Communities deserve better: stop being left behind. It's time to step up and meet expectations.

Why are some publishers and service providers still so “2000” in 2025? Get ready to rethink messaging and engagement, and start resonating more.

It’s 2025. We live in an era of hyper-personalization, AI-driven insights, and communities that shape brands in real time. Yet, walk through the websites or read emails and social media channels of many academic publishers, and you’ll notice messaging and engagement tactics that haven’t changed since the turn of the millennium. Why are so many still operating as if the world, and their audience, hasn’t fundamentally shifted?

The messaging time warp: why does it persist?

Let’s be honest: legacy thinking runs deep. Underlying engagement strategies are either non-existent or outdated, with teams too overloaded to be able to test, try different things or look at how they are really performing.

Community engagement continues to be essential. It's not new; I've been doing engagement strategies since the early 2000s, but we're finally seeing better consideration and adoption across the ecosystem. There are huge opportunities, and with competition for submissions so fierce, publishers can really make a difference and stand out from the crowd. It’s not just technology; it’s a mindset.

Why do outdated approaches persist? Sometimes it's complacency, “We’ve always done it this way”, fear of change, where leaders cite “organizational inertia” as the main barrier to innovation, resource constraints limiting marketing teams or not the right skill sets, so the default to tried-and-true methods, even if they’re no longer effective, still continue to be done to manage the expected churn rate.

But here’s the reality: community expectations have leapfrogged ahead, whether that is researchers, authors, peer reviewers, readers, those working in libraries and research officers, funders, etc. - our communities are complex.

What communities expect in 2025

A favourite of mine is Giuseppe Stigliano, co-author of “Redefining Retail,” who argues that “customer-centricity is no longer a differentiator, it’s the entry ticket.”

Today’s scholarly community expects the same level of relevance, responsiveness, and personalization they experience as consumers everywhere else so why can't our industry do that better?

The numbers don’t lie: 71% of B2B buyers now expect personalized engagement from brands, up from 62% in 2022. The rule of thumb is that retaining a customer costs 5 to 7 times less than acquiring a new one and increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can boost profits by 25% to 95%. The HubSpot 2025 Marketing Report states that the cost of acquiring a new customer has increased by more than 60% over the past five years.

The cost of stale engagement

Sticking with outdated messaging has real consequences:

• Banner blindness rates have reached an all-time high, with less than 0.1% click-through on standard publisher display ads

• Back in 2022, 62% of researchers report switching to alternative platforms or journals when they feel “unseen or unheard”

• Publishers who don’t evolve miss out on community-driven insights and new revenue streams, from user-generated content to virtual events.

One of the most significant shifts we are seeing is an adjustment in tone of voice. A few clients have just launched new tone of voice guides, a more active voice that addresses pain points. The Royal Society of Chemistry have been doing a great job of this for a few years now, bringing out a more active tone of voice and community feel.

• Personalize at scale. AI-powered segmentation delivers the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Look at your existing tools and see what you can already achieve as a quick win

• Think about how discoverable your content is to AI search. Forget quantity of engagement, it's all about quality. How optimized are you for AI? Forget B2C and B2B, it's all B2AI

• Celebrate user-generated content. User-generated content (UGC) and lo-fi campaigns are outperforming polished, corporate campaigns because they feel real

• Be transparent and authentic. Sharing editorial processes, decision-making, and even setbacks. Trust is the new currency

• Stop talking at people and have a conversation. Updating tone of voice to be more Golden Circle and storytelling helps create resonance and understanding. They use two-way channels like live Q&As, interactive webinars, and community forums to create conversations, not just push content

• Continue to resonate as a brand across generations. When people digest messages physically, digitally and virtually across generations, how you do continue to remain relevant. Scary how much AI tools have moved on since I wrote this last year: https://www.internationalbunch.com/post/staying-relevant-while-living-in-a-post-digital-world

If you oversee marketing, even if it’s not your core expertise, it’s time to audit your messaging and engagement:

• Is your audience invited into a conversation, or just being messaged at?

• Are you personalizing (beyond “Dear [FirstName]”) and segmenting for better resonance?

• What’s stopping you from piloting new engagement formats—fear, budget, or just habit?

In 2025, being “good enough” is no longer enough.

As Giuseppe Stigliano says:

“The future belongs to those who co-create with their audience, not just broadcast to them”.

If you’re ready to leave legacy engagement behind and embrace messaging that’s modern, authentic, and effective, let’s start the conversation. Because in 2025, relevance isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s everything.

We're currently working with Godwyns Onwuchekwa, who formerly headed community engagement at eLife, and has now set up Global Tapestry Consulting, to help build an engagement framework for our clients. If you want to take part in building this framework, we have a couple of discounted spots so you can be part of designing from the beginning.

I'm in Washington D.C. this week and at Silverchair's Platform Strategies on Thursday if you want to connect. Or book a meeting with Hannah and me at Frankfurt Bookfair: https://calendly.com/louisepeck/