week.

25:13And you can find out more about our plan so far at leadersinsport.com forward slash leadersweek. That's leadersinsport.com forward slash leadersweek. Talk to me about the newsletter strategy and where this fit into the supporter revenue generation strategy in general? Because it does seem to me that the data is so important. As you talked about, frequency of engagement with your prospective supporters is very important. And really, you know, to put a name on all the data that you're seeing, you need them to sign up to a newsletter, right? So what's happened in the world of newsletters at The Guardian over the last few years?

25:55Liz Wynn:Yeah. So look, I think you've hit the nail on the head, right? So emotional affiliation is not enough. You need to be able to have a direct connection and activate it. And what our email strategy does is allow us to do that. So probably two years ago, we had fewer than a million people registered that we could email with marketing messaging. That's now over 8 million. And we've had a concerted effort to develop that and to grow it. And we want to continue to grow it even further. And the way we've done it is quite straightforward, really. We've developed a very deep newsletter program. And so we're not unique amongst publishers in doing that.

26:42Liz Wynn:You'll see a lot of publishers following the same strategy, and there's a really good reason for that in that it works incredibly well. So we've got a portfolio of about 60 different newsletters. They add depth, breadth, perspective. They reflect breaking news. It's a mixture of weekly, daily, frequency, whatever you would like. But in signing up for the newsletter, then clearly we know who you are. And you move out of an unknown environment. So we have 120 million browsers. We don't know really very much about them other than what they're doing into a world where we know who they are and we can start to address them through the email program.

27:23Liz Wynn:And so we have a regular Saturday email written by the editor in chief and the local editors in Australia and America, which is a very important sort of contact with the newsroom. And then for our supporters, Will, who's our supporter editor, also does a supporter email itself. And so that's great in terms of driving just reconsideration on a regular basis. It's also great for traffic and it's a great vehicle for us to include marketing messaging. And the other thing we do is we do ask for registration. So in the app, if you download that, there's a request for registration. And then on site, periodically, we will put in registration asks.

28:10Liz Wynn:And again, it's all about just shifting from this unknown paradigm to a known one. And with it, you know, we're doing quite a lot at the moment to try and improve our data infrastructure so that we can better resolve, if you like, between those two different worlds. Because they used to be very siloed data sense. We had membership data and ID data and we had reading data. And so the login is very important to join that up. If you subscribe to a newsletter, as lots of people do these days, and then you decide, actually, I'm not really into this newsletter, I'm going to unsubscribe. Do you then still keep that data?

28:50Is that data still useful to you? Are you still able to identify those people as they navigate the site and use Guardian products?

28:58Liz Wynn:so i mean i mean we clearly follow all of the um data privacy protocols so you know if someone wants to unsubscribe we just unsubscribe them yeah and we don't track um but what um we do get through more broadly we get the ability to sort of target people with marketing messaging but we do build an incredible sort of bank of insight on an anonymized basis where we can better sort of resolve between the web behaviour and the individuals. And if you're not logged in or you haven't given us your email details, we still speak to you. So we have tooling on the website, which I'm sure if you've read and you've read a lot, you might see, you know, thanks for being one of our mega top readers.

29:45Liz Wynn:You've read 200 articles in the last month. And that's all about sort of triggering that sort of appraisal amongst the readers to consider supporting and why haven't they done so already? But that's done on an anonymous basis. It's good to see that you're not using the word guilt tripping. Well, there's plenty of, I want to say, there's a behavioural science principle called reciprocity. I think that's what we like to talk about. and looking on the site you'll see the multiple messaging channels we have so we have the banner we have the the article itself we have the header so we have house inventory house ad inventory as well which we're able to place messaging from time to time so it's a very rich environment and I think the sophistication with which we're able to understand our audience but also target it has come on leaps and bounds in the last five, six years.