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How Pugpig played a part in New Statesman’s 40-year readership high

New Statesman recently reported their readership is at a 40-year high and we’re extremely pleased to have built them a world class mobile app that’s played a key part in their success.

21st March 2023

New Statesman recently reported that their readership is at a 40-year high and we’re extremely pleased to have built them a world class mobile app that’s played a key part in their success.

The UK’s leading political and cultural magazine revealed that their circulation has increased by over 27% in the past year, accompanied by a “significant growth in online audiences.”

Revamping New Statesman’s mobile app

While we’ve worked with the team since 2015 and started an exciting revamp and relaunch of their mobile app in the spring of 2022. They wanted to diversify their digital products with a focus on audio, video and digital editions.

The new, revamped app blends curated live news feeds with digital editions, has an intuitive podcasts section and takes advantage of lots of our out-of-the-box features and publisher focused integrations.

When we compare the app’s performance pre and post revamp, we can see just how the work we did boosted engagement and thus contributed to New Statesman’s multi-decade record readership numbers.

App visits increased by almost 25%

Let’s look at December 2021 compared to December 2022 as an example. Total app users were up by almost 10% (9.4%), while visits increased by 24% and sessions per user went up by 14%.

As another key part of the revamp, the New Statesman team introduced much more flexible pricing plans with our integration with subscriptions platform Evolock in a bid to drive even more subscriptions.

The results speak for themselves – New Statesman’s world class app played, and continues to play, a key part in reaching new audiences, broadening their readership and ultimately their largest circulation figures in four decades.

Consistent subscription growth

New Statesman’s marketing director Sam Fairburn said:

“We have created consistent subscription growth by diversifying our efforts into the development of our digital products,” mentioning that “enterprise subscriptions, and the growth of our podcasts and app audiences” were also key drivers for them.

Dominic Easter, Customer Director at Pugpig said:

“We’re extremely proud of our long term relationship with New Statesman and are really pleased their mobile app has contributed to some huge successes for them. Since they upgraded to our Bolt platform, they’ve made use of a range of its best features and we’re looking forward to working with them to continue growing engagement on the app.”