Growing The Intercept’s membership program
I led design cycles on the “email wall”, which captures email addresses for our newsletter and fundraising appeals, and grew the list by 30%.
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Problem
The Intercept has no ad revenue and is free to read. Our non-profit business model relies on reader-supported donations that are collected during various email campaigns throughout the year. Readers’ email addresses and the ability to send donation appeals directly to inboxes is crucial to our fundraising campaigns.
We needed a way to capture those emails from a signup on our stories in a way that is minimally disruptive to the reading experience.
Process
Working with our director of membership, I was responsible for creating an email wall that converted readers into subscribers. I accomplished this by owning the A/B testing strategy, design execution, and documentation of our data pipeline.
Design, testing, and analysis: Growing The Intercept's email list by 30% in 4 months
As the sole designer, I designed the email wall interface, configured analytics tracking, and analyzed performance data to drive optimizations that resulted in 30% list growth.
Owning the relationship with our readers in a declining industry
As a nonprofit investigative newsroom, The Intercept is funded entirely by philanthropy and reader donations. Email capture powers our membership program by creating a loyal list for fundraising appeals, and helps sustain our audience relationships beyond search algorithms and social media.
We needed to grow our email list and convert casual readers into email subscribers at scale.
End-to-End ownership: From design to data
We had limited resources: no dedicated product manager, no data analyst, just me as the sole designer. Working with our Membership and Product director, I needed to:
Design conversion-optimized email capture experiences
Collaborate with engineering on implementation
Own the workflow of configuring analytics to track the right metrics, running A/B tests, analyzing performance data
Report results to editorial and leadership stakeholders
This forced me to become fluent in both design craft and growth analytics—a combination that became essential to driving measurable impact.
Designing the email capture
TK% of newsrooms have some form of email capture. Challenge: Getting valid email addresses for new readers who don’t know the brand. without alienating readers who are already skeptical of giving away their information.
Testing a “freemium” model
Initially, we allowed readers access to one “free article” that could be read without the email capture.
Article metering user experience
1st article (popup)
2nd article
What the data showed: More valid email addresses in the metered variant but much less volume.
Pivot: We moved to remove the metered experience and started email capture on 1st article.
“Try before you buy”
Readers read ~30% of the article, came up with this design hoping that allowing readers to see a preview, and thus capturing readers who show genuine interest. 3 paragraphs in . Wanted to maximize rate of capture of real email addresses with the volume increase of raw signups.
What the data showed: We actually found that conversions decreased significantly when we gave readers a preview.
A version of the email wall offered a three-paragraph preview so the reader was able to “try before buying”.
In testing, we saw that this “harsher” version converted better.
Article metering user experience
Finding language that actually converts
Testing our value proposition with mission-driven language
I led a larger effort to use more language on the site which contrasted our journalism against those of our mainstream media competitors: we hold power to account, and our site is free to read and is not inundated with advertising.
Brainstorm session with editors.
Results: TKTKTKT. Based on above, we sumised that readers want more TK (because the value prop language tests won).
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5% conversion
7% conversion
5% conversion
Streamlining
Breaking down the data more, we noticed that many readers who had entered valid email addresses were using the “sign up” as a “sign in” to bypass the wall. To reduce reader confusion, tried a version that was just the “Enter” text.
What the data showed: X% of addresses were not new addresses. Users were using the “sign up” field to “sign in”.This converted better across two data points: reduce user confusion (signing in through signup), increase at a glance comprehension of the CTA.
Final design
Desktop experience: Different context, different design
Even though new readers were 3x likely to come across our articles on mobile, we still have a group of new readers who come on desktop browsers who are more likely to donate (check data). improving the article layouts underlying the email wall. Optimize the desktop design.
New desktop design offers navigation etc.
Before
1. Logo not visible
2. Large photo without headline
3. Email capture covered headline
After
What the data showed: 10% Displaying the headline as well as a sub-navigationabove the ask for an email address gives new
readers a continuous experience and led to a
10% increase in signups.
Impact and results (growth)
These results directly supported The Intercept's membership growth goals and created a sustainable pipeline for
fundraising appeals.
Grew email list by 30% from baseline
Increased conversion rate from 1.2% to 2.0% across all variants
Generated 50K+ new email subscribers for membership and fundraising programs
Improved mobile conversion by 35% through device-specific optimization
Reduced form abandonment by 40% by simplifying email-only capture
Continuing product testing and improvements
These results directly supported The Intercept's membership growth goals and created a sustainable pipeline for
fundraising appeals.
