The Subscription Edition: Why readers don't pay for news from @wnip and the 24-hour churn problem PLUS Reuters launches research subscription

July 13, 2022

Subscriptions and the general shift to reader revenue has been the mega-trend in media for the past decade. As the major digital platforms have attracted not only the lion share of digital ad revenue but also have drained revenue from media companies' traditional businesses, subscriptions and memberships have been the focus to replace that revenue. It is not only a shift in revenue, but it also led to a tectonic shift in the business models that the market rewarded. Advertising-based businesses pushed media to become generalists, while digital trends and more recently subscription-based services rewarded media companies that could mine lucrative niches, which leads us to the news of the day.

Nieman Lab has summarised a report from paid content services provider Piano, which Pugpig works closely with, ab0ut subscribers who churn in 24-hours. You can read why people leave, but I think the best advice is how to keep people from leaving. You need an onboarding process for new subscribers that instantly connects with them and demonstrates the value you deliver rather than passively waiting and hoping that they will discover it. This includes a welcome email from the editor that builds up a personal connection as well as other messaging that lays out all of the valuable things included in their subscription.

WNIP summarises academic research into why people don't pay for news. (Better yet, the research has been released under a Creative Commons licence so you can read it in full.) Aside from price and access to free options, publishers need to understand that one of the barriers for potential subscribers is technical. That's a product issue that you can solve.

Rounding out this day full of subscription headlines are two stories, one from The Information and the other from Reuters. Once you have a subscriber, retention is key, and some publishers are looking at the funnel as more of an hourglass, with the top of the hourglass focused on conversion and the bottom focused on retention. This is smart because then it allows you to map out strategies to do both conversion and retention. Keeping engagement high is essential for retention, and The Information is launching a social network for its subscribers. Again, this is the kind of high-touch strategy that is possible when you shift from advertising-focused to subscription-focused strategies. Advertising is focused on volume, simply getting as many impressions as possible. Subscription-focused strategies focus on ongoing engagement.

Lastly, Reuters is launching a research service for individual users rather than corporations. The product, Reuters Insight, reminds me of the Delphi research method in which experts or stakeholders are polled on issues. This product will poll senior industry figures in various industries to provide insights to leadership teams to make decisions. Information wants to be free, but exclusive information wants to be expensive. As the write-up in Axios points out, this type of information used to be gleaned, informally, by going to conferences, but as the pandemic eliminated that face-to-face networking for a while, this becomes even more valuable.

PLUS:

  • US newsletter leader Dan Oshinsky launches a newsletter consultancy.

  • How Medium got caught between the short format on Twitter and the longform journalism of Buzzfeed and Vice.

  • Product leader Elite Truong joins the American Press Institute to develop their products and also to provide strategic product support to the industry.

  • Twitter exec joins Bloomberg

  • How to create a content product strategy. Yes, words matter in a product, especially in publishing and media where part of the product is the words.

The same-day cancellation rate likely includes subscribers who only wanted access to one article, or who felt the full paid experience was lacking after a quick look around. New data suggests some just really hate the idea of auto-renewal.

Price remains the biggest issue and turns out Netflix and Spotify are seen as benchmarks by younger audiences A new study says price, the access to free news somewhere else, commitment and technical issues are the main reasons for not paying for news. The good thing is that these reasons have remained largely the same across countries, small and …

"I think it's clear networking on the internet is a mess.”

It will provide subscribers with custom polling of senior industry executives.

Dan Oshinsky Launches Newsletter Consultancy

A reporter-led newsletter can be a viable, if complicated, path for local news.

, . "Dan Oshinsky launches Inbox Collective as a publication focused on improving newsletters." Nieman Journalism Lab. Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, 12 Jul. 2022. Web. 12 Jul. 2022.

Mr. Williams, the company’s founder and a co-founder of Twitter and Blogger, said in a post that he planned to start a new holding company and research lab.

Elite Truong, an experienced journalist, product owner and project manager, will join the American Press Institute as its first Vice President, Product Strategy. Truong most recently worked as director of strategic initiatives at The Washington Post. “Elite is a remarkable leader with a product mindset who has worked at the intersection of news, revenue and […]

Twitter senior content partnerships exec Nick Sallon is joining Bloomberg Media as its first chief partnerships officer.

How Medium got stuck in the middle. PLUS: Twitter sues Musk

Developing a product content strategy means product managers, designers and UX content writers working closely together.