Digital Transformation 2.0: Bangor Daily News’ Strategic Reset with Mather

By Arvid Tchivzhel, SVP of Technology at Mather Economics, Todd Benoit, President of Bangor Daily News, and Katherine Ruane, Director of Marketing Strategy at Mather

January 7th, 2025

Background

Founded in 1889, the Bangor Daily News (BDN) has been Maine’s trusted voice for over 130 years, championing the state’s values and communities. As a fourth-generation, family-owned newspaper, BDN serves Bangor, rural Maine and beyond through a daily newspaper, multiple weeklies, a marketing agency, and a commercial print shop. Renowned for its statehouse and investigative reporting, BDN is widely regarded as Maine’s paper of record and was recognized as the state’s best daily newspaper in 2024 by the Maine Press Association.

As the media landscape continued shifting toward digital, BDN recognized the need to adapt while honoring its legacy. Despite launching its website in 1997, the publisher faced ongoing technical and cultural hurdles in becoming digital-first. Outdated technology, limited data-driven insights, and cross-departmental coordination issues often slowed growth and led to an inconsistent digital strategy. BDN’s leadership recognized that keeping pace with industry changes would require elevated strategic and execution standards, paving the way for BDN’s transformation.

To overcome these challenges and strengthen its consumer revenue strategy, BDN partnered with its long-time strategic advisor, Mather, which had already been assisting with pricing strategy optimization for over a decade. With Mather’s advanced analytics, fractional leadership, and expertise in product and marketing, BDN set out to enhance operations and establish a best-in-class digital revenue model.

Objectives with Mather

Define a unified, data-driven growth strategy anchored by a North Star Goal for subscriptions.
Optimize the tech stack to fuel growth, prioritize revenue-driving investments, and eliminate tech debt.
Embed data insights across functions to inform decisions, enhance audience targeting, and maximize paywall effectiveness for sustainable revenue growth.
Empower teams with clear roles, measurable goals, and shared accountability. Break down silos to drive performance.

The Path to Success

To chart a clear strategic roadmap, Mather guided BDN through a comprehensive framework to assess the effectiveness of key functions across departments and the organization. This evaluation identified opportunities to enhance domain expertise within subscription marketing, simplify and modernize the tech stack, initiate a product strategy, and better leverage BDN’s wealth of data to drive revenue growth.

To align the BDN team around a North Star goal, Mather analyzed BDN’s current state subscription performance along with industry benchmarks to set a 3-year target for digital subscription growth and revenue. This goal was communicated across the organization to unify efforts and guide resource allocation.

To bring BDN’s vision to life, Mather outlined goals across the customer lifecycle (acquisition, churn, ARPU) down to the weekly level along the 3-year roadmap. Marketing tactics were prioritized based on impact vs. effort to deliver quick wins as well as chart a path for long-term success. Major changes were also implemented to the tech stack driven by a growth-oriented product and technology roadmap to ensure scalability and foster ongoing innovation.

To lead this transformation, Mather deployed a fractional team, including a Chief Strategy Officer, Product Owner (a first for BDN), and two marketing specialists. This team collaborated closely with BDN’s existing resources to drive efficiency and deliver on the roadmap’s objectives, positioning BDN for sustainable growth.

Impact & Results

Within just six months, the collaborative efforts between Bangor Daily News and Mather delivered tangible results, including:

50% Cost Reduction: Consolidated subscription and billing systems, cutting these operational costs by half.

2X New Weekly Digital Starts: Reset email marketing campaigns including new acquisition, winback and onboarding campaigns along with new acquisition offers.

1K+ Newsletter Signups in Week 1: Relaunched the e-edition and revamped the newsletter strategy. Over 1,000 people signed up for a new newsletter in its first week, giving confidence in a data-driven content strategy and accelerating the next 4 newsletter launches over the next 6 months.

Improved User Experience & Speed: Modernized the website and checkout process, significantly enhancing user experience and site speed to reduce cart abandonment.

Additionally, new initiatives were launched to supercharge revenue yield and drive sustained growth heading into 2025, including:

AI Makes 99% of Paywall Decisions: Onboarding Sophi’s AI-Powered Paywall Decision Engine has boosted paywall conversion rates 2.3X in the first month and boosted paywall conversion volume by 47%. Sophi has accelerated acquisition growth and reduced operational cost for BDN’s small marketing team. The Sophi AI continues to learn and improve its effectiveness.

Print Technology and Profitability Transformation: As part of the multi-year technology modernization, the legacy print circulation system will be retired in 2025. Subscriptions will be consolidated and managed within a single system alongside digital subscriptions. This technology change will halve technology cost and unify subscription strategy under a single roadmap. Single copy sales distribution is also being analyzed for rightsizing revenue and cost with a renewed focus on profitability and using digital products to serve Maine’s readers.

Advertising Strategy Reset: Mather has also begun a strategic transformation from selling impression volume to selling high-value audiences, driven by first-party data and connecting advertisers with relevant audiences. This marks another major bridge between advertising and subscription goals, multiplying the value of BDN’s audience, content analysis, and new strength in data-driven decision-making.

Close Partnership with the Newsroom: A renewed trust and partnership has been established between the Audience and Newsroom departments, focusing on maximizing reader value using data. Insights from Mather Listener™ provide strategic recommendations on content/geography that generates retention and acquisition value and how to optimize the production of articles to meet audience demand. The Mather team has also set performance goals (key metrics of engaged page views and conversions) at the section level. The partnership has aligned the organization towards sustainability.

Conclusion

BDN’s partnership with Mather marked a pivotal moment in transforming its consumer revenue strategy. By aligning around a clear North Star goal and implementing data-driven strategies, BDN has already achieved significant quick wins, including a 50% reduction in operational costs, subscriber growth, and enhanced user experience. While these early results are promising, many more opportunities lie ahead. With a clear roadmap and ongoing support from Mather, BDN is well positioned for long-term success.