The challenge of migrating, engaging, and retaining print audiences to digital products – and the role apps are playing for Advance Local – will be explored in an upcoming Mather Symposium session with Jon Van Zomeren, Director of Consumer Data Management at Advance Local and Pugpig on Friday 27th February, 9:40AM.
For publishers moving away from print, the transition marks a shift in how readers interact with their products. Ending print may address cost or operational considerations, but it also requires publishers to think differently about forming and maintaining reader habits, and how to retain their most loyal readers over time.
This is something Jon Van Zomeren and Pugpig will explore together in our Friday morning session at the upcoming Mather Symposium. It’s a challenge many publishers are facing, and one where apps are increasingly playing a practical role – not as a silver bullet, but as part of a broader approach to migration, engagement and retention.
Rebuilding reader routines
Print audiences follow patterns. The paper arrives at a predictable time, reading happens in familiar moments, and engagement builds naturally over years.
When print is scaled back, those habits don’t automatically carry over to digital products (although publishers’ lives would be much easier if they did!) Many publishers see an initial spike in digital usage, followed by a gradual drop-off as readers struggle to form new routines. You may have successfully moved readers online, but the behaviour hasn’t been rebuilt.
Publishers must think about where repeat engagement and daily habit happen. Apps often play a key role in that answer – they offer a highly engaging, habit-forming experience, especially when rich content formats like audio, video, games and push notifications are used alongside traditional written content.
Maintaining the feel of an editorially curated product is equally important. Apps are the perfect environment to balance deliberate editorial curation with well-executed personalisation, preserving a coherent reading experience, increasing relevance for each reader and making sure your hard-earned brand heritage and editorial identity aren’t lost.
Engagement and retention must be the key drivers
Conversion is easy to measure, but this alone doesn’t tell you whether migration from print to digital is actually working. What matters more is what happens after a reader enters your digital ecosystem. Do they come back regularly? Do they interact across content formats and products ie. website and app? Do they begin to rebuild a daily habit?
Engagement consistently proves to be one of the strongest signals of long-term retention, and should be treated as a core success metric rather than an outcome. Among frequent app users, engagement patterns appear early, making it possible to understand what is working – and what isn’t – long before any retention issues may surface in your subscription data.
As publishers move further towards digital-first models, apps often take on greater strategic importance. The focus shifts from driving acquisition alone to supporting consistent engagement and long-term retention, and apps – alongside other owned channels like newsletters and events – provide a stable, owned environment in which that work can happen.
What publishers can take from this (with more to come at the Symposium)
Many of these themes will be explored in more detail during our Mather Symposium session. While every publisher’s situation is different, a few consistent lessons are emerging:
- Migration works better when it’s treated as a behaviour challenge
- Engagement is a stronger early indicator of success than conversion alone
- Consistent, owned environments matter more as print routines fall away
- Apps warrant proper strategic attention when retention is the priority
- Measuring sessions per month and depth of engagement provides clearer insight than headline metrics alone
What comes next
The shift away from print continues to reshape publishing in very real ways. The organisations navigating it most effectively are those that focus less on replacing formats, and more on rebuilding reader relationships.
As the conversation with Jon Van Zomeren at the Mather Symposium will show, apps are increasingly part of how publishers are doing that work – supporting reader migration, driving engagement, retaining audiences, and ultimately supporting long-term revenue growth in a digital-first future.
For publishers facing similar questions, be sure to join Jon Van Zomeren’s Symposium session with Pugpig on Friday 27th February at 9.40AM. If you’d like to chat more about the role of apps in migrating, engaging and retaining print audiences, reach out to james.kember@pugpig.com