Foreign Policy re-launched its paywall back in 2018 which was initially fairly open. But with increasingly more buy-in internally on the value of this model, the paywall model has tightened over time. Today, 50% of revenue is from digital subscriptions.
I spoke to Corinne Osnos, VP Subscriptions and Marketing at Foreign Policy, about how they divide content into free vs premium, some of the tests they’re running to better answer this question and the set up internally for ensuring every team is working towards optimizing for their digital subscription model.
Key takeaways to copy & share
> Foreign Policy denied a randomised half of its audience even one free article. That cohort produced three times as many subscriptions and five times as many long-term plans, pointing to better lifetime value > They refuse to declare victory. The open question is whether the hard wall converted people already on the fence, or whether a few unusually strong pieces ran during the test window > The model now under test is time-based: 75% of articles hard-walled for their first seven days, then released to a meter. Editorial controls the exempt 25%, using its own judgement > The wall varies by how likely you are to pay. Search arrivals and lapsed subscribers hit the hard wall, while social referrals get a registration wall and a free article > That registration wall converts at a hundred times the rate of the subscription offer, and the email addresses it collects are their single strongest driver of eventual conversion
