Membership has its privileges – we couldn’t agree more

ABOUT a year ago, one of my colleagues wrote about having a confusing job title. I can identify. After more than a decade of working across the various news desks at The Business Times (BT), I made the switch to join the audience team as its membership editor about a year and a half ago.

When contacts or colleagues asked what my new role entailed, I took to rambling off a list of responsibilities memorised from my job description. (In a nutshell, it’s an audience-focused role dedicated to growing and engaging readers – especially subscribers.)

Not everyone fully understood what I was saying, and in fact it took me a while to figure things out as well. The learning curve in the first year was a steep one as I stepped outside my comfort zone for the first time in my career to take on a non-editorial role. 

It doesn’t help that hardly anyone in Singapore has heard of a membership editor; although this position has existed for years at other established and progressive publications such as Quartz, The Atlantic, and The Guardian.

To make matters more complicated, the functions and responsibilities of a membership editor and the membership programmes offered differ across media organisations.

At The Guardian, it’s to rally readers to donate in support the paper’s brand of “fearless, independent journalism”. Depending on the amount, donors/members also get access to newsletters, events and an ad-free reading experience. 

Over at Quartz, membership programmes revolve around unlocking exclusive content; and The Atlantic went one step further by giving its members the opportunity to directly interact with its journalists and editors.

Here at BT, we have taken cues from some of these peers. My responsibilities include being the voice of BT’s journalism, building a community of engaged readers, and rewarding subscribers. 

I also develop onboarding journeys for various audience segments, and work with colleagues from other departments on user acquisition, retention and other engagement strategies. 

The importance of an engaged reader

Building a vibrant membership programme has its benefits: it strengthens and enhances BT’s value proposition, and gives us the opportunity to interact with our readers more closely. 

This way, the relationship with subscribers goes beyond the transaction of sign-ups or renewals. For non-subscribers who are also our readers, we hope they will see value in taking up a subscription and becoming full members of our community.

Having highly engaged readers, encouraging positive habits such as installing the BT app, and explaining the full benefits of a subscription are also ways to manage subscriber churn. 

By having a pipeline of readers’ events throughout the year, we also elevate the reading experience by bringing BT to life and showcasing the work of my newsroom colleagues – the journalists who put out stories day in day out – through seminars, panel discussion and more.

In return, readers get the rare opportunity to engage with their favourite BT writers, columnists or editors at some of these gatherings.

Events and rewards

BT kicked off its readers’ initiative efforts last April with Mark to Market ‘Live’, an extension of senior correspondent Ben Paul’s popular column and podcast of the same name. In just a little over a year, it grew from a subscriber-only webinar series to a sold out in-person seminar.

Similarly, senior correspondent Leslie Yee’s inaugural Property Outlook Seminar drew a full house in February.

Both panel discussions – which included an audience question-and-answer session plus a buffet lunch – attracted about 120 participants each.

While both events were open to the public, registrations were available to subscribers a week earlier; and tickets cost only S$15, compared with the S$40 that non-subscribers paid.

In April, a very special group of subscribers got to meet key members of the BT team, including editor Chen Huifen, at our first ever Meet the BT Newsroom event. The by-invite-only dinner not only gave us a chance to thank some of our most engaged readers, but candid feedback about the product was also exchanged over canapes, drinks and a three-course meal.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so BT subscribers’ perks extend also to some of the finer things in life: a shochu masterclass, a truffle-tasting experience, an Italian wine-pairing dinner, as well as ticket giveaways to Jim Gaffigan’s stand-up show, Paul Anka’s concert, and football matches when Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Leicester City and Bayern Munich visited Singapore recently for a series of pre-season friendlies. 

There is more to come when our membership website, BT Club, is officially launched in October in conjunction with the paper’s 47th birthday.

Subscribers will continue to enjoy the full benefits of the programme, while readers and visitors to the website will be encouraged to register for an account so they can gain access to selected perks and privileges.

We hope our curated calendar of events and handpicked rewards will add value to our subscription packages. More importantly, we hope to see you at our next BT gathering.