Customers have to be the center of your paywall subscription management strategy. This is what should be centered for all the other aspects to fall into place. Engaging with the readers and building a long-term relationship with them is a whole other world than generating traffic or increasing numbers - it requires its very own dedicated strategy building. The legacy publishers know this, the power of a loyal reader supersedes it all.
Your subscription strategy starts at building traffic and ensuring your content is reaching a wider audience. After that, it involves increasing retention rate. Once you have a group of readers coming onto your platform it’s then time to look into what they’re looking for, how the personalization feature on your website is working and exactly which parts of your website would make sense behind a paywall. Once you have user behavior data, which is ever evolving therefore needs to be screened and looked into on regular intervals, you have something navigating your journey. This is when you begin to set down on turning loyal readers into paying subscribers for exchange of content that is worthwhile, with a user-experience that is subscription and subscriber-enabling. Let’s look into how this can be achieved.
A tool like Accesstype helps you manage all of your subscription needs from a single point. It integrates seamlessly with most content management systems and you get to add a layer of fully functioning and feature-packed tool without having to change your existing platform. Once Accesstype has integrated, you can explore your subscription plans. You are able to have a clear tracking record of registered users, subscribers, categorial subscribers etc. You can provide easy and secure micropayment options which recurring bills that are automated by the tool. You can further explore different types of paywalls - metered, hybrid, dynamic etc. Once you’ve got a tool like Accesstype, your subscription management journey becomes simpler but more effective.
1. Getting the right tool - Like Accesstype, a good subscription tool helps you keep the data associated with the customers/readers at a single space. This means that users can sign into your website with a registered email id or a new one with a quick two step verification process and have their personalized search patterns and recommendations saved. This tool will help you regulate the first/primary payments, the recurring bills and the overall subscription paywalls set up in place. Micro Payments are all managed on this front. Getting the right monetization tool helps publishers have the flexibility to scale their strategies and profits over time.
2. Setting the right paywall
Once you have the right tool in place, you can look into different paywall model options. As publishers it’s important to look at your website and be able to create segments - the free content and the content behind the paywall. Deciding this can take some time. While many legacy publishers are attempting to go behind the paywall entirely, it does help to have both subscription and advertising revenue.
Hard paywalls
Soft paywalls
Freemium paywalls
Hybrid paywalls
Dynamic paywalls
3. Remind and educate readers
Once you’ve got a reader converted to a subscriber, it’s very important to retain that subscriber. Once you have acquired a subscriber, remind them why this is the better experience. The most valuable asset on your website is your content, give them an understanding of the quality of the content that comes with a few extra bills. You can always remind readers that journalists work better when the content they create is charged for the quality of the piece. It’s also important to be transparent about your publishing goals, your targets, your growth and scale. This gives a better picture of where their money is going which helps build customer trust and better relationships.
4. Diversifying revenue channels
Usually publishers will only look into website ads. On the web, there’s a lot of room for advertisements as well as monetization. You can monetize many digital products like -
Digital newspapers
E-magazines
Educational data
Digital downloads
Expert blogs
Community information
Any media content
Per article charges
The more you branch out your monetization channels, the more your revenue will increase and diversify allowing you to not be overly dependent on a single source.
5. Exploring Machine Learning With dynamic paywall
A trend of dynamic paywall is rising where machine learning is made use of which automatically fits offers to the registered user based on the data about them. This is a good alternative from the regular hardwall and allows readers more flexibility in the nature of their subscription. The dynamic model uses the - propensity to convert score. Machine learning helps bring in an experience that is user centric and specific to user behavior. Data is the key in such a model - the more input you have on user behavior, the better the conversion and retention rates will be.
It may seem easier to simply offer a lot of subscription offers to your readers. It’s important to experiment with your target group, perhaps a focus group and have a well thought out system in place for monetization. Try not to change your rates too much and that there are different packages for each demographic. There are more tips you can look into to improve your subscription strategy. If you’re looking for a product to make this journey easier, click here to schedule a free demo today with Accesstype.
