For the most devoted audiences, a subscription to their favorite media outlet isn’t a financial burden. It’s a badge of honor.
By paying for quality journalism, you’re demonstrating to friends and family that you’re committed to being informed about current events. Depending on the publication, being a subscriber can also tell people a lot about your political leanings and the issues you care about most. Even if no one else knows you’re subscribing, there is an awareness that you are supporting work that matters.
In the last six months alone, media organizations ranging from CNN, Vox, the U.K.’s Daily Mail and even Reddit have launched or announced plans for subscription models (which are sometimes described as membership programs). Some of these are “metered,” where readers have a monthly free content limit, while others offer complete access for a recurring monthly charge.
Inside the ever-expanding subscription ecosystem
One of the challenges is that traditional publishers are far from the only organizations vying for subscribers. Content creators are offering tiered subscriptions on platforms like Substack. Cable TV packages and physical records have given way to digital subscriptions for streaming services. Across all industries, including those well outside of media, 71% offer some kind of monthly and yearly subscription plans.
How to use Audience Engagement Strategies in a Subscription-Based World
Publishers can’t afford to give up on subscriptions, of course. For starters, advertising alone won’t always bring in enough revenue. And subscribers provide media organizations rich data sources to better understand what interests an audience, get them to stick around longer, and even personalize the content they see.
A subscription is more than just a key to bypass a paywall. It’s a digital experience that needs to deliver real value on a consistent basis.
This is an area of opportunity for publishers. While less than a quarter are paying for online news now, according to that same Oxford Reuters Institute report, 36% of consumers are willing to consider becoming subscribers.
Attracting those people—and keeping them—comes down to getting a lot of the digital experience basics right, such as:
1. A fast site that never goes dark
Subscribers are usually paying for one thing: access to great content. When pages are slow to load or a site crashes, for any reason, it gives them another reason to think about cancelling or simply not renewing. Unfortunately, downtime is most likely to occur when the news being covered is highly topical or popular and causes a traffic spike.
Recent WordPress VIP research was actually able to put a dollar value on these incidents. Using a representative publisher with $335 million in annual digital subscription revenue as a benchmark, for example, an outage of just 30 minutes could cost $2,640 in lost revenue.
This makes it particularly important to run news sites on an enterprise-grade content management system (CMS) that can handle high-impact moments and maintain stable performance.
2. The Role of Content in Attracting Subscribers
Google searches and ChatGPT prompts shouldn’t work as a way to bypass your paywall. As obvious as it sounds, “quality content” needs to be well-defined to potential subscribers. An article on marketing industry publication Adfaqs suggests news sites may need to double down on niche areas or sub-categories within traditional verticals like Money, Lifestyle, or Sports.
Content can also mean something more interactive, the article noted:
Another key aspect, according to Nidhi Mahajan, deputy business head, The Quint, is in maintaining a connection with the audience, which it does through community-building, direct networking, and regular engagement, such as webinars with members, to understand what they want the publication to cover—especially around key events like elections.
3. Leveraging Audience Data for Subscription Growth
Even if the majority of your visitors don’t become subscribers, you can collect data about how they move through your site to determine what will drive conversions.
Having this kind of tracking and segmentation in place was key for Slate. When the site launched its Slate Plus membership, for example, the team relied on Parse.ly content analytics as a growth tactic. It allowed Slate to go beyond merely measuring reach and referral traffic and dive into audience loyalty and subscriber engagement.
Today, Slate Plus boasts more than 35,000 members, which shows just how crucial a role analytics plays in developing compelling digital experiences that pay off.
4. Flexibility and Technology in Subscription Models
There are options beyond metered paywalls and monthly subscriptions. Increased inflationary pressure and other macroeconomic forces could lead more publishers to consider micropayment platforms that provide audiences credits they can use on a per-article basis.
Writing on DigitalContentNext, the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor of Journalism at the University of Oregon, Damian Radcliffe, suggested a host of other subscription strategies. Publishers can bundle news subscriptions with other products like games, or even with subscriptions to other media sites. Other value-adds include invitations to VIP events, special discounts, and a first look at exclusive content:
In short, subscribers want to feel they are getting their money’s worth, both in terms of content and experience. Delivering on both of these fronts is the sweet spot publishers will increasingly need to hit to drive subscription growth.
5. Versatile technology to support future needs
Long-term subscriber retention will require publishers to constantly improve and build upon the digital experiences they offer. That could mean developing subscriber-only content hubs or setting up pages to showcase storytelling that combines text, video, and even AI in ways we haven’t yet imagined.
This is one of the reasons why Block themes are such a core part of WordPress VIP. It means developers don’t get bogged down in complexity but can work with standard web technology, while design stays consistent no matter where content gets published.
Subscriptions may be the media industry’s long game—it may take time before some publishers get the numbers and revenue they want—but it’s a long game they can win.
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Author
Shane Schick, Founder—360 Magazine
Shane Schick is a longtime technology journalist serving business leaders ranging from CIOs and CMOs to CEOs. His work has appeared in Yahoo Finance, the Globe & Mail and many other publications. Shane is currently the founder of a customer experience design publication called 360 Magazine. He lives in Toronto.
