Turn back to early 2024 and the Jeune Afrique team decided to completely reinvent their subscription model, making it more dynamic and personalizing offers based on a readers profile. Today, after months of testing, evaluating and developing, they announced that conversion rates increased by 30% following the implementation of a dynamic paywall, whilst the dynamic subscription offers page doubled conversion rates.
We spoke to Myriam Benyahya, in charge of the digital subscription strategy for Jeune Afrique, part of the pan-African media group Jeune Afrique Group , to hear about the operations behind the success of this strategy and share how others can achieve the same.
Jeune Afrique context box:
- Part of the Jeune Afrique Media Group brand, which also includes The Africa Report and Africa Business+, covering African and international political and economical news in both English and French
- Launched digital subscriptions in 2019
- Tools: Poool Access (dynamic paywall), Poool Engage (dynamic engagement and retention modules & landing pages), Chargebee subscription management
The impetus behind being more dynamic
“Firstly, visitors to our site are very diverse, coming from across the world, with unique needs, propensity to subscribe, payment methods, etc. But, at the time, they were all being presented with the same offers.
We also had a new website and design system in 2023, which worked great, but we were still waiting for tech teams to update our subscription landing pages to maintain consistency throughout the funnel. This reliance on tech really highlighted the problem, and one that doesn't just apply to design – our marketing team needed the flexibility and independence to be able to align these landing pages with other dynamic elements, enabling users to have a consistent experience through the funnel.
With this autonomy, we'd not only be able to change the design, but also value propositions, subscription offers, payment methods, messaging… In short, we'd be able to put much of the data we'd collected and insights we'd learnt into practice, and do this at engagement steps, the paywall and the subscriber landing page.”
How did you get started with this dynamic model?
“The first segments were based on user engagement, making use of Poool's native segmentation, which had already proven successful in initial tests. We created a hypothesis for each group, as being dynamic was something new for us, and then went about testing to understand behavior and how we could better optimize performance in each segment.
We then developed this engagement scoring to adapt to our unique context, as a brand with such a widely spread audience. The variables for our RFV calculation are: time since last visit, no. of visits in the last 90 days and the no. of articles read in the last 90 days.
The next step was to add a second layer of segmentation based on the country that a reader is based in, analyzing and grouping countries into 5 segments by propensity, conversion rate and payment method – some African countries use ‘Mobile money' for instance.”
Segmentation matrix
“But these segments are continuously developing, so we stay vigilant to performance, and of course continue to test!
For instance, taking the example of our “mobile money” countries, we noticed that the propensity to convert was slightly lower than other groups, so we tested various low-cost offers – such as €1 for the first month. But these didn't end up working well. After more testing and analyzing, we realized that actually these countries brought us the most value and that they preferred more longer-term and annual offers.
So we don't take these for granted, and continue to test and analyze with our KPIs – conversion rate, paywall visibility, CTR and retention/CA metrics for ensuring success in this strategy in the long term.”
> How to get started with a dynamic model
What was the dynamic element that adapted to each group?
“If we take the example of mobile money countries, it's the currency that will adapt as well as the icons representing the available, and preferred, payment methods.
We also adapt messaging around special offers or events happening in that particular country, such as elections for example, as well as the angle of this message – for less engaged readers, the focus is more on sharing our value proposition and explaining who JA is, but for engaged readers it's the subscriber benefits that are forefronted.”
Low CR countries & RFV Low
Medium CR country & RFV Mid Low
Mobile Money Country & RFV Mid High
High CR Country & RFV High
“And finally, in terms of the subscription offer itself, the term length, option of trial offer and requirements to stay subscribed for a certain period of time or not that adapt. For instance, some audience groups are more likely to subscribe to 6-12 month offers rather than a pay-per-month offer.
These initial dynamic elements on the paywall alone led to a 30% increase in conversion rate. So we were convinced of its value! ”
> How ELLE Magazine is using a dynamic paywall to increase conversion rates
Personalized subscription offers page
“Taking the same audience segments and aiming to ensure a fluid, consistent journey for each user through the funnel, we also built dynamic subscription offer pages, launching in July 2024.”
Currency, payment methods, and subscription offers are adapted to the audience segment.
Conversion rate for this page has increased by 50% since adding this dynamicity
“Building these pages on the Poool Dashboard within the marketing team, instead of having to go through tech, has allowed us to track performance of each segment more closely, and better follow performance through each step in the funnel, completing the data that we already have from the paywalls. We're now able to refine our segmentation even further and optimize subscription offers for each of these groups.
And we can't forget the flexibility that this has given us! This is a less measurable success metric, but it's giving us the freedom to test new ideas, special offers, marketing campaigns etc. without being dependent on tech.”
What's next
“Going even further with dynamicity, adding more layers and, in particular, applying it to our app too!”
