Engage and retain subscribers from the moment they click pay with an on-site onboarding journey, inspired by some of the leading publishers in the business.

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

In need of some best practices to accompany these benchmarks? Check this article out.

The post Subscriber onboarding journey benchmarks appeared first on Audiencers.

The first moments post-conversion, when the subscriber is still in the transactional mode, are vital for retention.

It’s the moment to:

• Deliver immediate value
• Capture key data points
• Educate subscribers on what they now have access to
• Set expectations
• And, importantly, activate subscribers, pushing key engagement products and features that correlate with high retention

With this in mind, Lise Benamou, Sophie Cassam Chenaï and the team at Le Parisien have built a new on-site onboarding journey with Poool Engage, leading subscribers through 4 steps to optimize for retention from the moment they click “Confirm payment”.

Le Parisien’s 4-step onboarding journey

First things first, before launching into the classic onboarding journey, it’s essential to reassure your new subscriber.

Le Parisien uses this moment to confirm that the transaction has gone through and is associated to X email address.

Step 1 – newsletter sign up

Incase you need reminding, newsletters are an important engagement-driver, allowing for habit-forming around your content and increased return visits.

• At El Confidencial, readers who are registered for a newsletter have a 15% greater chance of renewing their subscription
• For La Vanguardia, churn is reduced by 50% when a subscriber is signed up to the newsletter
• Whilst at Financial Times, research has proven that 18% of engaged subscribers would be disengaged if it wasn’t for the newsletters

In fact, according to a FT Strategies poll, newsletters the most effective product by far with 2 in 3 publishers choosing them as a key habit forming feature.

Promoting some of their most popular newsletters was therefore the most valuable first step for Le Parisien when building this onboarding experience.

What we love in particular: readers can subscribe directly on this page, in a single click, scrolling through the newsletters on the right. Once subscribed, or if they’re already subscribed to a newsletter, the CTA button changes to blue.

Recommendations:

• Highlighting the most important word in the main text (here, newsletters) supports each comprehension
• Communicate to users the number of steps in this onboarding journey. This helps to reduce frustration and shows the time-to-value (i.e. that it won’t be long until they have full access to your subscription product).
• For most publishers, these newsletter ‘cards’ include an image, heading, short description and the periodicity (“Every weekday at 7am”)

Step 2 – download the app

Apps are essential for high engagement (including time spent and frequency of visits) and retention rates, as proven by the PugPig State of Mobile Publishing Market Report 2024.

At The Atlantic, for example, subscribers who use the app have a more engaged “reader state” than those who don’t, meaning they were coming back and using the product more frequently than others. They are also more likely to renew than subscribers who do not use the app.

However, app adoption is often lower than other products (as The Atlantic found) so integrating promotion of the app in onboarding journeys is therefore very valuable.

To activate app download, some publishers present a QR code, like Aftenposten:

However, Le Parisien asks for a subscriber’s phone number to be able to send a link to download the app, a great way to collect another data point whilst delivering value simultaneously (i.e. a value exchange!).

Recommendations:

• Offer a “Skip this step” link (“Passer cette étape”)
• As always, images and highlighting important parts of the text support comprehension
• If a subscriber skips this step, work cross channel to promote in other ways – on-site post-onboarding, via email, WhatsApp, phone… – considering the type of message and when you’re sending it

For instance, L’Équipe shows subscribers a bottom-banner with Poool Engage on mobile if they haven’t yet logged in on the app.

The Telegraph sends a dedicated email 10 days after subscribing:

Whilst The Economist includes a page on this topic in their printed onboarding pack:

Step 3 – data collection

Given that the payment has already been made and subscription confirmed, this is a great moment to collect data without causing too much friction.

Le Parisien asks for name, postal address and phone number, but any data that has already been collected (here, first and last name), including phone number from step 2, is pre-filled.

Recommendations:

• Don’t ask for anything you don’t need! The key to data collection is to balance your needs / what’s valuable to you, and frustration
• Ideally you should explain why you need each data point – ITVX (TV replay platform) in the UK does a great job at this

> Find more onboarding benchmarks and best practices in The Audiencers’ Collections

Congratulations to Lise Benamou, Sophie Cassam and the team for this launch!

If you’re interested in doing something similar, get in touch with the Poool team.

The post Le Parisien launches on-site onboarding journey for new subscribers appeared first on Audiencers.

This is an extract of an article published in Tom Burrell’s Retention Blueprint Newsletter. The Retention Blueprint' is a free, retention-focused digest delivered straight to your inbox every Friday, providing you with the insights you need to drive retention-led growth.

In Subscription Businesses, Retention Is Crucial to Growth

The post Moments of truth: retention essentials for publishers appeared first on Audiencers.

This article provides recommendations on which steps to include in your onboarding journey to effectively engage and retain subscribers. Scroll to the bottom for benchmarks of on-site onboarding journeys from leading publishing brands (a list we're continuously adding to!)

Increasing retention rates has been a key focus for subscription businesses in recent years, particularly as it’s now widely recognized that retention is more valuable to your business, and less costly, than acquisition.

The post Publisher onboarding journeys: benchmarking and best practices appeared first on Audiencers.

In June, we organized a subscription speed-dating workshop in London. Speed-dating you said? Yes: a new kind of workshop aimed at facilitating knowledge-sharing among participants while... having fun.

The workshop took place in the impressive In Digital offices in Covent Garden with 20 publishing professionals specialized in digital subscription. The atmosphere at the event was absolutely amazing: the sun shining, a beautiful terrace, everyone open to sharing their challenges, wins and failures, plus expertise from the Poool, In Digital and Aptitude teams who helped run the day.

The plan was to split into 4 groups, consisting of 5 participants and 1 facilitator, with each group focusing on one stage of the subscription funnel:

1. Soft conversion steps
2. Dynamic user journeys
3. Onboarding of new members/subscribers
4. Long-term retention

During each 15-minute session, the group moderators prompted participants to discuss this stage in the funnel, their ongoing projects, any obstacles they were facing, and what strategies were proving successful (or not).

When the time was over, we blew the whistle to change tables, and each group had to move on to the next stage.

Today, let’s dive into step 3: Onboarding new members and subscribers

Good marketers let things develop. They build relationships, one step at a time, and then ask themselves, ‘Is this going anywhere?’ Their data tells them the answer, and they act on it”. 

This sentence, taken from Neil Hoyne’s book Converted, couldn’t be more true about onboarding tips and tactics.

A properly onboarded subscriber has:

• Gained short-term value from the converting article, feature, or benefit
• Understood what value the ongoing subscription will provide

Consideration for your definition

• What are the key value milestones for subscribers?
• What data do we have or need to identify these milestones?

The Audiencers’ strategies to ace onboarding

Step 0: Define the actions you want your new client to achieve

Of course, you’re not doing this just for fun. We know that members/subscribers with the highest equipment rate are the most loyal.

The post [Workshop recap] Strategies from The Audiencers to ace subscriber onboarding appeared first on Audiencers.

The context

Educating subscribers about their entitlements is critical for successful onboarding. One effective method is to send subscribers a targeted email welcome series. However, inboxes are becoming more crowded and email engagement such as click and open rates are declining. Additionally, the average subscriber at The Economist is older and affluent, so we saw an opportunity to test sending a physical welcome pack—opening an additional channel and creating a premium and tangible experience. 

The post Stand out with an onboarding pack: How The Economist increased new subscriber engagement by 3.5% appeared first on Audiencers.

100 days. During this time, you have to convince new users that your subscription is worthwhile for them.

One of the latest guests on my Subscribe Now podcast has been thinking for years about how to best use this time to build trust and routines.

Alban Mazrekaj is the Lead Product Manager at NZZ, responsible for the ‘Discover’ mission, i.e. the part of the subscription journey from the first contact with the brand, through registration and onboarding, which should then lead to subscription.

In the podcast, he reveals which actions have the greatest effect on propensity to subscribe and the role that personalization algorithms play in this.

The post NZZ: How do you inspire people in the first 100 days? appeared first on Audiencers.

Anjali Iyer is Head of Lifecycle Marketing at The Washington Post with over 15 years of deep knowledge in customer experience, customer insights, and strategy.

The Washington Post acknowledges the significance of a personalized onboarding journey for its subscribers, which has proven to result in higher engagement, improved retention rates, and ultimately, an enhanced customer lifetime value (CLV). We understand the criticality of establishing a strong relationship and making a positive first impression during the initial stages of a subscriber’s journey.

The post Unlocking Customer Lifetime Value: The Power of Personalized Subscriber Onboarding at The Washington Post appeared first on Audiencers.

You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #12, sent out on April 19th, 2023.  To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

In The Audiencers’ Newsletter #12:

• Ask the experts: what are the most valuable engagement metrics to measure in a subscription model?
• Paywalled content: rethinking your premium icons
• New benchmarking article: how 3 successful British publishers are onboarding subscribers
• Recommendations to add to your reading list: from The Audiencers & friends

Ask the experts: what are the most valuable engagement metrics to measure in a subscription model?

After the success of our first “Ask the expert” on newsletters, we’re back with another on how best to measure engagement.

Whilst there’s no shortage of engagement data available, many are struggling to prioritize metrics, understanding which are actually valuable to track with the end goal being to increase reader revenue. So, what KPIs do the experts recommend tracking?…

According to Katja Fleischmann, product manager at dpa infocom, and Dr. Ole Martin, data scientist at Schickler consultancy, media time is the most important – an easy to understand metric that looks at how much time a user gives you, something that has proven to predict conversion and churn very well. 

“The conversion probability increases by 130 times if the media time increases by 10 minutes per week. The churn probability is halved if the media time increases by 10 minutes per week”

Steve Price, digital publishing consultant, told me that, ultimately, it’s about linking engagement to the pounds, dollars and euros.

To do this, he recommends putting LTV (lifetime value) as your north star KPI, analyzing your high-value subscribers & asking yourself what ‘type’ of engagement correlates with high retention rates. 

The key: instead of starting with engagement, turn to look at your most loyal subscribers to discover what engagement actions are linked to highly valuable users.

Think of subscription as a bucket with holes. Users flow through but engagement fills the holes, keeping people in the bucket. Engagement is therefore a tool to persuade someone to convert and stay, rather than the goal in itself.

For Katja Trost, Teamlead Customer Retention at Die Presse, the most important metric for subscriber growth is churn rate:

There is no doubt that acquiring a new subscriber is much more expensive than retaining an existing one.”

"The key to growth is subscriber retention: spending time, money and energy on growth without fixing retention is like sailing a boat with holes in the bottom! During our off-boarding process we try to win back lost subscribers with an attractive offer and by triggering FOMO. In this context, the return rate is a significant metric.  Nonetheless, it is most important to prevent churn in the first place. One approach to achieve this is to identify customers who are likely to churn or show low engagement. In such cases, we attempt to revive the so-called “zombie” users, who have not interacted with us for a considerable period of time, by implementing appropriate strategies.”

> Hear from other experts in the full article on The Audiencers.

Paywalls: rethink your premium icons

“As publishers either implement or revisit their paywalls, a question always arises: How should we label or illustrate our premium content?

Star, diamond, padlock, or nothing… publishers are trying out different icons to mark their paywalled content as premium. But what if we’re looking at this wrong? 

Dagens Nyheter are doing something clever. They do have a label on premium content – but you have to be logged in as a paying subscriber to see it:

Instead of telling readers what premium content they don’t have access to by not subscribing, some publishers are instead telling the premium users what premium content they have access to and which the free visitors don’t.

It makes sense, because you play your website, its architecture and your content to its strengths.

Telling the recipients of your newsletter or people scrolling your front page that a given article is only for paying subscribers might be a nice service to the readers and spare some of them a visit to a site where they don’t have access.

But, arguably, it isn’t going to get you a lot of new subscribers.

So, stop excusing for yourself and your content and think about how you want to market your premium content on your website and channels.

> Find the full article here

New benchmarking article

We did the research, so you don’t have to!

 How 3 successful British publishers are onboarding subscribers. 

According to Press Gazette’s list, The Times & Sunday Times (no.13), The Telegraph (no.16) and The Economist (no.4) are amongst the best news brands in the world at converting users into subscribers.

But, as we know all too well since the subscriber-boom during the pandemic, converting is one this, retaining is a whole other story. One that begins from the moment a user clicks ‘pay’. 

So, how are these successful publishers leading their new subscribers through an onboarding journey that seeks to activate key engagement features and increase LTV? 

> Our latest benchmarking article dives in

In-house content to read…

• 2023, the year of the registration wall: How to succeed in your registration strategy
• For any new subscribers, check out our previous newsletter editions, such as this one on building a successful product with The Washington Post, A/B testing with Netflix & why we updated our registration wall
• Argentina’s biggest publisher bets on newsletters, and the characteristics that make it a success 

…and recommendations from elsewhere

• LADbible’s formula for unlocking young audiences: mastery of social platforms and a deep understanding of their interests
• Personalized subscriber onboarding results in higher engagement, retention for Washington Post
• Practical AI for local media report, sponsored by United Robots who did a little summary:

Stavanger Aftenblad’s Elin Stueland explains why their automated reporting on junior football has led to more journalists being hired.

PA Media’s Joseph Hook, editor of the RADARAI service, talks about how they dig into national data sets to create local stories.

NTM’s Jens Pettersson shares how robots reporting on basic stuff can surface bigger stories for journalists to dig into.

NRC’s Luuk Willekens explains how newsletters which include content personalized on users’ reading history, drive engagement.

McClatchy’s Cynthia DuBose reveals that they now estimate that two thirds of their AI real estate content readers are first time visitors, driving audience growth for the group.

The post #12. How 3 successful publishers are onboarding subscribers appeared first on Audiencers.

Getting users to buy into your subscription product is great, but sustainable growth isn’t achievable until you master retention, something that starts from the moment a reader finishes the conversion process. It’s at this point that a well-researched, continuously-tested onboarding journey, in the minutes, hours and weeks following subscription, is essential.

Not only is this journey about welcoming your new subscriber and making them feel valued, but about driving customer value, making sure they understand and make use of the potential value offered by your product. I.e. ensuring a high Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).

To achieve this, the first step is to identify which actions separate retained customers from lost ones – “aha moments” as many tech companies have called it following Facebook’s famous “aha moment” of getting new users to add 7 friends in 10 days.

For digital publishers, these “aha moments” are often linked to newsletter sign up, app downloads, high frequency of visits to the website, activation of key ‘subscriber-only’ features, activating push notifications, etc. But, of course, this ultimately depends on the publisher’s unique context. Research, testing & learning is needed to find the highest value “moments” that increase CLTV.

To support you in building the optimal onboarding journey, both on and off site, we’ve analyzed 3 successful British digital publishers to share their chosen “aha moments” and inspire your own efforts:

The Economist

The Telegraph

The Times & Sunday Times

General best practices that are common across the 3 examples:

• Communicate how many onboarding steps the user will be led through (“step 1 out of 3”)
• The trend here seems to be 3 steps on-site, followed by some guidance on how to navigate the new subscriber’s account space and an activation experience consisting of a collection of emails spread out across the following days and weeks
• The possibility to “Skip this step“. Leaving the user the freedom to choose whether to activate the onboarding step or not is essential
• “Newsletter sign up” step. Single-click subscription, variety of newsletter options (which not only increase engagement by allowing the user to select the editions that match their interest but also proves the value of your subscription product), value proposition for each edition, highlight when a reader will receive it (daily, weekly, etc)
• “App download” step. Clearly outline why the user should activate this step (what value do they gain?), consider how you can make this step simple for the subscriber – here we see examples of a QR code or being texted the link (although maybe phone number isn’t a data point that users are too willing to give away)
• Studying these onboarding journeys, it’s clear that a key ‘aha moment’ for high retention includes a subscriber downloading the app & signing up to newsletters. A lot of focus has been placed on this across the 3 examples.
• Consider the experience on desktop vs mobile. The app download step on The Times highlights this as the QR code is very useful if a reader is on desktop, but redundant if they’re already on their phone. Hence the need for the links too

• “Proof of concept” step: your chance to show and deliver the unique value that you offer in your subscription product

As Katja Trost, Teamlead Customer Retention at Die Presse recently said to me, “In the end it’s similar to building a long lasting relationship in real life. It’s about building trust, getting to know each other better, developing common habits and valuing each other.”

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