Developing Nature’s flagship newsletter service
Context
The Nature journal is read by thousands of researchers and scientists all over the world. In order to reach this audience more regularly, Nature Briefing provides both a daily and a weekly email newsletter service, hand crafted by an experienced editorial team.
I took over product management responsibilities for Briefing in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began. The service had been growing successfully for two years prior, but growth was beginning to tail off.
What happened
Over the following 18 months, I led a small team of developers, alongside colleagues from Nature‘s news team, and pivoted product development from acquisition to engagement.
I was responsible for implementing more accurate product analytics, and set goals around increasing the percentage of subscribers opening the newsletter more regularly, fulfilling the mission of the Briefing to become a daily appointment with the Nature brand.
Outcome
We continued to grow the subscriber base, and I formed a key partnership with the editorial team, leading to spin-off newsletters such as Back to the Lab – a response to the COVID crisis – as well as outlining a strategy for editorial products and newsletters for the whole of Springer Nature.
Employer:
Springer Nature
Project Duration:
March 2020 – September 2021
Themes:
Product development, publishing, journalism innovation, newsletters
Paul Rissen 