This article was written by Ann-Kathrin Wind & Marvin Suder at Handelsblatt Media, Germany.

> Handelsblatt Media Group, Germany's leading business publisher, had a paywall conversion problem that wasn't a product problem. Its four H+ tiers were each well-positioned. The mistake was showing all of them at once, at the moment of highest reader impatience

> Step one was removing the higher-priced products from the paywall entirely. It felt like hiding revenue. Conversion rose significantly instead, because the reader no longer had a package comparison to work through before checkout

> The new default is a single offer: H+ Standard digital access, with a trial or a three-month commitment at 30% off the monthly price

> Step two put choice back selectively. A Likelihood-to-Subscribe score decides who sees Premium, on the hypothesis that high-scoring users have both a higher willingness to pay and genuine use for the extra features

> The decisive metric was never initial conversion. Premium converts from trial to paid less reliably than Standard, so a failed Premium trial doesn't just underdeliver, it replaces a Standard subscriber you would have kept. The question became which offer generates the highest sustainable revenue per segment, not which offer converts best

At Handelsblatt, the problem was clear: our paywall conversion rate was too low, and we were not generating enough subscription volume. 

However, product diversification was not the issue. We already offered a strong portfolio  tailored to different use cases: 

• H+ Standard, including digital access to all articles on the website and in the app
• H+ Premium, adds the e-paper and a paid newsletter 
• H+ Premium Student, the Premium experience at a student price 
• H+ Premium Business, users who also want business-focused content, events  and professional learning opportunities 

Each product was relevant and well-positioned. The mistake was showing all of them at once, at the moment of highest reader impatience.

We set two objectives: Reduce the number of decisions a reader has to make and make better use of our Likelihood-to-Subscribe scores. 

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Jess Burney is the Managing Director of Customer Marketing and Subscriptions at Immediate, the publisher behind Good Food, Radio Times and Nutracheck. She runs a team of 50 and has spent five years pivoting from a print subscription business to a digital one. Immediate now has more than 1.2 million paid subscribers, around 800,000 of them digital-only, and a mission to reach 3 million by 2030. The majority of the remaining 1.8 million are expected to come from the US, from products not yet launched and from bundling.

> UK publisher Immediate (Radio Times, Good Food, HistoryExtra) has over 1.2 million paid subscribers, around 800,000 of them digital, against a company target of 3 million by 2030

> Print subscribers were never migrated. Immediate built and bought digital products for people who had never bought a magazine: the Good Food app is at just under 200,000 from a 2022 standing start, Nutracheck at 580,000 since its 2023 acquisition

> Paywalled articles only sell if the content is genuinely must-read, and evergreen lifestyle content isn't. Good Food charges for utility instead: cook mode, planning tools, and app takeovers exclusive to subscribers

> There's no single Immediate paywall. Stickiness, response rates and build costs differ by brand, so each gets its own model, and Immediate only builds where it leads the category

> A separate commercial team holds the budget and funds products against fixed thresholds: 40-55% trial-to-paid conversion, 65-80% at the next renewal, monthly retention above 90%, and 3:1 lifetime value to acquisition cost within two years

Print was working. That was the constraint.

Immediate publishes Radio Times, Good Food, HistoryExtra and around 50 other brands, and by the early 2020s its print business was thriving. Magazines still sold well, and lockdown had been good to them, with a steep uptick in demand for copies by post. Instead of needing to rescue subscribers from a collapsing format, as many other publishers did, Immediate’s existing subscriber base was profitable, loyal, and not going anywhere fast. As Burney put it, print is still a robust format, and one the brand needed to continue to commit to. But growth is in digital, a development necessary to achieve their 3 million subscriber target. 

What’s more, the bet was that the expertise from years of building subscription expertise in print – pricing, renewals, retention, and direct marketing to a known customer file – would carry into digital even though the format would not.

New products for audiences that print never reached

The post Reader revenue at Immediate Media: 1.2 million paid subscribers, and a custom model for almost every brand appeared first on Audiencers.

At the Audiencers’ Festival Montréal, Emilie Harkin, SVP of Growth at The Guardian, broke down what actually motivates readers to give money to a publication with no paywall.

The Guardian doesn't have a paywall, anyone can read it, whether they pay or not. So the 1.4 million people who choose to give money anyway aren't paying for access, they're paying for something else entirely

> Ownership is the product: The organisation's value proposition comes down to three words - global, independent, free. Owned by the Scott Trust, their sole purpose is to ensure The Guardian can keep publishing. It's this that's sold to readers

> One email, built entirely around that pitch, generated $2 million. When The Washington Post and LA Times pulled their 2024 election endorsements, The Guardian sent readers a simple message - we published ours, and always will, because no billionaire can tell us not to

> But it's the method that's worth noting rather than the moment: The Guardian surveys readers right after they give, with the goal of understanding the why. The top answers include protecting the free press, editorial independence, or the journalism itself

> These surfaced motivations don't just become a slide that's presented once to the team, they're used to build every single message that asks for support. They keep telling the story, deliberately and repeatedly

The Guardian doesn’t have a paywall. Anyone can read it, regardless of ability to pay. So every dollar it raises from readers is, in Harkin’s words, an elective transaction: nobody is required to give anything to keep reading. That constraint is exactly what makes The Guardian’s reader revenue data useful to anyone running a subscription business, paywalled or not, because it isolates motivation from access. People aren’t paying to get in the door. They’re paying for something else entirely.

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Max Moné is co-founder and CEO at Poool, the dynamic journey builder to boost subscription conversion, engagement, and loyalty.

This is the fourth in a 6-part series where I share what I learned from studying 100 subscription business models across 15+ industries. 
> Episode one: 100 subscription business, 15 industries, 1 moodboard
> Episode two: What’s free, what’s paid, and why it’s really an engagement trade-off
> Episode three: Why the best subscription businesses don’t try to sell on day 1

If you’ve ever worked on a subscription business, chances are the pricing page you’ve built looks a lot like the pricing pages I’ve seen across the industry. You know the one: three columns with a “recommended” plan in the middle, a monthly/annual toggle at the top, and a comparison table at the bottom with feature checkmarks. The kind of page where you end up spending weeks arguing about whether the middle plan should be the best offer, and A/B testing the color of the CTA button.

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In this guide, we share the various ways that publishers can segment their audience to develop a dynamic paywall model, with examples for each type of segmentation: 
> By content type: free vs premium, user needs, date of publication...
> By user profile: level of engagement, user status, location...
> By acquisition channel: Google, social media, newsletters...

Some quick definitions: 
> Audience segmentation: grouping users based on their profile or context, i.e. data that could impact their behaviour, inform us on what could convince them to subscribe or make them more or less likely to convert in that moment
> Dynamic paywall: a paywall that adapts for different audience segments. This could be in terms of the paywall design, messaging or even the journey itself (e.g. seeing a paywall or not). Note that "dynamic" doesn't necessarily equate to AI-driven. It's often rule based - i.e. a user reading a "politics" article sees a different paywall to a user reading a "sports" article.

There are 3 main buckets of audience segmentation with the goal of increasing conversion rates:

• By content type
• By user profile
• By acquisition channel

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In Fall 2025, Les Coops de l’information, a collective of six Canadian media outlets (Le Soleil, Le Droit, Le Nouvelliste, Le Quotidien, La Tribune, and La Voix de l’Est) launched an innovative subscription drive named internally as the “Pay what you can project”.

Designed to coincide with the 2025 Municipal Elections, the campaign aimed to lower the barrier to local news while reinforcing the value of independent, cooperative journalism.

Results were beyond their expectations:

• 4.2% increase in subscribers
• Despite the minimum amount being $1 per month for the first three months of subscription, the average amount paid was $3.12 per month. This increased to $3.50 after increasing the suggested price

Principal Director, Audiences and Platforms, Marc Gendron shared how this strategy boosted subscriber growth and increased ARPU for those on this offer.

> Les Coops de l'information, a cooperative of six Quebec news outlets, let readers name their own price for the first three months, timed to the 2025 municipal elections. Subscribers rose 4.2% in five weeks

> Against a $1 minimum, the average paid was $3.12 a month, and some new subscribers chose more than the regular subscription price

> The suggested figure in the price field did the work. Suggesting $5 lifted the average to $3.39 and suggesting $6 lifted it to $3.50, with more people simply taking the suggestion each time

> 84% of the new subscribers had never subscribed before, which is the number that matters most for a local publisher wondering whether it has exhausted its market

> Their own caveat is worth repeating: the resulting ARPU still came in below their fixed-price promotions and well below regular rates. Get stakeholder buy-in first, and manage expectations, including your own

“Pay what you can” strategy

The core of the initiative was a flexible pricing model for the first three months of a new user’s subscription.

“We wanted to make an audacious promotion that would be too good to ignore! It shouldn’t rely solely on a heavy discount, but also on our unique value proposition at a time when it’s more relevant than ever.

Our gamble was: we know that there will be more interest towards our local politics content during the municipal campaign, so let’s surf on that wave and make sure our new promotional subscribers get the most out of their plans, that they feel that they are getting much more than what they are paying for. Instead of opening up access to our elections coverage, or setting up a fixed promotional price, we wanted to give more power and autonomy to users by letting them choose their price.”

Key components include:

• Democratic access: The campaign was rooted in the belief that a strong democracy requires exhaustive and impartial electoral coverage.
• Price autonomy: Prospective subscribers were invited to “fix the price” for their initial three-month period.
• Transparency and trust: Using the slogan “Un média qui vous ressemble, un média qui nous rassemble” (A media that looks like you, a media that brings you together) the group highlighted its status as an employee-owned cooperative.

“Our goal was to increase the total number of subscribers, between 3.5% and 4.3% of total subs. 

We mobilized everyone we could in order to achieve these targets. The new features we needed to implement, flexible pricing mechanics, everything was put on the development roadmap early in 2025. Our collaborators from Wizeline, who take care of all our platform development projects and Arc XP integration, worked tirelessly to have every feature ready for the fall campaign.

We also got the help of Drakkar Digital (renamed deRabane since), our long-lasting marketing partner, in order to create the visuals, copy and plan the delivery of all the marketing messages.

The editorial team was mobilised too, because the success of the campaign relied heavily on their capacity to deliver unique, useful and original content during that specific period.

Finally, our small digital growth team (including the IT and customer service team) operationalized the whole process.“

Feature gating: creating a product worth paying for

Of course, a promotional project is only as good as the product you’re selling! Les Coops has worked on developing strategic “feature gating” to build a subscription worth paying for, with clear value and strategic steps through registration towards subscription: 

Interactive engagement: Features like the “Question of the Day”  required users to be connected to vote and view live, constantly updated results.

Bookmarking across devices: Registered users gained access to a bookmarking feature, allowing them to save their favorite articles across web and app platforms.

Premium audio: Audio versions of articles were restricted to “All-inclusive” and “Ultimate” subscribers, serving as an upsell for basic plan holders.

Access limitations: To maintain account integrity, the platform limited simultaneous access to four devices, automatically disconnecting the oldest session when the limit was reached.

Premium content: Chroniques (articles written by columnists) and archives (articles published more than 30 days ago) have been hard paywalled as a key part of their subscription value proposition 

Marketing across site

As with any campaign, design and messaging needs to be consistent across the website and platforms, including the paywall. 

Dedicated paywalls: Les Coops d’Information built dedicated “Pay what you can” paywalls in Poool, including a live countdown to create urgency.

Subscription landing page: To ensure continuity of messaging through the user journey, dedicated subscription landing pages were also created in Poool, highlighting the value proposition, sharing subscriber testimonials and providing reasons why users should subscribe. 

Multi-channel promotion

The campaign was supported by an intensive five-week marketing blitz:

Email campaign: 72 unique emails (12 per media outlet) were delivered, each utilizing different angles and value propositions.

Targeted ads: The group targeted known non-subscribers through Google Ads, StackAdapt, and Bing Ads

In-app and newsletters: Non-subscribers were greeted with dedicated “Pay what you can” headers in free editorial newsletters and pop-up messages upon opening the mobile app.

Results 

“The final results were pretty impressive. By the end of the five weeks of promotion, our total subscriber base had increased by 4.2%, more than our targets and very close to our most optimistic forecast.

What was the most interesting though was the fact that, despite the minimum amount requested being 1$ per month for the first three months of subscription, the average amount paid was 3.12$ per month. This average increased to 3.39$ when we suggested 5$ in the price field and to 3.50$ when suggesting 6$. Each time we changed the suggested amount, we saw an increase in the number of users choosing to go with the suggested amount.

There are even some new subscribers that paid more than the regular price of a subscription!

Another really encouraging fact: 84% of these new subscribers had never subscribed before! This is probably one of the most encouraging findings of this adventure. It means that there is still room for us to grow.”

What’s next?

“This kind of campaign is a little more complicated than one with a fixed set of promotional prices. But the results we got were pretty impressive.

The fact that the user sets the initial price does add a layer of interactivity however, and it lowers the entry bar to a level where they feel comfortable. The core of the challenge remains though: to convince newly converted subscribers that our offer is worth the regular price.”

What should another publisher make sure of before testing this same project? 

“They should immediately get the buy-in from all important stakeholders as the impact on ARPU can be unpredictable. In our case, we feel that we were quite lucky to get an average ARPU of more than 3$ despite the fact that the minimum amount required was 1$. But that is still below the average ARPU we got with fixed price promotions and way below our regular numbers. Make sure that you manage everyone’s expectations. Even your own! 

That being said, as we have been galvanized by the nomination we got for this project at the INMA Global Media Awards, we will reactivate the Pay what you can promotion for two weeks in order to see if we can get similar, or even better, results this time around.”

The post Les Coops de l’information “Pay What You Can” Campaign appeared first on Audiencers.

Spektrum der Wissenschaft, a leading German science journalism publisher, embarked on a multi-phase journey to optimize its digital subscription model, Spektrum+. Facing the challenge of engaging a broad audience with “deep, heavy, nerdy science content,” and understanding the limitations of resources, the publisher turned to a rigorous, data-driven testing strategy to build a product based on actual user behavior rather than internal assumptions (what a crazy thought, I know!).

At Audiencers’ Festival in Hamburg, Ann-Kristin Ebert, ecommerce Manager at Spektrum, shared their two phases of getting started with segmentation. 

> Spektrum der Wissenschaft, a German science publisher, tested its way into segmentation rather than assuming it. Phase one was testing everything to prove segments behave differently, phase two was testing only where it mattered

> A free trial banner moved conversions far less than a blocking wall, in every group. On the wall itself, a single offer performed worst everywhere while three offers with a highlighted "Best Offer" won

> Switching Facebook referrals from formal "Sie" to informal "Du" nearly doubled click-through. Most segments also preferred shorter copy on the offer page, except print magazine subscribers, who converted better with more detail

> The device finding mattered more than the winning variant. "Unlock article now" beat "Continue reading with Spektrum+" on desktop for both clicks and purchases, but on mobile it lifted clicks and lowered purchases

> With a small team, they work in three to four month OKR cycles and accept the limits. As ecommerce manager Ann-Kristin Ebert puts it, "we can't bake big pretzels with tiny ovens"

Phase 1: “Testing Everything” (test like Darwin was watching!)

In the initial phase, Spektrum adopted an exhaustive testing philosophy, described as “testing as if Darwin was watching”. The goal wasn’t necessarily to find a single winning variation immediately, but to build a comprehensive understanding of how different tests performed across diverse user segments.

Strategy and implementation

Spektrum focused on rapid, lightweight tests at the beginning of the purchase funnel to gain quick-win insights while minimizing cross-team dependencies. They initially targeted user groups they already knew well or could reach directly.

Key learnings from phase 1:

• Free trials: A banner promoting a free trial across all user groups had a significantly smaller impact on conversions compared to blocking walls in any usergroup. This led Spektrum to shift its focus toward testing its “hard paywall”.

• Contextual messaging (Facebook): Testing informal vs. formal language for Facebook referrals revealed that informal messaging (“Du” instead of “Sie”) nearly doubled click-through rates (CTR) for these audiences.

• Paywall design: Spektrum tested walls with one, two, and three offers across the 4 engagement groups defined in Poool’s dynamic paywall dashboard. While a single offer proved least effective across all segments, a three-offer wall with a central “Best Offer” highlight emerged as the strongest performer for the general audience.

• Text density: On the subscription offer page, most segments preferred shorter, concise text. However, a notable exception was print magazine subscribers, who converted better when presented with more detailed information.

Ann-Kristin shared that this first batch of testing proved very helpful for understanding the behavior of different segments, convincing the team that dynamicity is essential, and that they should start adapting to actual user needs, not just team assumptions.

“Evolution is a perfect way for the perfect adaptation for everyone – if you have some million years of time (spoiler: we didn’t).”

Phase 2: “Testing What Matters” (Test as if Marie Kondo could knock on your door at any time)

Recognizing that they lacked the “million years” required for total evolutionary adaptation, Spektrum moved into a more focused phase: “testing what matters”. This phase prioritized high-impact user groups rather than every possible variation for every segment.

Priority segments

Spektrum identified four key segments for prioritized testing:

• Biggest Group: currently “Volatiles” on mobile devices.
• Most Overall Conversions: currently “Volatiles” on desktop devices.
• Best Converting Group: currently newsletter subscribers.
• “Hidden Gems”: High-potential audiences, a segment that’s hard to identify. Ann-Kristin described this as like playing poker! At the moment, they think these audiences are those receiving mailings already

Device-based segmentation

A critical finding in Phase 2 was the difference in behavior between desktop and mobile users. While an “Unlock article now” prompt outperformed “Continue reading with Spektrum+” on desktop (raising both CTR and purchase rates), the same prompt on mobile increased CTR but dropped the purchase rate. It wasn’t so much the variations that were important here, but simply the proof that mobile and desktop users need to be treated differently. 

Operational framework and final lessons

To maintain this rigorous testing loop with a relatively small team, Spektrum implemented several organizational priorities:

1. Alignment through OKRs and RACI: They used three-to-four-month Objective and Key Results (OKR) cycles to define focus and RACI matrices to establish clear accountability for who is responsible, consulted, or informed for every task.
2. Data visualization: Spektrum emphasizes that seeing user segments visualized (e.g., in donut charts) makes it impossible to ignore the importance of the largest and highest-value groups.

3. Pragmatism over perfectionism: The team adopted “Zen mode,” accepting that “we can’t bake big pretzels with tiny ovens”. They focused on what could be accomplished immediately rather than future ideals.

Spektrum concludes that there is no “final version” of their product, only the next iteration, as user behavior and opportunities constantly evolve.

The post Spektrum’s evolution of audience segmentation and testing appeared first on Audiencers.

The Guardian is pretty unique in the US media landscape. Unlike most major players, it’s not owned by a billionaire or conglomerate, it’s owned by The Scott Trust, a mission-driven structure that ensures editorial independence and, crucially, allows the site to remain paywall-free.

Instead of a traditional subscription model, The Guardian relies on voluntary support. This makes their US “End of Year” (EOY) campaign, running from early November, through Giving Tuesday and on to midnight on December 31st, the most critical window in their financial calendar.

> With no paywall, The Guardian relies on voluntary support, making End of Year its most important financial window in the US. The 2025 campaign raised $3.1 million by 31 December, an estimated $8.6 million in lifetime value

> The work happens in the other ten months. New messaging must beat benchmarks during low-stakes periods before it earns a place, and the gains are small: the order of bullet points, the colour of a Support button

> For anonymous search traffic they test non-blocking walls asking for a newsletter signup rather than a donation. That grew the mailing list 66% in three months, creating warm leads for December

> A/B testing is too slow for Giving Tuesday or New Year's Eve. They run multi-armed bandit tests across 8 to 10 variations, with traffic shifting automatically to whatever is winning

> Recurring support went from 51% of the mix in 2023 to 65% in 2025. The reward for committing is a cleaner site, with fundraising modules suppressed for recurring supporters

Why is EOY so huge in the US?

• The cultural “season of giving”: It leverages a peak period of philanthropic behavior in American culture, as nonprofits and mission-driven organizations all fundraise towards an annual New Year’s Eve deadline.
• The revenue bedrock:  For mission-driven organizations like The Guardian, these final weeks often generate a large portion of their annual voluntary support revenue, providing the financial bedrock for the year of reporting ahead.

The post Behind The Guardian’s record-breaking US End of Year campaign appeared first on Audiencers.

According to the 2025 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, digital subscriptions have hit a plateau. Across 20 countries, only 18% of people pay for online news, a figure that has barely budged since last year. So if you feel like you’re hitting a ceiling with your core audience, you aren’t alone.

However, in their latest report on the power of registration, the 2025 FT Strategies and Google News Initiative (GNI) Subscriptions Academy found that the most successful publishers are stoping the “anonymous-to-subscriber” leap and focusing on the “middle ground”: Registration. By converting anonymous visitors into known users through a lightweight value exchange, you aren’t just collecting emails, you’re building the resilience needed for a privacy-first, platform-fragmented market.

The post Building resilience with registration appeared first on Audiencers.

Your subscriptions offers page is a convincer moment – it’s there to sell your product, show its value, and encourage a reader to click through and subscribe.

Of course, this makes it pretty important! Which is why we’ve built a collection of subscription landing pages to be inspired by other publishers around the world, test new ideas and improve conversion rate.

Click on the image to enlarge and swipe through the examples.

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