In 2025, the publisher’s digital subscriptions grew by 4.3% to 47,576 and print sales rose 2.7% to 56,152 giving it a total weekly sale of 103,728 (excluding its Australia and American editions),according to latest ABC figures.
It follows the titleblaming an 8% drop in turnover to £19.2m largely on “difficulties with a subscription technology platform migration” in 2023.
The platform also frees up the publisher’s marketing and customer service teams for other tasks.
Hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall bough The Spectator for £100m from the Barclay family in September 2004 and promised to invest in the title,
“When we first walked into The Spectator, it was a very traditional media setup, relying on an old legacy bureau to do everything from label runs to customer service,” said Seb Giraud, chief operating officer of The Spectator and CEO of CO-Editor.
The Spectator was “encumbered” with old tech, he added. Co-Editor reduced the subscription checkout process from seven minutes to around one minute for The Spectator by cutting out email verification and account set up.
Old subscription technology meant if a customer turned off their auto-renew subscription, The Spectator was not notified for nine days.
“Our team here in the UK will give you a ring, email you. It’s a whole structured path to win you back and to be able to re-engage you,” he added. “It’s all part of a one-stop shop to try and combat churn and win people as quickly as possible.”
FT Strategies was commissioned by Co-Editor and Stripe Billing to assess the difference in operational costsof the new subscriptions and it predicted savings of £500,000 a year.
As well as Stripe Billing, Co-Editor incorporates existing Spectator customer service operations, Customer.io for marketing automation, Piano for access management and Mailchimp for email marketing.
Source: Press Gazette
