From survival mode to second best revenue month EVER

Did you even ask for money is my version of do you even lift bro.

This was my first thought on August 13 when I got an email with subject line “Save RANGE.”

I wondered…when was the last time RANGE asked for money? So I took to my inbox, did a quick search and came up with…

Never.

Ok, not never. They do plug their memberships often but very rarely as a dedicated appeal like what happened in August.

I have a feeling that’s about to change because Spokane-based worker-owned RANGE just pulled off their 2nd BEST REVENUE MONTH EVER.

Today’s issue is about what they did, what worked and what we can learn from it.

Inside RANGE’s 2nd Best Revenue Month Ever

Luke sent this email on August 13:

⏩️ Fast forward a couple weeks later and RANGE had bumped up their monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by a whopping 20% plus one of their readers had stepped up with a large contribution.

Crisis averted.

So, how’d they do it?

Let’s back up a second…

What’s RANGE?

RANGE is a worker-owned newsroom out of Spokane, Washington founded in 2020. They’re part of the Spokane Workers Cooperative (also cofounded by Luke) and all 4 of the journalists are worker-owners which means they all own a piece of the publication.

They caught my eye with Erin’s hilarious live tweets from the Spokane City Council meetings and they’ll stop your scroll with Valerie’s in-your-face graphics.

RANGE is certainly nailing the news part and on top of that, they do an EXCEPTIONAL job at audience engagement with things like talking their City Councilmembers into a bar crawl with readers and making exclusive member patches after another elected made fun of them. (A good sign they’re doing something right 😉 )

Suffice it to say I’m a big fan.

RANGE’s business model

RANGE is a for profit coop and their goal is to be 100% reader funded. They are over 20% reader funded now.

As Luke wrote in that first August email “we have always supplemented your membership dollars by writing a lot of grants.”

Being 100% reader funded is tough the bigger your team gets and it’s super common to patch that with bigger donations (which for profit newsrooms can take through a fiscal sponsor). But as Luke also shared in his reader appeal “the great thing about membership money, compared with grants: it sticks around.”

Readers pay less, but they collectively provide more stable revenue. You can predict how long they’ll stay, make moves to keep them longer and recover from them leaving faster.

So when some grant funding fell through, RANGE turned to their readers.

🍻 Also check out: RANGE’s behind the scenes updates

How they ran this August promotion

RANGE took this promo cross-channel on email, social media and their website.

💌 Email campaign

• 13 emails sent from Aug 13-31 (including their regular newsletters)

• At least 3 dedicated appeals to readers (emails just about becoming a member)

• At least 3 big takeovers like the one below inside their standard newsletters

• A smaller member promo in the rest of the newsletters

📱Website

• Announcement bar on the top of the page (website wide)

• Modal that appears if you’re on the page for a bit

• Nice big clear “Support Us” button that always lives there

RANGE also has a nice, swift upgrade→checkout process. Three pricing tiers makes the choice easy and they send you straight to Stripe with only the minimum fields to fill out. We love that for them because we do not want to slow down this magic moment.

🐥 Social media 

• Posts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to back up their message to “Save RANGE”

• Mixing up news coverage with behind the scenes posts on “How RANGE decides what to cover” and events like the Politicrawl (bar crawl with politicians)

RANGE’s social strategy year round is very participatory and inviting which helps a ton when you make a big reader appeal.

What worked to drive new members

I asked Luke what he thought worked best about this effort and he said “being honest.”

The first email he sent drove the biggest bump in memberships.

The second bump came from an update on how it was going that Val and Luke sent on August 23.

You can see from this tweet below, their message was very straight forward and urgent. We’ve heard from The Intercept and The Guardian how well that can work.

Message probably played a big role, but it’s hard to separately measure the impacts of placement and timing. My read on what seemed to be the most important factors here:

• Dedicated promotions (bumps happened after dedicated emails, not after buried calls to action though it all works together)

• Frequency (sending more than one promo on more than one channel)

• Specific milestones (sharing current member count, target count and progress)

Another thing Luke called out was how being worker-owned changes the “trust dynamic” with readers. They’re more interested in supporting this new, exciting type of business model over more traditional newsrooms.

(I found supporting the worker-owned mission was a top subscriber motivation for another local news outlet too.)

Last thing that was a surprise win was re-engaging members and upgrading members. Members who had let their membership lapse came back and renewed. Members on a lower tier bumped up to a higher tier.

According to an update from last week, this meant:

• 78 new paying members

• 63 upgraded members

• 21 former members returning

Our Takeaway

RANGE was really just an ask away from getting the money they needed to ensure financial stability. It would be great if we didn’t have to ask but the more you ask, the more you bring in.

The RANGE team saved time by taking that ask to their existing reader and member base (rather than looking to find new readers). Members who already pay or previously paid can be easier and faster to win over than new members.

Existing and lapsed members really pulled through for them on this campaign in a surprisingly robust way. Not just upgrading memberships but also offering donations on top of that. A great reminder that the most valuable audience is the one you already have and that tapping them first is usually a smart move.