{"id":18260,"date":"2019-05-24T10:40:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T09:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/?p=18260"},"modified":"2019-05-24T11:33:48","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T10:33:48","slug":"publishers-key-tools-for-driving-subscriptions-in-2019-dynamic-paywalls-newsletters-and-sports-subscriptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/publishers-key-tools-for-driving-subscriptions-in-2019-dynamic-paywalls-newsletters-and-sports-subscriptions\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishers\u2019 key tools for driving subscriptions in 2019: Dynamic paywalls, newsletters, and sports subs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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FIPP\u2019s 2019 Global Digital Subscription Snapshot Report<\/a> gives an overview of publishers who have been successful in growing their digital subscriptions into a significant revenue stream. It reveals how they are doubling down on paywall content and technology as they focus on digital subscriptions as their key revenue driver.
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Growing confidence in the paywall model<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Cond\u00e9 Nast announced earlier this year that it would move all its titles and content behind a dynamic paywall – and it has been successful with over 167,000 digital-only subscribers.
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Its iconic title New Yorker Magazine shows clearly that consumers will pay for high quality and original content. While figures have not been shared, FIPP’s report states, \u201cThe company seems to now have enough confidence in their model to put every single one of their brands behind their dynamic paywall.\u201d
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Of course, the biggest success story in digital subscriptions is The New York Times. The publisher added 223,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2019<\/a>. According to the latest figures, it has over 4.5M subscribers<\/a> of which 3.5M are digital-only. Its digital revenue crossed $700M in 2018 and is expected to reach $800M in 2020. The Times is now looking at reaching 10M digital subscribers by 2025.
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The paywall narrative is positive in Europe as well – German publishers are doing especially well with Zeit recording a 123% growth last year, reaching 100,000 digital subscribers. Others including S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung and Der Spiegel have seen 42% and 50% increase in subscribers. German market leader Axel Springer\u2019s titles WeltPlus and BildPlus together have over 500,000 digital subscribers.
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The growing optimism about, and confidence in, the potential of reader revenue models delivered by paywalls, is not restricted to the market leaders highlighted above. According to Reuters, more than half of publishers identified subscriptions as their primary revenue focus for the next year.<\/p>FIPP\u2019s 2019 Global Digital Subscription Snapshot Report<\/strong><\/a> <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As many publishers focus on making digital subscriptions their key revenue driver moving forward, here are the key emerging trends outlined in the FIPP report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local sports is becoming a subscription driver<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Many publishers have found that local sports coverage attracts passionate and engaged readers. It is emerging as an increasingly lucrative subscription driver. The Athletic is one of the most prominent publishers working in this space. According to the report, it has attracted over 100,000 subscribers.
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Topic Hunters are highly interested in one or two certain subjects\u2014such as local politics or local college or high school sports\u2014and this interest was a major motivation for them to subscribe. The most frequently followed topics by Topic Hunters are local politics (53%), national politics (33%), college or high school sports (26%), and business and the economy (21%).<\/p>2018 American Press Institute survey, Paths to Subscription: Why recent subscribers chose to pay for news<\/a> <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Athletic\u2019s success has inspired other publishers including DK Pittsburgh Sports, The Capitol Sports, and Hookem.com. All of them have a strong focus on local teams in a limited number of sports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to FIPP, \u201cIn doing so, they are feeding moderately sized fanbases with a depth of coverage not available elsewhere, and are building up a dedicated following in the process.\u201d
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Those who subscribe to sports news also show a high propensity to renew. Alex Mather, The Athletic\u2019s Co-founder says<\/a> his publication\u2019s renewal rates are above 90%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, local sports coverage is not restricted by geography as interest in a hometown team persists even after someone moves away. For example, according<\/a> to Digiday, 48% of DK Pittsburgh Sports\u2019 subscriber base lives outside western Pennsylvania.
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Even local and regional newspaper groups have started improving local sports coverage as a potential subscription driver. Regional chain McClatchy offers lower-priced unlimited sports subscriptions<\/a> to draw in subscribers. And recently, The Telegraph UK paywalled their rugby content along with politics and business.
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The sports-only cohort is pretty large and they engage at a pretty high rate. But they weren\u2019t ready to commit to the full subscription. We\u2019ve got built-in relationships. And it\u2019s cut, paste, repeat in many of these markets.<\/p>Grant Belaire<\/a>, Head of Digital Audience at McClatchy <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Dynamic paywalls are increasingly popular<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As publishers restrict the amount of free content, they are using improved paywall technologies to customize their paywalls according to readers\u2019 habits. They are often relying on dynamic or intelligent paywalls<\/a> powered by artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These paywalls restrict content according to readers\u2019 behavior. For example, a reader who has shown a preference for a specific topic, say health, will hit a paywall earlier when looking for health articles.
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Dynamic paywalls also enable publishers to quantify their readers\u2019 propensity to subscribe. The Wall Street Journal spent four years developing its intelligent paywall which measures reader activity across 60 variables. These variables include frequency, recency, depth of read, preferred content types and favored devices.
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The Journal\u2019s Analytics Manager, John Wiley told<\/a> the Drum that a dynamic paywall, \u201cAllows you to pick the threshold based on past patterns of engagement. If there is a certain type of reader who will most likely convert on their fourth visit and another type who most likely converts on the seventh, the model will reflect that.\u201d
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The 200-year old Swiss newspaper, Neue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung (NZZ) has also seen considerable success with dynamic paywalls. According<\/a> to the publisher, it\u2019s conversion rate grew five-fold over the past year with the help of a dynamic paywall that targeted subscribers when they were high on the propensity to subscribe scale.
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If we\u2019re to be successful in paid content, we need to individualize the experience with our product and automate our marketing approach. Based on that hypothesis, this approach will increase engagement, retention and conversion rate.<\/p>Steven Neubauer<\/a>, Managing Director of NZZ <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Focus shifting away from social media<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Although Facebook continues to be an important marketing channel for many publishers, the FIPP report states, \u201cthe dynamic of the relationship with the platform has shifted dramatically in the last year. Research from Reuters has shown that Facebook is rapidly losing favor with publishers, and both reputation and functional considerations drive this.\u201d
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The controversies besieging Facebook<\/a> in the last few years are the main reason for this shifting dynamic, as well as the algorithm changes in 2018 that choked referral traffic for publishers.
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According to the FIPP report, \u201cWhile referral traffic for news and politics was down just over 30%, in categories like art and entertainment traffic is down as much as 71%, and for music and fashion, it\u2019s down over 60%.\u201d
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In order to reduce their dependence on social media, publishers are now using increasingly sophisticated data systems to understand where their subscribers are coming from. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report mentions, \u201cUsing such data, publishers like Le Figaro and Amedia have given Facebook an enormous thumbs down as a source of new subscribers, stating that more than 90% of subscription conversions come from their own platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasing importance of newsletters<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Mike Isaac, Technology Reporter at The New York Times, wrote<\/a> in a recent piece that newsletters \u201ccould be a more reliable means of increasing readership for major publishers whose relationships with social networks have soured.\u201d
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Newsletters help build reader engagement and are used as a marketing tool by publishers – they enable publishers to connect with readers who are not subscribers but may become one after sampling content through newsletters.
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NZZ is betting big on newsletters<\/a> to drive paid subscriptions. It has 21 email newsletters<\/a> and has seen significantly higher than average email open rates. It has also used reader data from its newsletters to increase subscriber conversions by 80%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The publisher does not intend to limit its newsletters and is willing to start a new one whenever it identifies a gap in the market. For example, it recently launched a newsletter to attract more female readers\u2014its readership is 65% male.
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NZZ is also experimenting with personalized newsletters that help readers stay on top of relevant news they may have missed. Late last year, it launched<\/a> \u201cMy NZZ,\u201d a newsletter that curates a personalized list of articles that a reader missed during the week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to NZZ\u2019s Head of Data, Analytics and Market Research, Markus Barmettler, their goal is to \u201ccreate a smarter, more personal news experience for our subscribers.\u201d
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He wrote<\/a> in a medium post, \u201cNeue Z\u00fcrcher Zeitung publishes up to 200 pieces of content every day, from video to audio, to written and visual journalism. The issue is: Our subscribers live busy lives, seeing only 8 of those pieces of content per day on average. We want to make sure they don\u2019t miss the ones most relevant to them.\u201d
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NZZ currently has 156,000 subscribers and grew by 4% in 2018<\/a>. Daniel Ammann, Head of Portfolio Management at NZZ told<\/a> Digiday, \u201cNewsletters are one of the most important tools to drive registrations.\u201d
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NZZ\u2019s data analytics has found that registered users who signed up for two or more newsletters had the highest conversion rate. The publisher has set itself the target of reaching 200,000 subscribers by 2022 (almost 30% growth in paid readership) and says that newsletters are going to play a crucial role in its strategy.
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Looking ahead, Mortiz Hilger, CEO of CeleraOne, which provides paywall technology to publishers, commented, \u201cContinuing the trend of previous years we see a growing demand for paid content solutions, and more and more publishers all over the world establishing successful models. We are very confident that this will continue and we are looking forward to more journalistic products with a paid strategy in the digital era.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here<\/strong><\/a> to download FIPP\u2019s 2019 Global Digital Subscription Snapshot Report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

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FIPP\u2019s 2019 Global Digital Subscription Snapshot Report gives an overview of publishers who have been successful in growing their digital subscriptions into a significant revenue stream. It reveals how they are doubling down on paywall content and technology as they focus on digital subscriptions as their key revenue driver. Growing confidence in the paywall model […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17612,17613],"tags":[19955,19087],"yst_prominent_words":[17539,19632,19629,8645,19633,3890,19956,17233,19634,19631,19628,8646,8640,19630,19637,19957,19636,1236,1799,19635],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18260"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}