Winner
Reach
In 2020, Reach focused on innovation, putting employees’ wellbeing centre stage, strengthening its customer insight and ensuring that no reader was left behind. Its mantra for the year was ‘rapid transformation’.
Lockdown made it more essential than ever to serve many thousands of print customers, especially older readers who were more likely to be shielding. Some of Reach’s most loyal customers were housebound and depended on the business to bring them their news. With this in mind Reach jumped on the cross-industry DeliverMyNewspaper scheme and heavily promoted it across its titles, with 100,000 sign-ups to date. Subscriptions for its national titles and direct to home deliveries both saw year-on-year growth.
Reach tackled mental health and diversity issues, with free subscriptions to the meditation app Headspace, by launching Wellness Wednesdays events and hosting “Tea and Talk” sessions. It also appointed its first-ever head of diversity and inclusion.
Newsletters played a key role in 2020. By the end of the year Reach was producing nearly 300 newsletters on a variety of topics and newsletter subscribers now visit its sites 30% more than standard users.
There was also investment in new products, with Reach launching ReachID at the end of 2020, a tool which gives the business a single view of each user.