Cet article a été écrit par Lennart Schneider, fondateur du podcast et de la newsletter Subscribe Now, et expert des modèles d’abonnement numérique.

Bonjour, je suis Suchit Patel, Account Strategist chez Multidots. J’accompagne les éditeurs numériques dans l’optimisation de leur stratégie d’abonnement et la maximisation de leurs revenus à long terme grâce à des solutions technologiques stratégiques.

Dans cet article, nous explorons pourquoi les stratégies de tarification promotionnelle peuvent nuire à vos objectifs de revenus d’abonnement, en examinant la psychologie de « l’addiction à la réduction » et en partageant des alternatives concrètes pour protéger votre rentabilité à long terme.

How did you come up with this idea, why and why now?

Louis: Since our latest round of funding from Marc Ménasé, we’ve made a strategic shift at Maddyness, strengthened our team and developed our advertising network model. We’ve welcomed Rose-Marie as Head of Product, worked on developing our community and reinforced our editorial line through a new, subscription-based revenue model (Maddy+, managed by Rose-Marie). 

With all of this, we designed a “Founders” offer, a unique proposition giving our most loyal readers lifetime access to Maddy+ via a one-off payment of €1,490. This lifetime subscription simplifies cash management and creates an exclusive ‘club’ and sense of belonging.

Rose-Marie: In just a few years, Maddyness has become the must-read media for entrepreneurs. Our independence allows us to engage convincingly with the issues that matter to our audience, made up of new business decision-makers, corporate executives, entrepreneurs and political figures. 

With Maddy+, we aim to inform, educate and unite the players in the industry around the challenges facing our society, offering exclusive content, scoops and quality networking opportunities. The idea of the “Founders” subscription came from our desire to meet the expectations of our most loyal readers by offering them a long-term proposition at an ultra-competitive price.

Inspired by others on the market

Rose-Marie: Our project drew on a wealth of national and international inspiration. Internationally, media such as The New York Times, Wired and the Financial Times via Sifted inspired us with their ability to offer in-depth analysis and exclusive investigations. We’ve also been influenced by SaaS solutions that offer lifetime subscriptions, which led us to offer our “Founders” subscription at €1,490 for lifetime access to Maddy+. This fits in perfectly with our DNA, aligning the experience of our very SaaS-focused team with goals of scalability and unique experience.

Louis: The idea was to create something unique, very close to the values and culture of our readers. We also wanted to limit the number of lifetime subscriptions available to avoid dealing with a mass of lifetime subscribers, which could have resulted in a big influx of immediate cash but more uncertainty over the long term. This limitation not only creates a sense of exclusivity and scarcity, but is also essential to maintaining a privileged relationship with our community.

How did this project work in terms of tech? And were there any legal requirements that you had to abide by?

Rose-Marie: Technically, we created a “fully custom setup” with Poool’s dynamic paywall solution, with bright walls highlighting the benefits of premium, leading to the subscription landing page. We collaborated with our dev and the Poool team to minimize the impact of our walls on SEO. 

We used dedicated messaging for the Founders offer and a one-shot payment system by card, Apple Pay or PayPal. Legally, we worked with our lawyers and Kramer Levin to come up with the best terms and conditions.

Louis: In fact, we worked very closely with Kramer Levin, which involved a great deal of legal engineering, as well as with Studio Meta for the new version of the site, to create a consortium of recognized experts around this offer. The idea was to create a strong, trust-based relationship with our readers, integrating them into an exclusive community and insisting on a sense of belonging.

What’s the value proposition for this special offer?

Rose-Marie:  We’ve built our value proposition around the needs of our target audience, startup founders, who are loyal readers of Maddyness. We offer them a long-term solution at an ultra-competitive price: pay once for a lifetime offer. This solution simplifies cash management and lets you network with a growing community while enjoying the latest exclusive content and features.

Louis: We found that our most loyal readers have been reading Maddyness for ten years! For them, the calculation is simple: I’m going to keep reading for at least ten years, so if it becomes profitable after three years, it’s worth paying for a lifetime membership. We worked hand-in-hand with key entrepreneurs and C-Levels in France to refine this offer, testing and perfecting it with our beta testers and ambassadors.

Rose-Marie: Naturally, we previewed this offer to our most loyal partners, who gave us very positive feedback. These one-to-one tests enabled us to confirm the relevance of the offer and its suitability for the market.

What qualitative feedback have you collected so far?

Rose-Marie: Initial feedback has been very positive. The simple, efficient two-step process and comprehensive landing page with a clear value proposition is very appealing. 84% of subscribers say they are very satisfied with Maddy+. Maddyness is a trusted, specialized media, so subscription intent is very high.

Louis: In fact, the feedback has been incredible. Subscribers are happy to have this solution and to build a lasting relationship from the outset. They become engaged and recognize our driving role in analyzing and deciphering tomorrow’s economy. I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that the first Maddy+ subscription sold was the “founders” offer, purchased by the chairman of a CAC 40 company. A powerful display of the potential of this subscription strategy.

And quantitative?

Rose-Marie: Since our launch, we’ve noticed that our conversion funnel often breaks records! The traffic on premium content exceeds 20%, the wall visibility rate 82%, click rate 2.33%, and conversion rate over 7%. 

We’ve set up questionnaires/surveys to gather user feedback and an e-mail address for direct access to our team. We didn’t expect to exceed our conversion targets – it solidifies our positioning as an industry-leading media, committed to its work.

Louis: We’re going to exceed our subscription targets this year, and are proud to have such an engaged community. Our satisfaction measurement tools, such as NPS, show very positive results: 84% of subscribers appreciate our daily newsletter, with an average open rate of 67%.

What have you learnt through launching this lifetime offer?

Rose-Marie:

• The single payment for the “Founders” offer is quite a considerable amount, so support from our team here is essential
• As the offer isn’t aimed at all readers, communication needs to be very targeted
• We’ve also realized the importance of visibility of our premium offers and paywall. It’s not enough to just increase the number of paid articles, but also strengthen communication on our other channels

Louis:

• We’ve become aware of the importance and strength of our community – their loyalty and commitment to our work, it’s really powerful to our subscription model
• We’ve also understood the importance of setting up a retention strategy right from the launch. These foundations from day 1 mean we don’t miss out on any retention opportunities

What would you have done differently if you were to do it again?

Rose-Marie:

• Focus more on the traditional offers, or target messaging: The Founders offer was a great idea, but it’s not for our average audience. When we refocused messages on a less expensive offer, conversion rate increased by over 30%
• We could also have communicated better about automatic renewal from the outset

Louis:

• Communicated about the lifetime offer from the launch
• We could have also created a solely event-based offer from the outset, making the Founders more than just a subs offer, but a fully-fledged event

What advice would you give others looking to do the same thing?

Louis: Engaging your community is essential. You need to create a real contract of trust with your readers, showing that you understand their needs and expectations. 

Strong positioning is essential; don’t discount your offer with low rates, as this can devalue perception of your brand and your content. In the BtoB media sector, it’s crucial to maintain a premium offering to ensure the quality and exclusivity of the information you provide.

We’re at a crucial stage in our industry, where we need to regain ownership of our relationship with subscribers. People are now used to paying for content, thanks in particular to streaming platforms, but they expect a unique experience and strong added value. It’s not enough to ask readers to pay for what they used to get for free! 

Investing in satisfaction measurement tools, such as questionnaires and NPS, is also vital to understanding and responding to your audience’s needs. 

Finally, limiting the number of passes available can create a sense of exclusivity and rarity, essential to maintaining a privileged relationship with your community. Create event-based and exclusive offers that resonate with your audience’s values and culture to reinforce this bond of trust over the long term.

Rose-Marie: Knowing your audience and their frequency of visits is essential to creating a subscription offer that works. 

In addition, it’s essential to talk to your ambassadors pre-launch and gather their first impressions. Working out your value proposition with your readers is the best way to meet their expectations.

I’d also recommend gathering as much data as possible on your conversion funnel and audience. 

Finally, staying focused on user pain points will enable you to constantly evolve your product in the right direction, both in terms of value proposition and user experience. 

After noticing Gina Bulla, executive director of audience research at The Atlantic, sign up to The Audiencers’ newsletter, I just had to get in touch to hear more about her role. What exactly is audience research? What type of research does her team run? And how are the findings used to increase engagement, conversion and retention at The Atlantic?

I was excited to learn more about our audience on a deeper level beyond what we could know about them from data and demographics. I saw an opportunity for those insights to strengthen our work across the organization. Fast forward a few years, and I pivoted to lead our Audience Research team. 

It’s a new role for me, but what made the leap easier is Audience Research is an emerging discipline in the publishing industry. So there’s an opportunity to determine what Audience Research means for The Atlantic along with the industry. And, The Audiencers helps connect me with others in similar roles—so thank you for that!

What is audience research at The Atlantic? 

I always say that my job is listening to people. We can glean so much data from our metrics, and our Data Science team are expert at analyzing and making sense of it. But there are also so many questions that data can’t answer. That’s where Audience Research comes in, to try to answer the questions that data can’t answer: why is something happening, how do people feel, and what are their unmet needs and desires?

It’s important to me that when we think about Audience Research, it’s not just our current audience that we want to connect with but our prospective audience as well. Of course, our super fans are an incredibly important voice, but to truly understand who our audience can be, we also need to connect with groups that are less (or not yet) engaged with us.

And probably the most important role of an audience researcher is to advocate for our readers and ensure their voices are heard when building new experiences.

What are The Atlantic’s research methods? 

We are primarily focused on qualitative research, so activities that allow us to solicit feedback verbatim from current and prospective readers, like interviews, forums, and surveys. We’ve been experimenting with diary studies–longitudinal research, where we can connect with participants over a period of time to understand their habits better. 

Because it takes effort for respondents to participate, we’re selective about the volume of these activities. Speaking to our readers and subscribers face-to-face is a privilege, so we want to respect their time, privacy, and opinions.

We are also tuned in (or listening) to our readers in what I’ll call non-active ways. What is our customer care team hearing? What are people saying on social media? What is resonating across the industry? 

How do you decide what to research? 

We try to balance the big, important questions that can help us define the future of The Atlantic with the more specific questions that can help ensure a product’s or project’s success. 

One of the big, important questions we’re focused on right now is: who are our future subscribers? We’ve just executed research to help us identify audiences that may be inclined to subscribe to The Atlantic in the near or not-so-distant future. We’ll use this research to ideate strategies to increase conversion, engagement, and discovery.

How are projects prioritized? 

That’s probably one of the biggest challenges. Every department in the organization wants insight from our audience, but as I alluded to before, we don’t want to oversaturate them with research requests. 

We ask two questions to filter the projects that we take on:

• Is it actionable, or will we make a decision based on the research?
• Is it really a question that our audience can answer for us?

Your work obviously relates back to a wide variety of teams at The Atlantic – including product, marketing, editorial and data. How do you make sure that each team is able to learn and act from your insights?

Synthesis and sharing out results is one of, if not the most important, steps in our process. For almost every project, we create a report and try to make it as engaging as possible (visuals, videos, etc.). Then we share it in a few ways: via group slacks, and research readout meetings that stakeholders across the company attend, emails, etc.

That way, Audience Research isn’t happening in a vacuum, and what we’re learning can inform any team’s work.

Can you give us an example of how something you learned from audience research was used to increase engagement, conversion, and retention at The Atlantic.

Something we hear a lot from readers as a barrier to subscribing, or sometimes a reason for canceling is that they don’t have as much time to devote to our journalism as they might like. So it’s encouraged us to think about how we can help our audience fit The Atlantic into their lives more seamlessly. I don’t want to say too much because we’re working on some new features right now but keep an eye out for some of those enhancements soon.

I’d like to say thank you to Gina for her time – I certainly learnt a lot and am now an advocate for every publisher employing someone in this kind of role! As she mentioned to me in the interview, Audience Research is a practice that’s fairly new in the industry, but something that’s becoming increasingly valued as publishers are becoming consumer businesses, requiring them to put readers first, understanding exactly what brings them to engage, convert and remain loyal to the brand.