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.

I’ve been there, I’ve built those pages too.

So I ran an experiment whilst working on this article.

I asked Claude to design a “classic subscription landing page” for a publisher, just to see what it would come up with. Here’s what it gave me:

Three columns, a “MOST CHOSEN” label in the middle, Digital / All Access / Patron (whatever that means), monthly prices, bullet lists of features. Claude didn’t really invent anything here, it just reproduced what it had learned from crawling the entire web, which tells you something about how standardized the media pricing pages are.

What is interesting is that it means that there is so much potential for publishers.
Why? Because when we studied 100 subscription businesses, we noticed that the best performers don’t really do this anymore.

Forget “acquisition vs retention”, think micro-conversions

Before we get into the pricing side of things, we need to revisit something we talked about in episode 3: 

When it comes to converting users into subscribers, the classic “attract → convert → retain” model doesn’t really hold up when you look at the best performers. Their customer journey is actually a series of micro-conversions, each one with its own goal and each one unlocking the next. The first micro-conversion might just be creating an account, then comes a cheap first subscription, then an upsell, then a bundle, then another upsell, and it goes on from there. It’s a long series of small steps that never really ends.

This matters for pricing, because the “acquisition price” and the “retention price” aren’t really two different things. They’re just two points in a longer sequence, each one adapted to what you know about the user at that specific moment.

I borrowed a sentence from INMA that captures this well: “Acquire with one simple offer, retain with many.” 

In our micro-conversion language, what this really means is one offer at a time, always.

And tailored to the user needs and interest (tailored to what you learn at each micro-conversions).

What are the best performers doing? One or many offers?

When you go through the first paid conversion step of Spotify, Headspace, Apple Music or most of the top subscription businesses we looked at, the pattern is pretty consistent. You see one offer clearly highlighted, sometimes with a secondary option tucked next to it, but always with a hierarchy that makes the decision essentially binary: you take it, or you don’t.

Spotify, for instance, still pushes “Premium, 1 month free” as the primary entry point on most of their pages. The other plans (Student, Duo, Family) are technically available somewhere, but they’re not what you see first: you only find them if you scroll or click around a bit.

Apple does this almost perfectly, I think. Whether it’s Apple Music, Apple TV+, or Apple One, the page pushes one offer prominently (usually the standard individual plan with a free trial), while the rest is deliberately tucked behind a small “See all plans” link. The whole layout is engineered around a single decision, and the other options only really exist for people who go looking for them.

And if you look at the NYT, they are doing it too. Depending on the context you’re in (and I imagine the profile you have) they push one offer (the same offer) with different arguments and design. Then if you scroll down you can find the print offers, or the cooking offer

And this connects to something we already covered in episode 3, which applies just as much to pricing as it does to the rest of the journey: the goal isn’t really to make money at this moment. It’s to get the user inside the product long enough to start building a habit. That’s why these first offers tend to be cheap, sometimes free (trial), and almost always presented as one simple choice. At this step of the journey, the job is to get the user through the door, not to explain the full menu of everything your product can do.

The next micro-conversions: same logic, different offers

So where do all the other offers actually show up?

They show up later in the journey, once the user has made that first paid conversion, once they’ve spent enough time inside the product to see its value, and once you know something concrete about how they actually use it.

The New York Times is probably the clearest example of this playing out at scale. At their 2022 Investor Day, they explicitly framed their growth model as: push one offer, then upsell, then bundle, with the conclusion that ARPU is the end game, not conversion. That single sentence captures most of what we observed across the 100 businesses. With the NYT, you get the basic subscription first, and over the following months and years they progressively introduce you to Games, Cooking, The Athletic, Wirecutter, each one a potential upsell or bundle presented when the data suggests you might actually care about it.

Each of these is a different price and a different offer, but you never actually see them all at once on the same page. You see the one that fits where you are in your life right now.

Across all examples we’ve seen (Apple, Spotify, + 97 others), the underlying logic is the same: each micro-conversion comes with its own offer, and the complexity of the catalog lives in the sequence of steps rather than crammed onto a single landing page.

Ideal world vs real world: the “Jeune Afrique middle ground”

In an ideal world, you’d build this entire journey end to end. Every user would get their own path, and every offer would be personalized based on what they read, how often they visit, which device they use, and what they’ve already subscribed to. At any given moment, the user would see exactly one offer, and it would always be the right one for where they are in their relationship with your product.

(I would love to live in an ideal world, everything seems always so perfect)

The problem is that building this kind of journey is genuinely hard. Most publishers don’t have the tech stack, the data infrastructure, or the resources to orchestrate dozens of personalized micro-conversions in real time, and for most teams it’s still pretty far out of reach.

So there’s an interesting in-between approach worth considering: keep the classic pricing page with its multiple offers, but make that page itself dynamic.

That’s exactly what Jeune Afrique did a couple of years ago (full disclosure: they’re a Poool client). Their situation was pretty specific, because their audience is spread across many different countries, with very different propensities to subscribe, different payment methods, and different engagement patterns. Pushing the same static pricing page to all of those audiences was clearly leaving money on the table.

So in 2024, they rebuilt their offer page around dynamic segmentation, combining two layers of logic: a user engagement score (an RFV calculation based on recency, frequency, and the number of articles read) and a country segmentation (5 groups based on propensity to subscribe, conversion rate, and dominant payment method, including “mobile money” countries where even the currency symbols and the payment icons adapt automatically).

The results speak for themselves: a 30% increase in conversion on the dynamic paywall, and a doubled conversion rate on the dynamic subscription offer page.

And there’s one detail from this story that I find particularly telling. When they started, the team had assumed that low-cost offers would work best for “mobile money” countries, because lower purchasing power should mean lower prices, right? But after running the tests, they actually discovered that these audiences preferred longer-term annual offers, contrary to assumptions. That kind of counterintuitive insight is pretty much impossible to uncover when you’re serving the same page to everyone.

It’s obviously not the fully personalized journey we described earlier, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction compared to pushing the same static pricing page to every visitor regardless of who they are or where they come from.

What you can take away from this (and test tomorrow)

Do the Claude test. Ask Claude (or any other LLM) to design a classic subscription pricing page for a publisher, and compare the result with your own. If they look suspiciously similar, that’s a signal worth sitting with. Not a judgment, just a signal. The classic three-column model became the default for a reason, and it’s also become increasingly stale and predictable.

Think in micro-conversions rather than in acquisition vs retention. Next time you design a pricing step, ask yourself which single offer fits this exact moment of the user’s journey, given what you already know about them. The question isn’t really “what are all of our plans?”, it’s “what’s the right offer to show right now?”.

If you can’t build a fully personalized journey end to end, at least make your offer page dynamic. Jeune Afrique’s approach is a solid middle ground, with different offers for different segments based on engagement and profile. Doubling conversion on the offer page is really not a marginal win, and it’s within reach even if you haven’t rebuilt your entire customer journey yet.

And keep in mind what the NYT shared at their 2022 Investor Day (and still true): “ARPU is the end game, not conversion.” The first paid conversion is just the starting point. The real game is growing the user’s lifetime value over many small, well-timed steps.

Next week, episode 5: what happens after the first paid conversion, and why the first 100 days are basically your only window to shape the user’s long-term relationship with your product. Or I should say, almost the only window.

PS: After writing this article, I went back to Claude and asked it to redesign the landing page based on what we just discussed (one offer, micro-conversion logic, the whole thing). Here’s what it came up with. A bit more interesting than the first version, I’d say.

The post The subscription pricing page we’ve all built at least once: episode 4 appeared first on Audiencers.

As media organizations shift from volume-based traffic to value-based reader revenue models, the challenge often lies in bridging the gap between an anonymous click and a loyal subscriber. Sadly, this isn’t like Married at First Sight… this relationship won’t be built in a day, nor with a paywall alone. It takes time, energy and a variety of formats to develop. 

Milenio, one of Mexico’s most influential news groups, has well understood this. Their answer wasn’t found in aggressive paywall tactics, but in cultivating a highly engaged community within its own ecosystem.

We spoke with Chief Reader Revenue Officer Juan Manuel Nava Madrazo about how, by strategically pivoting toward conversational tools and gamified loyalty, Milenio has successfully tripled user time-on-site and established a sustainable pipeline for its January 2026 paywall launch.

Moving beyond “social media friction”

For years, Milenio relied on Facebook for its comment sections. However, this led to audience leakage, where users were pulled away to external social platforms, and a double login friction that stifled local community growth. Worse, the lack of moderation created a toxic environment that excluded younger audiences and alienated quality readers.

“We needed to centralize data and convert anonymous readers into loyal registered users, all within our own ecosystem,” 

To reclaim its audience, Milenio replaced its social media plugin with a proprietary community engine, Logora, focused on three pillars: 

• Unified login (SSO): Eliminating friction by integrating the comment system directly with Milenio’s registration.

• Smart hybrid moderation (AI+Human): A robust moderation that drastically reduces toxicity and ensures a civil debate.
• Local identity: Total customization, including avatars specifically designed to reflect Mexican culture (e.g., Frida Kahlo), strengthening the sense of belonging.

• New editorial product (“Realidades”): Creation of a new video-debate section that fosters deep discussions on everyday life topics (Mexican lifestyle and social topics).

This ownership of the community, with attention to details that help encourage participation, is paying off across the board: 

1. Community growth

• Volume: +150% in daily comments in the first year and an additional +100% in the second year
• Engagement: Over 120,000 comments accumulated with 80–85% approval rate (vs. 60% previously) and 120,000 interactions (likes/votes)
• Quality: Users went from leaving emojis or short phrases to writing reasoned paragraphs and reading others’ opinions

2. Retention and time spent

• All Milenio users: 1 minute 48 seconds
• Registered users (non-commenting): 2 minutes 20 seconds
• Registered users using commenting: 4 minutes 40 seconds (+200% vs. average)

3. Conversion driver for registration

• 10-11% of new daily registrations come directly from the comments widget
• Between 2,000 and 2,500 new users register each month to participate in comments
• Commenting is the 4th most important registration source for the media outlet, surpassing many content sections

The new video series “Realidades” shows:

• +20% higher participation
• +10% more users writing arguments, not just voting

Gamifying loyalty: the points milenio program

A central component of Milenio’s retention strategy is Puntos Milenio, a loyalty program that rewards high-value behaviors with redeemable points.

To bring Puntos Milenio to life, 3 key elements were needed:

• The talent of the Milenio team (Development, Business, Data, etc.).
• External platforms that understood their needs
• Trust in the project

With these three elements, they had to integrate and adapt different technologies so they could coexist and function as a single system. In addition, it was essential that operations and configuration were as simple and scalable as possible.

The end user was always the focus: “someone for whom we aimed to create an easy, hassle-free experience and who clearly understands the value of staying informed through reliable journalism”.

Users aren’t aware of how they earn points in detail, to avoid cheating of the system, but internally these are built up by:

• Engaging with content: commenting, reading multiple articles, or reaching specific scroll depth targets
• Watching videos (encouraging long-form consumption)
• Referrals: sharing articles to social platforms (to bring in new potential registrants)

Although the project is still in a maturation phase, the initial results already show strong signs of impact:

• More than 2,500 users are currently participating in the program
• They have generated more than 1 Million points, mainly by reading news, playing EntrenaMentes, listening to podcasts, watching videos, and commenting on content

These points can be exchanged for tangible rewards, such as discount coupons for Starbucks, Amazon, and Google Play. Critically, subscribers to Milenio Plus receive double points for their activities, adding a layer of perceived value to the subscription itself.

Community “Lovers” as a qualified pool for subscription

Registration is widely recognised as a valuable model to launch pre-subscription. It helps to build a qualified, engaged audience of potential future subscribers, as well as providing a testing ground for conversion tactics. Mileno, however, have gone a step further by building a community around registration, ensuring these audiences are engaged enough to convert when faced with a paywall. 

Commenting is placed behind the registration wall, establishing a simple value exchange that builds engagement whilst collecting key data points. 

Using Marfeel’s scoring, Milenio identified commenters as high-value “Lovers” (70 pts vs. 10 pts for casual users). With 50% of registered users classified as lovers, this community is the prime target for the subscription revenue to come in 2026.

The post Owning the community and gamifying loyalty: Inside Milenio’s engagement strategies appeared first on Audiencers.

In Germany, most readers do not pay for news, but a few strategies could change that: at least, that’s the conclusion of the study “Navigating German News: topics, formats and willingness to pay,” published by FT Strategies at the end of 2025.

According to the study, based on a sample of 1,957 participants representative of the German population (49% women, 50% men, and 26% under 35), a clear paradox emerges: while German readers are very attached to traditional sources of information, the majority of them (59%) do not pay for news.

By filtering their relationship to the financing of news, the study distinguishes between subscribers (41%), The On-The-Fencers (29%), and The Maybe-Next-Timers (30%). The 29% representing the On-The-Fencers are the most interesting – they support the idea that media should be funded by its readers, even though they don’t yet pay. 

Mapping topics based on their value/revenue

TLDR: The number of page views doesn’t necessarily equate to conversions, and audiences are less inclined to pay for certain types of content.

Despite the fact that the most viewed topics are not necessarily those that interest subscribers the most, such as politics or current affairs, there is still a willingness to pay. To better identify this, the study maps the popularity of topics against the revenue they can generate.

We can see 4 categories emerge that might inform content & product strategies:

• Paid-for-niche: Topics that are low popularity/high willingness to pay which signals a B2B opportunity or a niche vertical for engaged audiences 
• Experimental niche: Topics that are low popularity/low willingness to pay which signals high commodification of this type of news. Highly differentiated coverage is the only way to cut through the noise
• Paid-for-mass market: Topics that are high popularity/high willingness to pay signalling an obvious first-mover advantage where brands can reap benefits for becoming known to be the go-to source
• Experimental mass market: Topics that are high popularity/low willingness to pay signalling their importance as ‘service journalism’ stories to put in-front of the paywall

Contrary to assumptions, the most viewed topics are not necessarily those that generate the most subscriptions: topics related to politics are those that interest participants the most (55%), but few of them (14%) are willing to pay to view them.

On the other hand, certain mainstream topics, which are more likely to be funded by readers, should likely be blocked by paywalls to encourage conversion. For example, 21% of participants are willing to pay for sports and 16% for climate-related topics.

The same is true for niche topics that are particularly likely to attract subscriptions, such as fashion and beauty (23%) and finance (16%).

Finding the right format

TLDR: Short videos, breaking news and in-depth text stories are the preferred formats, but younger generations shift towards audio & long video content, and the format should ultimately be adapted to the content itself.

In addition, media outlets wishing to generate subscriptions for this content must adapt to the formats favored by their audiences, which differ according to age: the majority of participants prefer long-form written content (81%, rising to 84% among subscribers), while those under 35 prefer long videos (76%) and podcasts (78%). 

Some German media outlets have already grown their audience by adapting to these habits:

• Bild, which offered 12-15% of its content behind paywalls in early 2024, has developed long-form content reserved for subscribers and has become the German newspaper with the most subscribers (over 700,000).
• Die Zeit has developed 27 podcasts, some of which are accessible with a specific podcast subscription, including “Was Jetz?” (What now?) and “Rhonzeimer,” which are among the most listened to podcasts in the country.

It is by adapting the format to the subject matter that media outlets can distinguish themselves and convert the undecided. 

Certain uses stand out:

• The short format is valued for topics related to business, finance, fashion, beauty, and trends.
• The long format is more suited to topics related to science, nature, technology, and sports.
• Visual storytelling and data visualization make topics related to science, nature, and technology more concrete.

In terms of emerging formats and content opportunities, participants are most interested in solution-based, positive stories, while video documentaries offer a potential new way to engage audiences. 

Balancing AI and the human touch

TDLR: AI provides an immediately adapted user experience, but maintaining the human element through contact with journalists can help build subscriber loyalty.

A large proportion of participants would like to see AI developed to improve the user experience. In addition to the ability to summarize and translate, other more interactive features stand out, such as searching for and selecting the most relevant articles (44% of subscribers and on-the-fencers) and the question-and-answer function (37% of young people and 31% of subscribers). 

However, the study also suggests the importance of maintaining a human connection with journalists for discussion or moderation, as some media outlets have implemented in recent years:

• Der Spiegel has set up a discussion tool reserved for subscribers, in which journalists sort, select, and sometimes publish certain comments in the print edition.
• After Welt journalists increased the number of responses to user comments under their articles, the number of departures due to a lack of “community” decreased between 2022 and 2023.

Conclusion

To convert readers into subscribers, German media outlets should therefore:

• Optimize their paywall strategy, differentiating between the most viewed topics and those that generate the most subscriptions.
• Provide information in different formats depending on the topic, giving subscribers the choice between long-form written articles, short podcasts, and long videos on platforms.
• Create a strong user experience by combining artificial intelligence with contact with editorial journalists.

The post Navigating subscriptions in Germany: topics, formats and willingness to pay appeared first on Audiencers.

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

This is the third in a 6-part series where I share what I learned from studying 100 subscription business models across 15+ industries. 
If you haven't read the first one yet, start here. 
And Episode 2, focused on product and media, is here.

What we expected to find vs. what we actually found

When we started building our subscription moodboard, we structured our analysis around 4 areas: product, conversion, offers & pricing, and retention.

Episode 2 covered the product (and was focused solely on media brands).
This one covers conversion, and we’re back to cross-industry.

For the past 10 years, whether in e-commerce, Saas or media, I’ve seen the same customer journey model everywhere. Attract → convert → retain. 

A linear, finite sequence. And that’s what we expected to analyze in this series: how the best subscription businesses optimize the 3 steps in this sequence.

What we found was fundamentally different.

When we looked at the NYT, Figma, Miro, Calm, Masterclass (and 95 others), we noticed that conversion almost never happens in one step. It happens through micro-conversions, each with its own objective. And more importantly, even conversion itself seems secondary. The real priority for those companies is to create value for their user as a first goal. To build engagement. To make the product feel indispensable before asking for money.

We saw this pattern everywhere.

The journey we observed doesn’t look like a line. It looks like a loop. 

Attract → Convert at level 0 (ex: account) → Onboarding & discovery → Engage → Convert at level 1 (trial or cheap offer) → Onboarding & discovery → Engage deeper → Convert at level 2 (full price, bundle)… and it keeps going.

One step, one job. And for some, it’s almost a religion

The critical principle behind this model: each step has one single goal.
Not two. Not three. One.

Let me show you what that looks like in practice.

Look at the homepage of the New York Times (I mean, when I looked at it when building the moodboard). Arguably the biggest digital newspaper in the world. The only action button in the top right corner says “LOG IN.” Not “Subscribe.” Not “Try for $1/week.” Log in. Because at this stage, the goal is registration, not subscription.

And this discipline is consistent everywhere. In their registration flow: zero* subscription CTAs. In their onboarding: they ask which areas of The Times you want to explore, they recommend newsletters, they push the app download. Zero subscription CTA. The only goal is to understand who you are and start personalizing.

This sounds obvious when you write it down. But look at most media registration walls: they almost always push a subscription offer at the same time. Most onboarding flows try to sell and educate simultaneously. Same for the homepage, if you spend more than 20 seconds there you will probably be asked to do 5 different things in one session (register, signup for newsletter, subscribe, …)

*if you look closely, you’ll find spot where you can see subscription CTA, but you have to look closely

Not just media: Figma, Miro, Calm, Masterclass do the same

This isn’t a media-only pattern. That’s the whole point of this episode.

Figma: $12.5B company.
Homepage: “Sign up for free.” You click, you give your email. 

Then the onboarding starts: What’s your name? How do you plan to use Figma? What do you do for work? Where do you work? Have you used Figma before? What do you want to make first?

Six questions before you see anything about pricing. And when the plan page finally appears, it includes a free Starter option, so even the pricing step isn’t a hard sell.
Look at the wording: “Which plan would you like”? 

(Image: Figma onboarding flow – from homepage to personalized workspace, 8 steps)

What Figma adds to the picture (that the NYT doesn’t show as clearly) is that the product itself adapts in real-time during the onboarding. On the right side of the screen, you see your workspace evolving with each answer. It’s not a form. It’s a first preview of the value you’re about to get (to make you stay onboard).

Miro: 600M€+ in revenue
They push this even further on the personalization side.
Email → role → needs → team size → personalized interface → guided tour.
The subscription offer only shows up when you try to access a paid feature. At a moment when you already understand the value. Not before.

Calm goes somewhere else entirely. Before any trial or payment, they ask 10+ questions. Not about your job or your team. About your feelings. What can we help you with? How have you been feeling? What’s your biggest source of stress? They build a custom experience around your emotional state before asking for anything. For a meditation app, I found that pretty remarkable.

And Masterclass adds another layer: even from a paid Google ad (so, a user they’re paying to acquire), they don’t send you to a checkout page. They ask about your interests, build a personalized path of 36 classes (“Building your custom results…” appears on screen), and only then do they present the offer. They’re willing to add friction to a paid acquisition channel because they want to get you hooked first – making money is a second goal.

The cheap first offer: same goal, different method

Not every company goes through registration first. Some skip straight to a paid offer.
But when they do, the logic is the same: the goal isn’t to make money. It’s to get the user inside the product.

The NYT at $1/week. Peloton at $2.49/month. Washington Post, The Pioneer. These prices aren’t designed to generate meaningful revenue. They’re designed to let the user experience the product long enough to build a habit. The bet is that over 6 months, a year, 18 months, through bundles, new products, and price increases, the average revenue per user will grow significantly.

That’s why some media companies offer subscriptions at $20/year or even less. It sounds crazy if you think about it as revenue. It makes total sense if you think about it as product discovery with long term revenue as a goal.

And some companies stack both approaches. The NYT does registration first (zero subscription CTA), THEN aggressive trial pricing. They sequence the micro-conversions. As their own data shows, registration alone increases subscription conversion by more than 40%.

Others go with pure free trials: 7, 14, or 30 days. Headspace, Amazon Prime, Walmart+, Audible. Same logic: get the user inside long enough to build a habit. Free trials work especially well for products with daily usage. For the media industry, it depends on consumption patterns. A daily news publisher, maybe. A B2B publication or a monthly magazine? A 7-day trial probably isn’t enough to build anything valuable.

Let’s be honest, everything here sounds simple but it’s reaaaaaaally hard to do.
Complexity here is not about revenue tactics, but it stands in alignment within the organization.
You need a strong alignment between vision, long term goals (shared by all teams) and operations (plus a huge capacity to resist short term revenue, which is hard nowadays).

What you can take away from this (and test tomorrow)

Count the goals per step in your current journey. If any step tries to do two things at once (like a registration wall that also pushes a subscription CTA), that’s the first thing to fix. One step, one job.

Consider adding a “level 0” conversion before the paid one. A registration step gives you data, personalization, and engagement. The NYT showed that this alone increases conversion rates to subscription by more than 40%. That’s exactly why Poool makes it easy to set up and test registration modules (registration walls, onboarding sequences) and micro-conversions without dev, putting the data and engagement to use further down the funnel.

Rethink your first paid offer. The goal isn’t revenue on day 1. It’s getting the user inside long enough to build a habit. If Nieman Lab’s research is right and habit formation drops off after 100 days, design the duration around that.

Go sign up for Figma, Calm, or Masterclass. Not to use the product. To observe the journey. Take screenshots. I promise you’ll come back with ideas. (We did, and that’s how this whole series started.)

Next week, episode 4: offers and pricing. Why do the best performers acquire with one simple offer and upsell/retain with many. And why a single price means you’re designing for an “average user” who doesn’t exist.

The post Why the best subscription businesses don’t try to sell on day 1: episode 3 appeared first on Audiencers.

One of Europe’s largest publishers is bundling hiking apps, e-books and masterclasses alongside its journalism. Matthijs van de Peppel, Group B2C Strategy Director at Mediahuis, explains the strategy — and what the data is showing.

TL;DR
-> Mediahuis has built an 'essential subscription' bundling journalism with hiking apps, e-books, masterclasses and the New York Times

-> The bundle is structured around three layers — Inform, Guide and Enable — tailored by brand rather than by individual subscriber

-> Its 777 strategy aims for 70% of operational margins to be from digital by 2030, using the bundle to drive both volume growth and tier migration

-> 170,000 subscribers activated RouteYou; activated users show 26.5% lower churn, and subscribers log in 2.4–3.0 times per month on average

Key lessons: 
-> Stay within one degree of separation from journalism
-> Services that require a bigger conceptual leap tend not to stick

When Mediahuis added RouteYou, a Belgian hiking and cycling app, to more than a million digital subscriptions, it was a signal that something more fundamental was shifting. The Western European publisher, with titles spanning the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and Germany, had been quietly building what it calls the ‘essential subscription’: a bundle that wraps news, practical service content and standalone apps into a single offering. 

The goal is to solve a genuine consumer problem, making a digital subscription valuable enough that subscribers use it daily, not just when news breaks. Journalism remains the core, but the strategy rests on the belief that Mediahuis can offer subscribers more value beyond it.

Around 60% of Mediahuis subscribers are now digital, but operational margins on those subscriptions remain lower than on print. The essential subscription is the mechanism for closing that gap, by making the digital offering more compelling and driving subscribers towards the fuller, higher-priced tier.

The three-layer framework

The essential subscription is built around three layers:

• Inform covers the journalism itself, shifting towards depth and away from commoditised news, including what Mediahuis calls ‘signature journalism’: research-led, context-driven reporting that is genuinely core to each brand and not easily replicated elsewhere. Mediahuis runs ‘signature journalism weeks’ to identify what each title does best, redirect resources accordingly, and is shifting from text-only to audio and video as standard practice.
• Guide covers service journalism — restaurant recommendations and personal finance advice — which digital surfaces far more effectively than print.
• Enable is the newest territory: services that let subscribers act directly on what they have read. RouteYou was the first enabling service added to the bundle in 2023.

For instance, a subscriber reads about a hiking trail and can now open an app and navigate it. They can read a book review and, as part of their subscription, download it; subscribers in the Netherlands and Belgium receive one e-book per month.

“Stay close to your brand. Stay close to your journalism. Because then it makes sense to the subscriber.”

Brand-by-brand, not subscriber-by-subscriber

Rather than personalising the bundle for individual subscribers, Mediahuis has built different bundles for different brands:

• The New York Times partnership sits alongside the premium titles — NRC in the Netherlands, De Standaard in Belgium, and the Luxembourg brands — where an internationally minded readership sees a natural connection.
• E-books are offered more broadly, with selections varying by brand.
• RouteYou has been rolled out for all titles, but is particularly successful in regional and Belgian brands with strong outdoor and weekend-lifestyle content, where a survey of more than 10,000 subscribers had already shown that 24% wanted a hiking and biking app as part of their bundle.

“Different bundles work better for different brands,’ van de Peppel explains. ‘We try to tailor it really around the brand and make those choices which make sense to the brand.“

The RouteYou acquisition

RouteYou is a Belgian company used by more than 15 million outdoor enthusiasts, with its strongest presence in the Netherlands and Belgium. Since the Mediahuis acquisition in 2023, coverage has expanded into the Irish, Luxembourg, and German markets, where the publisher’s titles already have deep roots. It competes in the same space as Strava, but with a distinctly local character and established relationships with regional tourism boards.

Mediahuis’s regional titles had long published hiking and biking content, especially in weekend editions, but the next step was always missing: readers could learn about a trail, but had nowhere to go from there. Now, a QR code in the article links directly to the route in the RouteYou app. ‘It’s a strong connection with the editorial rooms,’ van de Peppel says. “You can really make a direct connection between the content and then going out and doing something with it.’

The acquisition was not conceived purely as a bundle enhancement — Mediahuis bought a standalone business, intending to develop both sides of the business. Since then, investment in a native app and an expanded RouteYou team has driven +98% growth in standalone subscribers in 2025. 

When RouteYou access was extended to over a million Mediahuis subscribers, it immediately dwarfed the app’s existing standalone user base. Those who came through the news bundle were subscribing to journalism; the outdoor features are a welcome addition rather than the draw.

What the numbers show

The activation numbers tell part of the story. The retention numbers tell the more important one. Mediahuis tracks whether subscribers who have activated RouteYou behave differently from those who have not, and they do. 

Over a 12-week period, subscribers who had activated RouteYou were significantly more likely to remain subscribers at the end. For every 100 who had not activated, 4 had churned. For every 100 who had, fewer than 3 had churned. At the scale Mediahuis operates, that difference compounds quickly.

The perception data reinforces this. 

• Among all Mediahuis subscribers, around 52% consider RouteYou a valuable addition. 
• Among those who have actually used it, that figure rises to 82%. 

The gap between the two numbers is the central challenge: the product works, but only once subscribers try it. Getting them to that first experience is where most of the activation effort goes. Mediahuis offered exclusive webinars to help subscribers get started; 12% of readers attended, and 54% of those participants were already Mediahuis readers who engaged with the outdoor content in their titles.

Sustained usage backs up the initial activation picture. Active users log in 2.4 to 3.0 times per month on average, with 15% opening the app at least once a week, numbers that predictably spike in the spring and summer hiking season. In total, 49% of eligible Mediahuis subscribers used RouteYou at least once in the past year.

Mediahuis has been drawing lessons from the New York Times, whose bundle is a well-documented case study in how added services drive both retention and revenue per subscriber. ‘They see strong effects on retention and ARPU when people start using more services, van de Peppel says. “We are seeing the same thing, which is really encouraging.’

The 777 strategy

The essential subscription is the commercial engine behind Mediahuis’s 777 strategy: shifting 70% of operational margins to digital by 2030. Currently, the balance runs roughly the other way, at around 60% print and 40% digital.

Van de Peppel frames the mechanism plainly: it works on both Q and P, quantity and price. A more compelling subscription drives digital subscriber growth. And because most additional services are only available in the full premium subscription — not the basic tier — the bundle creates structural upward pressure on ARPU. The full subscription costs roughly twice as much as the basic tier, and as the bundle becomes more valuable, more subscribers opt for the full tier, either at sign-up or by upgrading.

‘We also see a shift from the basic subscription to the full subscription,’ van de Peppel explains. ‘Which in the end means they pay a higher price. We increase value, but of course, the value coming back is also higher.’ Volume growth and tier migration together are designed to get digital subscriptions generating the margins that print once did, and within a seven-year window.

Advice for publishers considering a similar path

Van de Peppel’s guiding principle is staying within ‘one degree of separation’ from core journalism, adding only services that connect naturally with what the newsroom already produces:

• The New York Times partnership works because Mediahuis titles already cover international affairs.
• E-books work because those titles are already reviewing books.
• RouteYou works because brands have always written about the outdoors — and the data already showed subscribers wanted it.

Where the connection has to be invented, it tends not to stick. Van de Peppel’s advice to other publishers is simple: don’t stray too far from what your newsroom already does well.

The lesson he returns to most on RouteYou is editorial embrace. Newsrooms are independent — there is no guarantee journalists will link content to the app. Where they do, the activation numbers bear it out: Belgium, with the strongest editorial collaboration, hit nearly 30% activation, compared with a portfolio average of 1 in 5. The success of RouteYou’s adoption really depends on editorial collaboration.

Van de Peppel’s target is for at least 70% of digital subscribers to regularly use at least one additional service, weekly or monthly. ‘We launched a lot last year. This year, we won’t launch as much. We will focus on what we have and really make it work.’

The post The essential subscription: how Mediahuis is bundling beyond journalism appeared first on Audiencers.

At the recent Audiencers’ Festival in Hamburg, Paywall Strategist at NTM, Daniel Loebjer, shared a radical success story that had the room talking (and asking lots of questions on access restrictions based on age!). In just one year, Sweden’s second-largest local news publisher managed to increase their young subscriber base by 500%.

The secret to their success? A bold decision that many publishers fear: They made it free.

The post Winning the young ones: how NTM grew its under-25 subscriber base by 500% appeared first on Audiencers.

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

This article is the second in a 6-part series where Max shares what he learned from studying 100 subscription business models across 15+ industries. If you haven't read the first one yet, start here. 

Why we’re focusing on media for this one

In most subscription businesses, the rules for accessing the paid offer are simple. You subscribe to a box, you get the box. You hit a usage limit on Claude, you’re asked to upgrade. You want to get access to Calm for guided meditation? You get 1 week, then have to pay. Each model has its logic, but it’s tied directly to the product.

In media, it’s different.

Media online was historically free (almost always). Then publishers moved to paid models, and products got more complex: apps, newsletters, podcasts, games, bundling, community. Because of this, an enormous variety of access models emerged.

So we decided to go deep into media alone in today’s episode. Because the question “what’s free and what’s paid” is one of the most consequential product decisions in our industry.

And there’s no right or wrong answer. The right model depends on your organization, your editorial DNA, your content, your business model… It’s specific to each media, each newsroom, each audience.

The goal here isn’t to tell you what to do. It’s to show you the range of what exists, so you can figure out where the opportunities are for your unique context.

The engagement-frustration trade-off

The data on this has been clear for a while now.

In 2021, we published the Digital Media Review (DMR – a research initiative with Google and Le Geste – a french association for publishers) at Poool. One data point stood out: the relationship between the share of traffic exposed to paid content and conversion. The correlation is clear: the more you expose, the more you convert. But only up to a threshold. Past that, conversion plateaus or falls. Frustration alone is not a sufficient reason to subscribe.

And the other side of the coin is just as important: the DMR also showed a strong correlation between traffic on paid articles and the share of users who simply leave the site when hitting a paywall. The more you frustrate, the more people bounce. That’s not just a missed conversion. That’s a direct hit on engagement, on page views, ad revenue, and your ability to build any relationship with that user.

In the same year, Mather Economics published a study (part of a GNI LatAm Subscriptions Lab report) looking at paywall hits per user. Subscription probability follows a bell curve: up with each hit, peaks, then back down. Same conclusion, different data.

Then in 2022, the New York Times shared what brought all of this together (Audiencers analyzed it here). When they launched their paywall in 2011, the meter limit was the same for everyone: a fixed number of free articles, a regwall, some more articles, and finally a paywall.

Over the years, they developed the Dynamic Meter, a machine learning model that sets personalized meter limits per user.

The core insight: the model optimizes for two metrics simultaneously, engagement and conversion. And these two metrics have an inherent trade-off. More paywalls → more subscriptions, but less readership. They proved this with randomized control trials: as the meter limit goes up, engagement increases but conversion drops.

With a fixed approach, you’re forced to choose. Maximize engagement, or maximize conversion. Not both. There’s always a window of lost revenue that a single rule can’t capture. The Dynamic Meter expands that window by personalizing: more frustration for high-propensity users, more openness for low-propensity users.

None of this is new. DMR: 2021. Mather Economics: 2021. NYT: 2022. We’ve known this for years. And yet, the vast majority of publishers still use a uniform paywall for all users.

If you don’t personalize, you’re forced to make a choice between engagement and frustration. And that choice won’t be the right one for all users. That’s why more and more sophistication has developed. And the jump from “manual” to “1-2-1” isn’t binary. There’s a whole spectrum in between.

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The 6 levels of paywall sophistication

Being at level 1 doesn’t mean you’re behind. But it means there are probably missed opportunities. The question is whether these missed opportunities are big enough to justify the resources needed to reach the next step.

• Level 1: Fully manual

Free and paid decided by hand, article by article. An Atlas & Audiencers’ study confirmed this is still the norm: the decision is based on the article’s perceived value. Breaking news free, analysis behind the wall (to simplify it to its core).

• Level 2: Manual + automated rules. Paid content still decided manually, but rules modify access based on additional criteria.

Foreign Policy shared their approach on The Audiencers. They segment by publish date (under 7 days: hard-walled; older: standard meter), but also by cohort. Users with high search intent and churned subscribers are hard-walled (high subscription propensity). Social referrals see a registration wall with a free page view (low subscription propensity, but conversion on registration is 100x higher than on subscription). That registration data became their strongest conversion driver. No AI needed. Just smart segmentation.

• Level 3: Manual with override.

The base decision is manual, but the system can override contextually: closing a free article for a high-propensity user, opening a premium one for a segment you want to engage. A first step toward personalization without losing editorial control.

• Level 4: Manual + a third automated category.

Free and premium decided manually, but a “grey zone” is managed automatically based on user profile, device, or source. Ideal for publishers in transition between fully manual and more automation, while still giving the editorial team a great deal of control (yes, the business side gets some autonomy, but only on categories validated with editorial).

• Level 5: Fully automated for conversion and engagement.

The system decides everything: whether to show a wall, which type, what meter limit, per user. The engagement/frustration trade-off managed dynamically.

Business Insider does this with AI: reading habits, traffic source, content genre propensity. The algorithm decides: paywall, registration wall, or nothing.

The NYT does it with the Dynamic Meter (as we talked about earlier). It learns from first-party engagement data (no demographic or psychographic features), adjusts per user, and continuously runs randomized trials to improve. This is the model that expanded the opportunity window we described above (source).

• Level 6: Fully automated for conversion, engagement, AND advertising.

The decision also integrates ad revenue. Fortune’s CCO at the time, Selma Stern, explained that if a user’s subscription probability is too low (first-time visit, smartphone, social media), the paywall opens and the page view is monetized through ads. The goal is to maximize total user value, wherever it comes from (which I personally think is an amazing model for short term profitability – because yes, sometimes long-term profitability might require less revenue in the short-term).

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What you can take away from this (and test tomorrow)

Figure out which level you’re at. If all your users see the same paywall regardless of behavior, source, or profile: what are you missing?

Try one rule-based variation before thinking about AI. Foreign Policy’s 100x stat didn’t require machine learning. It required a hypothesis and a way to test it.

Start by looking at your bounce rate on paywalled content. If a significant share of users leave the site when they hit your paywall, that’s revenue you’re losing twice: no subscription AND no engagement. The DMR, Mather Economics, and NYT data all showed the same thing: a uniform paywall always forces a trade-off. Even a simple first step (like showing a registration wall instead of a paywall to low-propensity users) can start closing that gap. That’s what Poool makes it easy to test.

See you next week for Article 3, where we leave media and look at how the best subscription businesses across all industries think about conversion.

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PS: This article was about the decision logic (who sees a paywall, and when). We didn’t cover the blocking method: how the paywall is technically implemented, front-end or server-side, and what that means for content protection, AI scraping, and SEO. That’s a separate topic, and we covered it here: “Paywalls & SEO“. All 6 levels above work with all blocking methods.

The post What’s free, what’s paid, and why it’s really an engagement trade-off: episode 2 appeared first on Audiencers.

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. 

TLDR
If you’re working to break through the subscription plateau, here are five projects mentioned by Stephanie that you might want to consider:
-> Block archived content by considering the percentage of pageviews on 30+ day-old content
-> Fix churn from payment failure
-> Look at save rate by cancellation reason
-> Don't forget about abandoned checkout recovery
-> Consider dynamic paywalling
-> Use AI to challenge your marketing campaigns

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!)

Introductory pricing & abandoned checkout

Growth gets harder every year. But Forum Communications are still adding subscribers. So what moves the needle now?

• Introductory pricing

They run 6-month promotional offers at significantly reduced rates.

• 5–10x multiplier on starts during promo periods.
• Churn doesn’t outweigh the acquisition lift.
• Behavioral stickiness builds during that 6-month window.

This won’t work for every publisher. But if you’ve rejected promo pricing outright, consider coming back to the topic. 

• Abandoned checkout segmentation

Many publishers don’t target users who abandoned checkout before subscribing, whilst in the ecommerce industry it’s standard practice. 

Today, Forum Communications:

• Segment users who start checkout but abandon.
• Run tailored email and digital campaigns specifically to that cohort.
• Nudge them to complete what they started.

Although these aren’t 20% lifts, the 1–2% improvements compound. And at maturity, this is what growth looks like.

Stop losing subscribers to payment failure

The team discovered that the #1 reason for churn wasn’t content dissatisfaction. It was payment failure. 

In the past, like many, they reacted after failure, which meant the subscriber had already lapsed.

Now they:

• Use their CDP to detect upcoming payment issues.
• Trigger on-site popups before renewal.
• Remind users they’ll lose access.
• Time messaging precisely to renewal dates.

If payment failure is even 5–10% of your churn, this is low-hanging revenue retention.

Make cancellation easy, but personalize it

Cancellation is where many publishers get defensive and try to keep hold of subscribers at all costs.

FCC did the opposite by making cancellation easy, because friction creates resentment and resentment kills winbacks.

They tested multiple cancellation flow iterations. 

What worked: 

• Short bullet points
• Clear value reminders
• Personalized next steps

In particular, moving the cancellation survey to the start of the flow. 

Instead of:

Cancel → Survey → Exit

They now do:

Why are you cancelling? → Tailored response

If reason = technical issue → Direct to support
If reason = content complaint → Direct to newsroom
If reason = price → Offer extended promo

Early tests show measurable lift in save rates.

As Stephanie put it, not everyone in the cancellation flow actually wants to cancel, some want to be heard.

A non-scalable but effective win-back strategy: just call them

The team selected 15 recently canceled subscribers, and the Head of Customer Success called them. Not to resell, but to ask “Why did you leave? What can we improve?”

10 agreed to speak.
9 resubscribed.

Of course, this won’t scale to thousands. But it reveals something critical:

Retention isn’t always about pricing. It’s about relationships.

They also:

• Run segmented win-back email journeys
• Test telemarketing for specific cohorts
• Show former subscribers adapted paywalls and promote annual offers instead of monthly ones

AI in campaigns: A tool to challenge teams, not replace them

FCC is cautious with AI. They don’t use it to replace marketers, but as a way to pressure-test campaigns.

The workflow:

1. Human writes campaign brief
2. Design assets created
3. Human feedback round
4. AI review inserted
5. Final human edits

They ask questions such as:

• What are the first two clickable elements?
• Is the hierarchy clear?
• Is the CTA obvious?
• Is the core message unambiguous?

This helps remove emotional bias, surfaces hierarchy issues and sharpens scannability.

For mature subscription businesses, this kind of structured use of AI can produce incremental gains at scale

The post Minor tweaks make all the difference: lessons on breaking the subscription plateau from Forum Communications appeared first on Audiencers.

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

This article is the first in his 6-part series following an analysis of 100 subscription businesses. He'll share trends, best practices and lessons for media brands with a reader revenue model. 

It started with a simple idea. 

We (at Poool – an awesome customer journey builder for publishers) wanted to build a “subscription moodboard”. Not a strategy, not a benchmark report. A moodboard. Like designers do when they start a project – they look at everything that exists, take screenshots, and see what patterns emerge.

So last year, we went on a little adventure: we subscribed to things.

A LOT of things. We created accounts, tested products, downloaded apps, clicked on paywalls, went through onboarding flows, tried to cancel (which is always a lot less simple). And we did this across 100 subscription business models in 15+ industries.

And we had a lot of fun doing it (not for the cancellation part, as you’ve understood)

Because when you start looking at subscriptions outside of media, you quickly realize that people subscribe to pretty much everything. Toilet paper (yes, Who Gives a Crap has over 40M$ in revenue, and a lot through subscription). Japanese snack boxes (TokyoTreat). Wine (Le Petit Ballon). Razors (Dollar Shave Club). Personalized coffee with a charity donation included (We Are Here). Genealogy research (FindMyPast). Cars (yes, cars). Even Walmart has a subscription now that bundles grocery delivery, Paramount+, and Burger King discounts. I’m not making this up.

Of course we also looked at the usual suspects: Netflix, Spotify, The New York Times, Financial Times, Masterclass, Calm, Miro, Xbox, and many others. To be clear: we didn’t interview anyone. We didn’t get access to internal dashboards. We simply observed, as if we were a user. We subscribed, we tested, we unsubscribed. We took a lot of screenshots.

We then presented this moodboard to some of our clients. And their reaction was so enthusiastic that we thought: OK, let’s turn this into a series for Audiencers.

So here we are.

This is the first article of a series of 6. And the goal of this first article, is to give you a taster of what you will find in the episodes to come.

Let dive in!

What surprised us most: it’s all about engagement

OK so here’s the thing.

Historically, media companies have always been focused on page views.
More page views, more ads, more revenue. Simple.

Over the past five years, the industry shifted to subscriptions. The new priorities became conversion rates, subscriber counts, churn. That makes sense. If you’re building a subscription business, you measure subscription metrics.

But when we looked at these 100 business models, we noticed something different about the top performers.

We can’t know for sure what Spotify, Netflix or Calm measure internally. We don’t have access to their dashboards. But when you look at how their product is designed, how they onboard users, how they structure the experience, everything seems built around engagement first. Not conversion. Not retention. Engagement.

And when you think about it, it makes sense. Because the more you engage a user, the better they convert. The more engaged they are, the longer they stay. The more engaged they are, the higher their lifetime value. And the more engagement, the more money you make through advertising (volume of page views, and quality of data).

The data we have access to confirms this. INMA data shows that a quarter of subscribers churn in the first month, and half are gone by the fourth month. Nieman Lab published a study from The Wall Street Journal showing that the probability of adopting a new habit drops dramatically after 100 days.

El País shared internal data on this at an INMA event, and it’s very clear: subscribers who use editorial newsletters churn 24% less. App users churn 15% less. Premium newsletter users churn 29% less.

The pattern is consistent.

Engagement isn’t a consequence of conversion. It seems to be the cause of everything else.

Just look at the homepage of one of the biggest newspapers in the world (you know the one) – they don’t have a single call to action here. It’s all about engagement.

From a linear subscription journey to an infinite cycle

Over the past 10 years, whether in e-commerce or in media, I’ve seen the same model everywhere. Literally everywhere.

Attract traffic → convert → let them discover the product → retain.
Aaand, we’re done.

A linear, finite sequence. It is was in every strategy deck, every conference talk, every blog.

What we observed in the best-performing subscription businesses is fundamentally different. Their journey looks more like a series of loops, with baby conversion step:

Attract → Convert at level 0 (ex: create an account) → Discover → Engage through a personalized experience → Convert at level 1 (trial) → Discover new features → Engage → Convert at level 2 (subscription level 1)… and it keeps going until it NEVER ends

What’s critical in this model is that each step has one single objective. Not two, not three. One. If the user is at the “discovery” stage, you don’t show them a subscription CTA.

Take the New York Times. This one blew our minds a bit. When you look closely at their registration flow, there is not a single subscription CTA anywhere. Zero. None. Nada. At that stage, the only goal is to create an account, understand the user’s interests, and start personalizing the experience.

During registration, they ask which areas of The Times you want to explore. They recommend newsletters based on your selections. They let you pick games. They prompt you to download the app.

(click on the images to enlarge)

Subscription CTAs come later.

But look at Miro, a 600M€+ subscription based company, pushing a “signup for free” on the homepage. Same pattern here.

Calm does the same. Before you can start a free trial, they ask you more than 10 questions. How have you been feeling? What’s your biggest source of stress? What are your goals? They literally build a custom experience for you before asking you for log in or money. I found that pretty remarkable for a meditation app.

Masterclass goes even further. Even when you arrive from a paid Google ad, they don’t send you to a checkout page. They ask about your interests, build a personalized path of 36 classes (“Building your custom results…” appears on screen), and only then present the offer.

Each step, one job. Discover first. Sell later.

These companies have probably iterated dozens of times to get to these journeys.
And they keep iterating (I strongly guess).

That’s actually why we built Poool in the first place: to allow publisher to build, AB test and improve each stage of your their journey (registration flow, onboarding flows, conversion flow and many more) without needing a dev team every time you want to try something new.

Check out how Irish News grew subscriber base by 15% in 6 months using Poool (published on Audiencers, of course)

What’s coming in this series

As I said, this is the first article in a six-part series.

We have a lot to share, so here’s a quick overview of what’s next:

Article 2: Product. From manual paywalls to intelligent paywalls: the 6 levels of sophistication we identified. This is the only article in the series focused exclusively on media, because the product question (what’s behind a paywall) is very specific to our industry and not comparable to other sectors.

Article 3: Conversion. Why the best performers replaced the linear funnel with an infinite cycle. And why they don’t try to sell too early, or too expensive on day 1.

Article 4: Offers & Pricing. “Acquire with one simple offer, retain with many.” What we saw on pricing, and why a single price means optimizing for an average user who doesn’t exist.

Article 5: Retention. The first 100 days are your only window. Product adoption vs. anti-churn, and the 3 lock-in effects we observed.

Article 6: Bonus. The fun one: Toilet paper, Japanese snack boxes, razor blades, wine, genealogy: the most surprising subscription models we came across, and what they teach us about engagement.

What you can take away from this (and test tomorrow)

We don’t have a single truth, nor claim to have found it (sadly). We looked at 100 business models and took a lot of screenshots. But here’s what we think is worth considering (we will try to include this at the end of each article):

Ask yourself: what is the one goal at each step? If your registration wall also pushes a subscription CTA, you’re trying to do two things at once. The best performers we observed don’t do that. Every step has one job.

Start measuring engagement alongside conversion. Not instead of. Alongside. Track which product features your subscribers actually use. El País showed that each additional touchpoint (newsletter, app, loyalty program) reduces churn by 15 to 30%. That’s concrete and measurable.

Look outside media for inspiration. Some of the most interesting things we saw came from companies that have nothing to do with content: Calm’s onboarding, Miro’s registration flow, Dollar Shave Club’s friction removal. The principles are the same.

If you have questions, disagreements, or examples that contradict what we saw, we’re genuinely interested. This is a conversation, not a lecture.

Drop me (Max, CEO at Poool) an email.

See you next week for Article 2.

This article is part of the series “We studied 100 subscription business models. Here’s what we learned.” published on The Audiencers.

The post 100 subscription business, 15 industries, 1 moodboard: episode 1 appeared first on Audiencers.

If you feel like the “easy” wins in digital subscriptions have vanished, you’re not alone, and the data finally backs you up. The WAN-IFRA World Press Trends Outlook 2025-2026 report reveals an industry at an interesting, if slightly daunting, crossroads.

While the narrative for years has been “digital or bust,” we are now entering a “print + digital + other” paradigm. Digital revenues currently account for 31% of publisher income, but growth has noticeably stalled, nearly matching last year’s figures.

For us at Audiencers, this isn’t a sign to retreat. It’s a signal that the “one size fits all” subscription model is officially broken, that you need to keep innovating, giving audiences more flexibility than ever, whilst building relationships that last.

WAN-IFRA’s Trends Outlook 2026: Subscriptions by the numbers

The shift toward digital continues, but the pace is cooling. 

Unlike predictions about print decline over the past years, it remains resilient, and the largest single revenue source. 

However, the gap with other income sources is narrowing. Digital circulation now represents 14% of revenue, while income from other activities (events being the greatest part of this, followed by B2B services & e-commerce) lies at an average of 25.4%.

As for reader revenue in particular: 

• Digital circulation has grown: from 9% in 2021 to 14% in 2025, a 55.6% increase in under five years
• The adoption gap is closing: 58.5% of news organizations now offer digital subscriptions, a number that jumps to 72.9% in developed markets
• The “Ceiling” effect?: The report suggests that “growth has leveled off and looks to have hit a ceiling… publishers have already signed up many of those prepared to pay” making further acquisition increasingly difficult in a tight economic climate

At Audiencers, we’re less convinced that this “ceiling” has been hit.

In either case, there are some key strategies, many highlighted in the report and across Audiencers, to put in place to combat this “leveled off growth” through a focus towards a more sophisticated and diversified model.

1. Bundling & Family Plans

We’ve seen a significant shift toward high-value bundles over the past few years, combining both national and international brands to reduce the need for a user to pay for multiple subscriptions. 

• News Corp brought together three of its best-known publications in October 2025, enabling subscribers of The Australian to also be able to access The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal
• A number of European publishers (Politiken in Denmark, El País in Spain, Italy’s Corriere della Sera and The Irish Times in Ireland) have partnered with The New York Times to offer subscribers access to the NYT’s suite of content
• Le Figaro worked to reduce password sharing, both by limiting simultaneous sessions and developing alternative sharing options, such as Family Packs: “A subscriber to one of these two packages now has the possibility to link 2 to 4 user accounts to their subscription.”

But don’t overcomplicate – as Subscrybe’s Morten Suhr Hansen puts it, “over recent years, many subscription businesses have added layer upon layer: products, pricing models, campaigns, systems, and channels. In 2026, the ability to simplify becomes a competitive advantage. Companies that do not have a clear value proposition, a strong understanding of their core customer segments, and clarity on their key value drivers will struggle – regardless of how much AI they implement.”

> Gain clarity on your purpose with this workshop

> And perfect your value proposition with these 2 frameworks

2. The dynamic paywall

One-size-fits-all is (finally) being left behind for dynamic acquisition models that adapt experiences to a reader’s profile or context. Solutions like Poool, used to put these dynamic strategies in place, are more accessible than ever, built for marketing teams to have autonomy from tech.

What can you adapt to?

• Level of engagement
• Source of traffic
• User status (anonymous, registered, ex-subscriber…)
• Content type / topic
• User location

What can you adapt?

• The type of wall: registration wall, paywall…
• How “tough” the wall is: closable, anti-scroll, full-page, partial-block
• The messaging on the wall
• Introductory offers or pricing proposed
• Currency

A few examples:

• ELLE Magazine’s contextual paywalls, adapted messaging and design to the content type, increased conversion rates by 20%
• Jeune Afrique doubled conversion rates by adapting the paywall messaging and pricing to a user’s level of engagement and location 

3. Flexibility and an end to “locking in” 

A successful retention model isn’t one that prevents readers from leaving. It’s one where audiences are saved before they even consider cancelling, where unsubscription isn’t the end of the relationship, where alternative, more flexible options exist, and where we accept that people will come and go. Ending the relationship badly doesn’t do us any favors (in fact, it only reduces trust and potentially helps prevent acquisition due to bad past experiences).

What should you do instead?

• Pause functionality as a standard: the ability to pause a subscription instead of canceling permanently is an extremely effective retention mechanism. French publisher Le Monde already has this in place

• Easy cancellation is the new retention strategy: simple unsubscription is a necessary foundation for building trust, improving CX, and ultimately turning your pool of ex-subscribers into your biggest future growth opportunity. This is exactly what Nat Geo Kids is proving. 

4. Subscriptions as relationships, not contracts

The lines between transactional “subscriptions” and missionary “memberships” are blurring. By developing a community, publishers add an emotional layer to the relationship, making readers more likely to remain loyal and participate thoughtfully.

• Condé Nast has created a “Membership” tier that sits above subscription to build belonging amongst their most loyal audiences. The value exchange here is two-way: members are active participants contributing data, feedback, and engagement. They expect to belong to a community. And the strategy is paying off: a member has an LTV (Lifetime Value) up to 50 times higher than a subscriber, amongst other benefits listed below
• The South African publisher Daily Maverick is perhaps the poster child for these types of membership models, with 40% of its revenues generated by member-driven support. Styli Charalambous, Daily Maverick’s co-founder and CEO told Pugpig in late-2024 that “after three years, 85% of people who start as a member are still there.”
• At The Kyiv Independent, membership means that journalism remains free. With a membership, a reader can support from $5-$100 a month, getting a few benefits in exchange, which have of course evolved over the years. With members based around the world, they’ve worked hard to bring members together, such as through a community map. 
• A variety of publishers are creating “clubs” for subscribers, such as DIE ZEIT‘s “Friends of Zeit”, Handelsblatt‘s Circles, The Economist Insider, amongst plenty others.

5. Innovative acquisition channels 

Just like revenue streams, acquisition channels are being diversified to reduce reliance on the traditional funnel.

• Referrals at Zetland: Tav Klitgaard, Group CEO and Co-founder, shared how important referrals are for them.

“At Zetland, we have for several years focused on leveraging existing members for acquisition. This is by far the most meaningful way for us to grow, because it builds stronger relationships with both the new members who join through personal recommendations and the existing members who help spread the word about a service that makes a difference in their own lives.

The “contracts” generated by our member-get-member campaigns are far stronger than any ad could ever be.“

• Daily Maverick tackles low conversion rates with a targeted Q&A mailer, significantly enhancing member acquisition and engagement. The initiative addresses the gap between interest and action, providing detailed answers to potential members’ questions, which has led to a notable increase in conversions
• The Times & Sunday Times has been testing an open weekends each year as a way of offering non-subscribers a chance to discover the premium content they have on offer

• Whilst Daily Maverick tested the opposite, proving the importance of their work and helping to finance it

• And learning from other industries such as ecommerce businesses who have abandoned shopping cart notices. The below example from Texas Monthly

> Fancy being inspired by 45 acquisition channel ideas? Well you can, just here.

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“Other sources” as the new core?

Perhaps the most shocking finding is the rise of “Other Sources” (events, content services, etc.). This bucket now makes up 25.4% of revenues, almost doubling since 2021.

Events continue to be the main area of activity in this area, with 32.2% of respondents identifying them as an important revenue source, followed by B2B services content and partnerships with platforms (both 16.1%), according to WAN-IFRA’s report.

The secret to building these alternative revenue strategies well? Understanding audience needs, building streams around this and continuously innovating to serve evolving needs.

Panos Sarlanis, Co-founder of IamExpat Media, spoke about this at our 2024 Festival in London. 

The question they kept asking: “What essential needs can we solve with new products or services?”

• This led to the launch of directories, helping users find trusted professionals, from tax advisors and language schools to English-speaking dentists, lawyers and career coaches. These have become a significant part of IamExpat’s business model.
• Recognizing the challenges of finding accommodation and employment in new countries, IamExpat also launched a housing platform (aggregating rental properties from partners) and a job board specifically tailored for their international and multilingual audience. 

These “classifieds”—directories, housing, and job boards—now account for a considerable part of their revenue. Directories contribute the most, and this highlights the high value and conversion rate of these specialized services that focus on user needs.

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The direction is clear: To succeed in 2026, you can’t rely on content access alone. Publishers should build an ecosystem with the audience at the center, where subscription is the gateway to a community, not just a library of text.

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