New Subscriptions Acquisition for The Athletic

The Athletic is a premier sports journalism platform, catering to dedicated fans across American football, basketball, the Premier League, and more. Since its acquisition by the New York Times, The Athletic has continued to innovate and expand its global reach.

As The Athletic’s user base grew, the company faced a challenge: how to scale new user acquisition efforts while maintaining efficiency in the face of increasing competition. We wanted to convert a higher volume of leads into paid subscriptions and drive engagement with existing subscribers.

In coordinating with the broader Performance Marketing and Growth teams, I led a comprehensive direct-to-checkout strategy designed to boost clickthrough rates and increase new user acquisitions. My approach utilized paid acquisition channels like Facebook and Twitter X, and I worked closely with the Brand, Design, and CRM teams to execute high-impact campaigns.

Optimizing paid media strategies across key sales events, contributing to a large portion of new customer subscriptions for The Athletic (net adds).

Partnering with Design and Brand to collaborate and create ad creative for high-engagement campaigns, driving large increases in Clickthrough Rates across static and video ad creative paired with high-converting ad copy.

Experimenting with lifecycle and engagement tactics that increased Weekly Active Users (WAU) among existing subscribers and registrants with statistical significance.

Through these efforts and those of the broader organization, The Athletic experienced a notable increase in new customers:

A profitable Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) year-over-year for acquisition and winback campaigns.

Increased marketing efficiency by coordinating with cross-functional teams, elevating The Athletic's brand presence and user experience.

By leveraging creative, data-driven marketing strategies, I helped The Athletic expand its subscriber base and engage its community of passionate sports fans.