How Newspack helped Oklahoma Watch grow reader engagement

The background: Oklahoma Watch is a nonprofit news organization specializing in in-depth accountability journalism. It’s been serving the state since 2010, distributing its work through its own site as well as news outlets statewide. 

They’re a digital newsroom with nearly 47,000 monthly users and send three weekly newsletters to more than 10,000 subscribers. With a small but determined team, they rely on Newspack to publish their content, drive revenue, and engage their subscribers.

The bottom line: As participants in Newspack’s Revenue Development Program, Oklahoma Watch saw an exponential increase in site registration and a more than 400 percent increase in newsletter signups in just three months, better positioning it to attract donations during this fall’s NewsMatch campaign.

The big picture

Executive Director Ted Streuli was frustrated with vendors that didn’t take his support requests seriously. He felt they only cared about their bottom line. But that’s not the case with the Newspack team, he recalled. “Somebody actually hears what we’re saying and makes a good faith effort to help us with it,” he said. 

Ted and his team value their relationship with Newspack and its publisher community. They know that no web solution is perfect — but they appreciate how responsive the Newspack team is and how seriously we take publisher feedback. 

“Newspack feels more like a partnership than some vendor that’s just trying to take your money, get the next customer, and gobble them up.”

Shaun Witt, Director of Audience Development at Oklahoma Watch

The day-to-day: Witt runs the website, publishes the newsletters, manages advertising, sponsored content, the media kit, and many other things — as one does at a small nonprofit — so he spends a lot of time in Newspack.

He loves that the Newspack Newsletters tool integrates with Mailchimp because it’s a huge time-saver. He saves hours over the time he once spent copying and pasting each newsletter in Mailchimp.

And he’s used Newspack Campaigns to boost engagement and newsletter signups. But he had a hunch he could be doing more. 

Getting to the next level: Witt had experience creating newsletters, but he needed help optimizing engagement. Enter the Revenue Development Program. 

The program starts with an intensive six-session workshop, reviewing best practices and training publishers on how to best use Newspack’s tools to drive audience and revenue growth. During that time, Witt learned how to optimize his use of the Newspack Campaigns tool to add persuasive calls-to-action to the Oklahoma Watch website. 

With support from his program coach, Katie Mercer of Newspack’s partner Blue Engine Collaborative, he created a strategy to drive engagement and subscriber growth. 

After kick-starting his Newspack Campaigns, monthly newsletter signups and site registrations jumped significantly. In the two months before the program started, they had two site registrations and 38 newsletter signups. During the program sprint that wrapped up in July, they logged 128 registrations and 103 newsletter signups. Those numbers increased to 216 registrations and 195 newsletter signups in August.

“I feel like we were starting from ground zero so all of this has been a tremendous help,” Witt recalled his overall experience in the program. 

Working together to find solutions

Witt is grateful for Newspack’s resources and guidance. He appreciates our quick responses to his urgent Slack requests vs. trying to fix something on his own and risk making it worse. 

He’s also a fan of our bi-weekly publisher community calls. “The subject matter doesn’t always pertain to me personally, but it’s always nice to hear what other people are doing.” 

With the help of our support team, the Revenue Development Program, and ideas shared with other Newspack publishers, Witt considers Newspack a true partner. “Newspack is always looking to keep all the partnerships moving forward as opposed to just trying to service calls.”