Articles by: "Joel Bejar, SVP Business Development – OpenWeb"

How to increase your subscriber base despite the economic downturn

August 17, 2022 Joel Bejar, SVP Business Development – OpenWeb

Throughout the pandemic and well into 2022, the narrative in publishing was simple: subscriptions are the future. With third-party cookies on the way out and traffic from social media less reliable than ever, subscriptions emerged as the stable revenue source digital media had been seeking for well over two decades. And the numbers backed it up. When the New York Times hit 10 million digital subscribers it was was touted throughout the industry. And numerous other outlets have reported a surge in paying customers.

Some deflation was probably inevitable, and in the last few months it’s started peeking over the horizon. Reuters’ Annual Digital News Report was bullish on subscriptions in 2020 and 2021, but this year’s installment says that “there are signs that overall growth might be leveling off.” NiemanLab, citing data from paywall tech company Piano, also recently reported that “a significant number of new subscribers cancel their digital subscriptions within a day.”

There is no question that subscriptions are still a highly viable revenue source, and will remain so for the indefinite future. But outlets that want to maintain and expand their subscriber base in a challenging, competitive environment will need to develop a deeper sense of what keeps readers subscribing––and what brings them onboard in the first place.

What drives readers to subscribe––and renew?

Access to quality content

The common wisdom used to be that your best stories should go outside the paywall because those were the stories most likely to bring in new users (and help boost pageviews and ad dollars in the process).

Recently, though, some have turned that common wisdom on its head, with intriguing results. Look at Business Insider: in recent years they’ve aggressively paywalled some of their biggest scoops, and have grown their subscriber base significantly in the process. Scoop, of course, is the key word here. Users are willing to pay for the kind of distinctive content they can’t get for free elsewhere.

Feeling part of a community

As the big social platforms know well, community is the “stickiest” thing a company can offer. Nothing draws users back more reliably than vibrant on-site conversation. Data from OpenWeb’s network of 1,000+ global publishers shows that those who engage with the conversation view 4.5X more pages. They also spend 3.6X more time on-site, and drive 3.2X more revenue than non-engaged users. Better yet, on average, 25% of these users return monthly. Publishers have been trying to turn their websites into social hubs for over a decade now. But with Facebook effectively abandoning the social news space as it pivots to TikTok-style videos, publishers have more breathing room to cultivate communities of their own.

Subscriber perks

The last few years have seen more attention paid to what InPublishing calls a “rounded membership proposition”––i.e., everything an outlet offers besides its content. This can take countless forms: from puzzle games (like the New York Times’ Wordle) to subscriber-only podcasts, newsletters, Discord communities, cooking courses, and more. These can go a long way towards that “bang for your buck” feeling that keeps subscriptions off the chopping block.

Interactivity

According to the Piano data referenced earlier, 40% of subscribers are “sleepers”––i.e., people who don’t interact with their subscription at all. As it happens, a large percentage of these people cancel the moment they “wake up.”

The solution? Prevent them from falling asleep in the first place, through interactive content. Things like expert AMAs, live blogs, and staff Q&As are simple to set up and great for retention: they force users to come to your site at specific times and get them used to checking your content regularly.

Appeal of individual journalists

At this point, certain journalists are minor celebrities in their own right––and publishers should do everything they can to harness that star power. The New York Times’ newsletters do an excellent job of this. However, every publication has actual or potential stars, and cultivating them can go a long way towards boosting reader loyalty.

Subscriber acquisition starts with knowing readers better

When publishers expand the scope of their content offerings, they create a positive feedback loop. Comments sections, subscriber posts, journalist Q&As––these things keep readers on-site for longer and grant publishers fine-grained insight into how their content is resonating. That data can then be used to further refine subscription offerings, bringing in even more users and even more data, which can then––well, you get the idea. Figuring out precisely what your audience wants is a difficult task, and no one size fits all. But knowledge in this arena is inevitably cumulative––data begets data, every time.

Even the most optimistic observer of the ’20s subscription surge knew, on some level, that it couldn’t last forever. A leveling-out was always in the cards. For publishers, accepting the challenge of this moment means getting creative––experimenting, seeing what works, and building the kind of audience that will stick with you through this downturn and long beyond it.

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Where conversations fit into your paywall strategy

May 18, 2022 Joel Bejar, SVP Business Development – OpenWeb

A mid-sized digital media outlet dropping its paywall is not usually the stuff of national news. But when Quartz, the digital business outlet, scrapped its paywall earlier this month, the move was promptly written up in the New York Times. What gives?

The degree of attention paid to Quartz’s decision has something to do with the media environment of the moment. As we’ve written about more than once, digital subscriptions are on the rise across the industry, boosting profits for everyone from the New York Times to local papers in Buffalo and St. Louis.

Still, while subscriptions are generally trending upwards, nothing in the media industry stays static. In fact, just a few weeks later, Quartz announced it had been acquired by G/O Media, whose suite of sites is unpaywalled. It’s possible Quartz was just getting in line with its soon-to-be owner. It’s also possible that it is suggestive of a trend. Either way, it might be worth it to take a step back, assess your current paywall policy, and explore other methods of expanding your revenue strategy.

The power of community

In recent years, the rise in paywalls has grown in tandem with another trend: a renewed interest in community on the part of publishers.

The focus makes sense. Even the biggest publishers—outlets that receive tens of millions of visits per day—see only a fraction of the traffic of the big social platforms. On the internet, it seems, there’s no bigger draw than conversation. Give people a place to be heard, to connect with like-minded individuals, and they will repay you with regular visits: this is one of the main lessons of Web 2.0. It’s no surprise that publishers would want to siphon some of that energy for themselves.

For publishers looking to beef up their owned communities, a fully-paywalled site can be a complex proposition.

On the one hand, people who actually pay for a subscription are some of the likeliest to comment anyway. A thriving community can absolutely be built exclusively with paid subscribers. Substack’s a great example of this. Many Substackers only let you comment if you subscribe, and nonetheless host sprawling, engaged comments sections. There is also the fact that only letting paid-up members comment almost guarantees a more civil discourse, as it’s unlikely that a troll would actually pay money to annoy people.

On the other hand, comments are an incredible tool for growth—and paywalling all your articles can negate that function.

There is no question that it’s your content that matters most when cultivating readers. But as mentioned: online, community that creates stickiness. Community keeps readers reliably coming back, day after day. Un-paywalled articles allow first-time or occasional visitors to shake up the conversation, keeping things fresh and luring in still more readers (and participants). This can still be possible with a paywall—some percentage of readers, after all, will opt for a free trial and find the conversation that way—but the process might be slower, the growth less explosive.

To paywall or not to paywall?

Obviously, few sites deploy a paywall for every article (though some do—such as The Washington Post). Most, instead, paywall some content and open other content to anyone who wants to read it. Countless strategic concerns go into the decision of what to paywall. What we’d argue—given the importance of community for growth—is that one of those concerns should be: How likely is this article to generate conversation?

This consideration doesn’t have to be incompatible with a normal paywall strategy. In a normal paywall strategy, the articles that are paywalled are those most likely to drive clicks—juicy scoops or exposes, say, or epic longform features. But the articles most likely to generate clicks are not necessarily the ones that will generate the most conversation. They can be, absolutely. However, the truth is that evergreen, lower-stakes content is just as if not more likely to generate vibrant discussion.

Think, say, a list of the best albums of 1999. Or a quick primer on the best way to cook a steak. Or a write-up of last night’s big prestige-TV finale. Content like that can generate discussion at a surprisingly high volume. It draws in new readers and, in the slightly longer run, subscribers.

All of that said—and despite the Quartz move—there is no real indication that paywalls are on the way out. The beauty of this moment in media is that publishers don’t have to choose. They can grow their audience with paywalls while they can grow their audience with community (and with social media, live events, ecommerce, etc. The options right now are endless, as discussed in our recent guide).

What an engaged community can offer, more immediately than many other revenue concepts, is engagement. Higher engagement means more pageviews and––when leveraged to sell subscriptions or place ads––stronger, more diversified revenue for publishers.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

These next-level user experiences lead to more loyal, registered users

September 20, 2021 Joel Bejar, SVP Business Development – OpenWeb

When it comes to the future, increasing user registrations and building robust first-party datasets should be at the forefront of every publisher’s strategy. Building first-party data unlocks a publishers’ ability to increase user loyalty, activate their audience, monetize their content, and improve their editorial strategy.

However, according to a recent survey from Teads, 65.3% of publishers say they are not planning on increasing the usage of logins to gather first party data. Why is that? According to the report, they’re worried about a “potential disruption of user experience.”

It’s a valid concern: 67% of customers say poor user experiences are a reason for churn.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Many leading publishers are leveling-up user experiences on their website by creating social experiences and using personalization to create a seamless registration and log in process. These publishers stand to attract and grow an audience of loyal readers. Let’s take a look at how they’re doing it.

Three tactics to engage loyal audiences

1. Give users a reason to register with immersive social experiences

Stand-out content will always drive readers to a publisher’s website. Increasingly, though, readers are looking for other ways to interact and engage once they’re done reading an article.

Today, the publishers who are creating social experiences on their website see more registrations and greater retention rates. At OpenWeb, we’ve found that publishers who create these experiences have users who spend 35% more time on-site. They are 450% more likely to return month-after-month, and drive 4x the revenue as the average user.

There are a number of ways that publishers can create social experiences. Many are adopting engagement tools like one-click polls where readers can weigh in on the article they just read. Others are producing interactive ask-me-anything style interactive forums (AMAs) with authors or journalists. Another effective social experience is hosting a comments section. When publishers invite readers to interact in quality conversations where they feel valued, they’re more likely to register and return again and again.

2. Use active personalization to provide value and keep users coming back

Users not only crave engaging social experience, they’re loyal to publishers who “get” them.

That’s why more publishers are creating personalized content experiences to drive registrations and loyalty. In fact, 88% of marketers believe that audiences now expect personalization. One of the most effective ways that publishers can provide value to their users is through active personalization, or personalization that allows users to self-select their favorite authors, topics, and more.

Readers who receive targeted content tend to stay on-site longer, return more often, and view more content. They also provide publishers with more information about their content preferences, allowing publishers to take advantage of rich first-party data insights. One of the great things about personalized experiences is that, with the right tools, just about any publisher can create them—even those without a comments section.

3. Optimize your first party data success strategy

First-party datasets will play a pivotal role in every publisher’s future. In fact, they’re absolutely critical for any sustainable strategy, particularly in light of cookie depreciation. Through exceptional user experiences, publishers will drive more registrations. This will, in turn, allow them to collect more robust and accurate first party data which ultimately enables them to provide additional value to their audiences. In other words, all roads lead to a loyal, active community.

Time to interact

So if you’re still contemplating how to navigate the cookieless future, start by evaluating your user experience and ask these questions:

What opportunities are there to create social experiences and build a thriving, active community?
How can we leverage personalization to provide targeted content experiences for readers?

With this approach, publishers stand to see more registered, active users and higher retention rates, like Salon has. Thanks to immersive social experiences on their website (including a comments section), they built a loyal community of active users—and boosted their retention rate 4X.

The bottom line? Give users exceptional experiences and see exceptional results.

About the author

Joel Bejar is the Vice President of Business Development at OpenWeb.