Onboarding: The science of building audience habits that create loyal subscribers

My last role was as the director of digital products and platforms at a public service broadcasting group in the US. For anyone familiar with public broadcasting in the US, most of any station’s revenue comes from members - viewers and listeners who pay whatever they want. When I was asked about our digital strategy, I said it was to build habit and loyalty that led to membership. The BBC has quantified the goal with its 552 strategy. The “BBC aims for audiences to use its services for at least five hours a week, across at least five days, and on at least two platforms on both traditional broadcast and digital products”, as outlined in the Digital BBC Report (PDF). This is all in keeping with research from the Medill Spiegel Research Center at Northwestern University. Researchers there analysed data from 106 newspapers in the US and found that regularity, more than pageviews or session duration, was most correlated with subscription purchase and retention.

Publishers and broadcasters are focused on developing regularity and relationships with audiences. Getting someone to register or subscribe is the start of a relationship, but media operators know that this is just the beginning. Onboarding has become a key activity to communicate the value of the registration or subscription, and it starts immediately. Christian Röpke, Chief Digital Officer of ZEIT Verlagsgruppe, told the WAN-IFRA Digital Media Europe conference last year about how the German publisher had to shift balance its focus on conversion with equal energy put into retention. They had launched a discounted subscription to convert more users but then struggled to move these new cut-rate subscribers to a full-cost plan. They found new subscribers weren’t engaging with content within the first 24 hours after they paid. Interestingly, they also found from qualitative research that new subscribers felt overwhelmed by the volume of content. Die Zeit rolled out an engagement score as part of their “First Day Subscription” strategy so that they could understand how well new subscribers were engaging with content to support retaining these.

Publishers are experimenting with a wide range of ways to communicate the value of a subscription to new subscribers and help them find things that interest them. You only have to look at The Economist’s new printed welcome pack to appreciate the breadth of these experiments. They had seen email open rates decline and felt that their “older and affluent” audience might respond to this high-touch offering. It complements rather than replaces their email onboarding series. By using an A/B test, they found that users who received the welcome pack were 3.5% more engaged.

If you want an in-depth case study of how to design an onboarding programme, David Tvrdon outlines the approach he took for Denník SME in Slovakia. A quick takeaway is that onboarding now starts immediately but goes on much longer. And it delivers. The subscribers who have gone through David’s onboarding programme have a 40% higher Customer Lifetime Value than the rest of the publishers’ digital subscribers.

David also demonstrates how important great user experience is. He started by revamping the group’s newsletter strategy and made sure that their news app engaged users.

He then mapped out all of the features that built habits and delivered value to users. Add them all, and then focus. For him, these are features that “bring immediate value to the subscribers” such as news apps with push notifications, a fast, responsive mobile web experience, paid newsletters and ad-free experiences. He added these into a 10-step onboarding experience.

And now onto our links for this week. With the unfolding crisis in local news in the US, a lot of energy and money is flowing into the system. Matt DeRienzo talks about how the future of local is small scale rather than the big groups that rose and now have fallen. To support these smaller organisations, they need support in building skills, capabilities and technology. This new de-centralised system will need new funding models.

Oddly, running counter to that shift to de-centralisation, the National Trust for Local News is working to rebuild the centralised services that have declined as the major chains’ models have failed.

Interesting. Researchers in the US have found audiences believe “that the news industry as a whole values profits above truth or public service”. People assumed that the ad model forced publishers to pursue large audiences rather than accurate reporting. Well, there were also study participants who believed that news organisations got paid off by the American Right’s bogeyman, George Soros. Sigh.

Research from FT Strategies has shown that publishers are more resilient if they have more than two revenue streams (although there is a law of diminishing returns with more than five or six). At Condé Nast’s Bon Appétit brand, they have moved beyond food with a range of adjacent products.

WordPress VIP has an excellent article on how publishers can adapt to Google’s algorithm changes this year. Publishers have been punished for site reputation abuse. Google’s “policy targets websites that host low-quality content created by third parties with little oversight”. I have seen this with sites that have syndication services to generate revenue. One publisher I advised saw their traffic drop by 60% overnight, and it was down to a low-quality syndication service.

One takeaway is that publishers need to lean into distinctive, high-quality, helpful content. The changes that Google has rolled out require changes in content strategy, not just technical solutions.

International developments: Aussie publisher shuts licenced US news brands and user needs process in India

Nine in Australia had pursued a strategy that I’ve seen a number of publishers pursue by licencing US brands. You’ll see that in the magazine, broadcasting and digital space. But Nine have now decided to shutter these US brands and focus on their own.

To have a successful subscription or membership strategy, publishers need to have a deep understanding of their audiences, and the user needs model has become one of the most widely used models to achieve this. It has helped them develop an app that has helped them build on their subscription success.

And I’ll add this interesting news item from India, where they are looking to develop a public AI platform.