Engagement, visibility and a touch of frustration; here’s a list of strategies to successfully convert your free registered members into paying subscribers.
1. Increase engagement
Successful conversions are all about balancing frustration and engagement. You can block members with a paywall all you’d like, but if they aren’t engaged, and if they don’t believe in your value proposition, they won’t convert.
Increasing engagement is therefore an essential part of moving free members down the funnel. Of course, this should be done through the classic techniques – quality content, a variety of formats (games, newsletters, app…) etc. – but you can also consider the below strategies, specifically for registered users.
Onboard new members
Just as you (hopefully) do for paying subscribers, you should lead new members through an on-site onboarding journey to deliver immediate value, increase engagement and personalize a user’s experience.
Importantly, they should be designed according to what a “valuable member” means to you.
The New York Times, for instance, recently implemented a new onboarding journey for registered users and it tells you exactly what’s valuable to their wider strategy.
Based on this onboarding journey, it’s clear that for the NYT a valuable user:
- is engaged in multiple verticals – news, cooking, sport, audio, games, reviews
- is signed up to one or more of their newsletters, an important content format for building habits and bringing readers back to the site
- plays games, something proven to form habits and bring in new audiences (think of the Wordle trend, where those who didn’t play daily felt left out of conversations). Interestingly, they even added a “Go to games” link at the end
- downloads and uses the app
Plus, they’ve added a banner on-article to promote their paid offering directly after someone creates their account.
The lesson to remember: Onboarding is essential, but should be adapted to your audience – what features, content or benefits are the most valuable to you (often calculated based on engagement/retention)?
