Articles by: "Matt Broad, Director of Optimization Services – Piano"

How to resource your team for effective subscription marketing

November 9, 2022 Matt Broad, Director of Optimization Services – Piano

As we approach the end of 2022, it’s never too early to plan promotions and set an end-of-year calendar for your organization.

These initiatives often require buy-in from the whole company. While editorial and marketing teams often lead the effort, product, technology, ad sales and senior leaders all play important roles. That’s especially true when an organization is shifting from an advertising-first strategy, focused on pageviews and engagement, to a user-centered strategy. The entire team will need to be aligned on KPIs and work together to execute the digital subscription strategy.

Key roles for successful subscription marketing

The most successful subscription publishers have dedicated resources for their digital subscription business that allow them to market their offerings nimbly, and continuously optimize their efforts. For those building or growing their teams, the following roles are foundational for success:

Head of consumer revenue

A senior revenue leader directly influences the future of the company and its business model, focusing on sales and everything that drives them, like marketing campaigns and product pricing.

This individual sets group goals and KPIs and typically is not executing day-to-day efforts, but does ensure campaigns are focused on the proper channels and customers, using the most impactful messaging. The head of consumer revenue usually has product knowledge and understands what makes the product unique and valuable to users in order to monetize it.

Marketing manager

A marketing manager is typically the person who oversees day-to-day marketing campaigns.

They possess experience identifying target audiences and executing campaigns that target, engage, and convert users throughout the customer journey.

This person should have a background in digital marketing or audience engagement to be most successful at understanding the audience and how to serve them with the right message at the right time in the most impactful way. Their goals are to enhance sales and remind existing users of their benefits. Subscriptions aren’t a set-it-and-forget-it business, so the marketing manager is also important for testing different aspects of the user experience to constantly be iterating and improving campaigns.

Creative team

Every publisher needs a resource with a creative mindset to help provide a frictionless UX while adhering to company brand guidelines. In many organizations, copy comes from the marketing manager and then designers ensure the look, feel and messaging of the campaign are aligned.

When design and copy are complete, a front-end developer may build templates to use with the software that’s serving promotions. Developers are often shared resources, so we always recommend creating templates with content fields whenever possible so that others on the marketing team can create variations—updating messaging, changing headlines, moving forward with new tests or promotions, etc.—without that technical background.

Data team

It’s helpful to have data analysts working closely across functions to help marketers understand what audience segments they are looking at and what information they have about them. Based on this performance, data experts can then help enhance segmentation and build out additional campaigns. They can answer questions like, where are the low-hanging fruit? Where can you drive business? How are campaigns performing among specific audience segments? Where is there an opportunity to iterate and improve results?

As a subscription business grows, the data team ultimately plays a critical role in benchmarking KPIs like cost of acquisition, customer lifetime value, retention rates and more. More sophisticated data scientists can also provide attribution models, revenue forecasting, or even come up with creative algorithms to segment your audience.

Tech team

Although they might not be needed on a daily basis, having a technical team that can support your business is very important. This group is aware and understands the technical objectives and gains knowledge of systems and processes, learning how relevant data is leveraged throughout the organization. They can also make sure integrations are functional and that data is passed correctly between systems, which is important for making strategic recommendations around price, revenue, etc.

If there’s a single most important factor in successfully marketing a subscription program, it’s having a top leader in the newsroom and someone on the business side engaged and in agreement that subscriptions are the priority. The group can build a marketing team to be responsible for executing this strategy.

How trials & promotions can help

Depending on how complex your organization’s audience segmentation is, trials and promotions can be worthwhile for all segments if they’re well-planned and used appropriately. How can you plan now to offer the right trials and promotions in the coming months?

Trials are a way to offer sampling; in other words, trying the product before a user makes a long-term and possibly expensive commitment. In subscription, these can have a big impact on conversion rate: At Piano, we’ve seen between a 20% and 150% lift in conversions after users enter a trial period.

However, free trials on annual subscriptions are not recommended. These typically result in very low retention rates and negate much of the benefit of offering a trial in the first place. One exception is to offer introductory pricing for annual subscribers. This can be an effective way to incentivise choosing a longer subscription.

Nonetheless, promotions are a way to encourage conversion among users who might otherwise consider a product too expensive, or who previously passed on an offer to subscribe. Through pricing research, you should be able to map out a revenue curve that helps you understand what different user segments might be willing to pay and how that impacts your overall revenue projections.

Running promotions creates a sense of urgency and pushes users to convert: At Piano, we’ve seen a 64% lift in revenue during a month with promotional offers, relative to the month prior. But the key is making these promotions targeted, temporary and irregular. Keep the offers in the market for a week or two at most, allowing the most motivated, price-sensitive users to respond.

The right team will help guide you on the effectiveness and performance of trials and promotions. With strong leadership, there’s still time to put in place a strong subscription marketing plan for the rest of the year and beyond.

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

3 tips for lean teams managing multiple subscription sites

August 12, 2022 Matt Broad, Director of Optimization Services – Piano

Subscription marketing teams are managing more digital media properties than ever after what seems like near-daily announcements about media acquisitions. In light of the growing necessity of digital engagement and audience targeting to grow reader revenue, media companies are looking for opportunities to consolidate their resources and encourage staff to be more efficient.

For lean teams or individual champions managing multiple sites, taking a few simple steps can help streamline workflows and apply audience lessons more broadly.

1. Manage user identity globally

Google may have delayed its deprecation of third-party cookies yet again, but publishers are still wise to set themselves up for a future based on first-party data. For most publishers, the obvious way to develop a trove of user identity data is by encouraging users to register for accounts or pay for subscriptions.

Regardless of whether your registration offer is free or paid, the big step to make this easier on both your internal team and your users is consolidating accounts across properties—in other words, creating one set of log-in credentials for users that control access across all of your managed sites and apps. This requires some up-front configuration, but it’s a win-win. Not only will your marketing twam have a holistic view of your audience, but your users will only have one set of credentials to remember and manage their access to multiple content sources.

2. Combine data analysis across properties

Analyzing user behavior across individual sites might leave you in the dark on key audience patterns. With your combined user identity system, you’ll be set up to analyze behavior metrics across sites rather than (or in addition to) in silos.

This view of user behavior on individual sites and across all properties will help you gain a deeper understanding of your audience’s motivations. Armed with this information, you will have fuel for targeted marketing and better user experiences, as well as more audience segmentation options for multi-property ad sales. This comprehensive view may also help you identify anomalies in your data, like a drop in conversions or traffic, to fix any issues that might come up for a single site or app.

3. Templatize experiences and conversion offers

Continuous testing and optimization is the name of the game when it comes to subscription growth. But it’s incredibly tedious to duplicate every update you make across 5, 10, or even 20+ sites for major publishing groups. We’ve found that creating these elements as modular, customizable units is the best way to manage this test-and-learn approach.

This allows you to keep the framework you know is effective, while customizing specific delivery for individual brands or properties. Then, you can ideally deploy them across multiple applications from a centralized view. Building a template library over time will also allow you to reuse seasonal promotions, like discounts around the back-to-school season or for holiday gifting. This will also create efficiencies in delegating resources, as well. Rather than having individual resources managing the promotions, user flows, marketing, and more for each brand in your publishing group, a shared services resource can be working on multiple brands at one time. This allows you to make the most of your team’s bandwidth and do more with less.

Managing a handful — or even dozens — of sites and apps is no small feat. But implementing a smart system from the onset will set you up for long-term success.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How to drive registered users to become paid subscribers

June 15, 2022 Matt Broad, Director of Optimization Services – Piano

Getting a user to register is far easier than getting a user to pay—users shown a registration offer have a 1.69% median conversion rate, vs. 0.26% for a paid subscription offer.

The good news is that registered users are more likely to become subscribers. But it can take some time for them to convert. The best practices below can help you attract more registrants and ultimately push them down the funnel to become paid subscribers.

Asking the right users to register

The first thing to recognize is that a registration offer may not be the right path for all user segments. So publishers must be strategic on how to segment audiences and determine who to convert quickly as registered users, vs. those who should only see the paid subscription offer.

Email is the leading referrer when it comes to acquiring subscribers, according to Piano data, which validates the registration experience for anonymous users who are coming from lower-performing referral sources (search, social, etc.). Those coming from email could be more apt to convert, so you might show them a paid subscription offer right away. However, you should consider introducing a guest pass or trial for users who arrive on-site from lower-performing referral sources.

Another way to segment the appropriate users to show a registration offer is algorithmically, or through machine learning. If you can determine a user’s likelihood to subscribe, you can ask those who aren’t as likely to instead register. It’s a common “first ask” in the customer journey and a solid tactic to engage the user with your publication and content.

Converting registered users to paid subscribers

When you do get someone to register, how do you keep them engaged and ultimately to become a paid subscriber? It’s not uncommon to wonder whether registered users will ever subscribe, but a smart strategy can ensure that the registration experience does not impact your conversion rates for users who are more likely to become a subscriber.

Some users convert quickly on their first day or first week as a registered users, but many more users will take a month or more to become paid subscribers. These numbers can help you model potential subscriber growth over time.

Some tactics you might implement to encourage paid subscription include:

Collect first-party data

By analyzing your registered user group, define how many have hit a content lock and have not subscribed. Do they warrant a different journey? There are always going to be users that just won’t pay, so collecting more first-party data to build those users’ profiles can help you tap into more advertising opportunities and generate revenue outside of subscriptions.

Make a ‘“crazy” offer

Offer a great deal at a steep discount because it just might be an offer your audience can’t refuse. Not all users will warrant this offer. However, by segmenting those that visit often but never subscribe, this may push them across the conversion “finish line.”

Target logged-in no-access users

Running promotions outside of your content lock is a good tactic to target users who are logged-in but aren’t subscribed to your site. Less intrusive on-site messaging can show users an offer while they’re reading “free content.”

A few more registration best practices

Whatever your strategy or how a user registered, treating registered users the right way will help lift conversion rates:

Create a clear value exchange

Whenever possible, connect the registration to the user benefit. It’s not just about registering, but becoming a member, getting these exclusive benefits, getting something tangible in exchange for providing your information. This messaging tends to increase conversion rate and make user consent more likely.

Minimize friction

Utilize email-only registration or social signups for ease of registration and collect additional information over time. You might consider a passwordless initial option to get users in the door, then you can capture other data later on in the user journey.

Be transparent

If you are collecting additional information, tell the user how you’ll use it and what the benefit is for them. For example, don’t just use their email address for ongoing subscriber acquisition emails. Give them something they want and will engage with, like an email newsletter.

Treat registered users like customers

It may take time, but registered users are likely to subscribe, so treat them as you would a valued customer. Create an onboarding experience for registered users as you would for a new subscriber. Encourage engagement, highlight user benefits and provide relevant content recommendations.

A registration experience can unlock a lot of additional value for your publication, but only if you proceed with caution so you don’t impact your existing paid subscription offer. Treating these users like customers with a clear value exchange will ultimately help audiences cross the finish line to become paid subscribers.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

How publishers can combat active and passive subscriber churn

March 21, 2022 Matt Broad, Director of Optimization Services – Piano

The subscription journey doesn’t end at conversion — it’s really just getting started. No matter how successful your subscription program is, you’ll always have customers on the edge of churning, or those you have to win back.

When trying to improve subscription retention rates, it’s important to understand that there are two sources of churn, passive (payment failures) and active (cancellations). Each of these require dedicated tactics to target the users that may be susceptible to churn and keep them as subscribers. By intelligently and intentionally harnessing subscriber data, publishers can proactively combat churn.

Active churn

Active churn is when users are consciously choosing to cancel their subscription or membership with your publication. To keep these users around, you likely need to better engage them with the product and showcase the value they’re receiving.

Communicate value with impactful onboarding experiences

When a new user converts to become a subscriber, an onboarding experience is the best way to get them acclimated with their new subscriber benefits and immediately engage them in the offering. This could include messages welcoming subscribers, encouraging app installs and newsletter sign-ups, and highlighting various subscription benefits. These tactics help to foster the habit of engagement with your content.

As monthly subscribers use the site heavily in their first 30 days, offering a holistic onboarding experience can be more effective than an email campaign alone. On-site messaging can add much more influence in this critical time period. It’s all about communicating the value of the offering.

Use content recommendations to increase usage

Higher content consumption is generally linked to lower churn. By using personalized content recommendations to surface the right content to the right users, publishers can double both pageviews and active time on site.

While content recommendations are most often thought of from an advertising context in relation to increasing pageviews, those additional pageviews also help show users the type of content they’re most interested in and tangibly demonstrate the value of your content, reinforcing the messaging of your onboarding campaign. The more relevant content the user sees, the more they will value their subscription.

Leverage machine learning to identify users most likely to churn

By understanding the users most likely to churn and the biggest drivers of cancellation, you can target messaging or campaigns separately to high- and low-risk subscribers. Machine learning can help you segment these groups based on hundreds of metrics. These can include everything from the referrer at the moment of conversion to whether a subscriber paid with Visa or American Express. With a better understanding of what behaviors are driving cancellation and retention, you can work with your editorial team to encourage the positive behaviors and suppress the negative ones.

Passive churn

Unlike active churn that results from action by the subscriber, passive churn is most often caused by credit card failures or other technical failures.

Extend grace period to try charging cards more than once

A simple but high-impact change that publishers can make is shifting the grace period for retrying credit cards that had a failed payment. Although many marketers never envisioned overseeing the intricacies of payment processing, this has become an integral part of subscription strategy to optimize revenue.

By spacing card retries out five days apart, many reasons for payment failure (such as a maxed-out card) can resolve themselves. The first retry is almost always the most effective, successfully charging an average of 25% of monthly subscriptions that enter grace periods and an average of 18% of annual subscriptions entering grace periods. The second attempt, 10 days after an initial payment failure, also often can have a double-digit success rate. Later attempts tend to get progressively less successful, with only a couple percent of subscriptions successfully charged during later attempts. But even low additional success rates on later attempts can add up to real money for large subscription bases.

Communicate billing updates directly with users

Visitors with expiring credit cards soon to expire are often customers who are satisfied with the product and simply need to be prompted to update payment details. Reaching out to users in advance of card expiration dates, or with billing failures when they happen, gives them every opportunity to update the payment method.

Think of this communication as a service message, rather than a marketing message: “Your payment details are expiring. Please update them here for uninterrupted service.” If the payment method isn’t updated, you may consider increasing the urgency of your messaging in a sequence as the expiration date gets closer.

Initiate a win-back campaign to re-engage former subscribers

The first step in running a successful win-back campaign is understanding which former subscribers are most likely to be won back. While only about a third of churn is passive, a Piano analysis found 55% of subscribers who had a subscription lapse and later re-subscribed were passive churners. This makes sense. It’s much easier to win back a customer who did not intentionally end their subscription than one who did. Former subscribers with a payment failure may not even realize their subscription is no longer active.

Onsite messages targeting this specific user group can be used to prompt former subscribers to resubscribe onsite. Emails sent based on a subscription or access ending event can also be used to run win-back campaigns. Similar to credit card expiration messaging, win-back campaigns can start out simply as service messages: “Your subscription has expired. Please update your payment details to resume service.”

Taking a two-pronged approach can help you address both passive churn and active churn of your subscribers. By prioritizing retention as much as acquisition, you can ensure you don’t lose a single hard-won customer you don’t have to.