In 2019, Forum Communications Company (FCC) launched its first digital paywall.
Seven years later, the company runs subscription models across 30+ local publications. They’ve hit the same reality most publishers face: early growth is exciting. Then comes the plateau. Not to mention external, industry-wide challenges.
Stephanie Schroeder, Chief Revenue Officer, has been leading consumer revenue since day one. What’s changed over the years isn’t just their meter settings. It’s how granular they’ve become — in segmentation, payment failures, cancellation flows, marketing campaigns…
If you’re trying to grow reader revenue in a mature subscription business, Forum Communications provides valuable lessons in the importance of continuous iterations and the value of minor tweaks.
> Forum Communications runs subscriptions across 30+ local US titles and has hit the plateau every mature subscription business hits. Chief Revenue Officer Stephanie Schroeder's answer is granularity rather than big swings > Around 10% of their pageviews were on articles over 30 days old, arriving via search with high intent. Hard-paywalling that archive doubled conversion rates and now produces 15 to 20% of all subscriptions, without impacting SEO > The biggest cause of churn wasn't dissatisfaction with the content, it was failed payments. They now use their CDP to spot upcoming failures and warn readers on site before the renewal date > They moved the cancellation survey to the start of the flow, routing technical issues to support, content complaints to the newsroom and price objections to a promo. Not everyone cancelling wants to cancel, some want to be heard > The Head of Customer Success phoned 15 recently cancelled subscribers, not to sell but to ask why they left. 10 took the call and 9 resubscribed
Launch fast, iterate forever
Forum Communications spent nearly a year preparing their first launch. But once they went live, they didn’t pause to perfect it before rolling out to other markets.
“As long as nothing was majorly broken, we kept rolling — knowing we’d iterate over time.”
At launch, they:
- Set a loose 10-article meter
- Made registration optional
- Soft-launched to avoid audience shock
- Focused heavily on activating print subscribers digitally
At this point, Covid hit… Like many publishers at the time, they temporarily opened content, before realizing that this wasn’t a short-term event. At this point, registration became a key part of their strategy.
The goal wasn’t immediate subscription conversion, but building a known audience.
The result:
- No meaningful pushback from audiences
- Massive growth in known users
- Significant lift in subscription conversions
If you’re working to launch subscriptions, registration provides a great testing ground and step between anonymous and subscribed. Read more about registration as a strategy here.
Test dynamic paywalling
Data collection helped pave the way for audience segmentation and targeting in their paywall model, based on a collection of engagement signals that suggest propensity to subscribe. The one-size-fits-all metered model was instead replaced by dynamic reader-based paywalls.
- A new visitor with very low propensity to subscribe would be allowed to scan and read uninterrupted. They found it’s more valuable to garner ad impressions from these readers and let them build a habit by sampling the product in hopes they’ll return again.
- A returning visitor who isn’t quite subscription-ready but shows signs of engagement sees a registration wall. The conversion from anonymous to known helps get that reader in the funnel so they can be served more content and return to the site when they have a higher propensity.
- A highly engaged, high-propensity reader will be shown a paywall. This might be determined by a variety of factors, including frequency of visit, duration of visit, registration activity or engagement with newsletters.
The result?
- Readers aren’t blocked from reading content before they’re ready to take action, optimizing ad revenue and allowing new visitors to sample the product
- Registrations and paywall events are optimized at the reader level, which means more readers are allowed to engage with content without sacrificing conversion rates
Don’t overlook the goldmine that is archived content
Most publishers obsess over today’s headlines. FCC looked at 30+ day-old content.
When they checked Google Analytics, they discovered that ~10% of pageviews were on articles older than 30 days.
And unlike homepage traffic, this content is typically accessed via search, social and direct links, which means users are actively seeking out this content.
High intent = high propensity.
So they tested hard paywalling 30+ day-old articles.
The results:
- Conversion rate doubled compared to standard paywalls.
- 15–20% of all subscription conversions now come from archived content walls.
If you’re not measuring the share of traffic on older content, head to your analytics and check what percentage of pageviews are 30+ days old.
Evergreen content is often your most under-monetized asset.
(and no, they didn’t notice any negative SEO impacts as a result of this change!)
