The Philadelphia Inquirer is a legacy news medium with a 195-year history. Their site has monthly visits of around 7.6 million people and a registration of 1.4 million people. Its key initiative regarding conversion effectiveness was a dynamic paywall on the Web and app that increased conversion rates by 85% between 2022 and 2024.

During the recent INMA Media Subscriptions Summit, Darya Ushakova, chief marketing officer at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Pete Doucette, senior managing director at Mather Economics, showcased the approach to increasing digital subscriptions proficiency.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s average revenue depends on dynamic digital pricing. They took a dip in revenue when they introduced the six months for US$6 offer.

“What you need to understand is that I fully believe that this offer is worth it for us,” Ushakova said. “We see by the moving of the digital revenue line that the profit is fairly visible, and it's moving even further up at this point. But you need to willingly take a dip. For about half a year you're going to get just a dollar from all of your new subscribers which for us is thousands and thousands.”

For Ushakova and her team, “one subscriber isn’t better than the other” — even the ones that pay less still bring in revenue.

Audience growth in the Philadelphia Inquirer is focused on content verticals, specifically regarding sport and food. 

“People say over and over again that they don’t want just hard news,” Ushakova said. That’s why it’s important to them to dedicate time and money to verticals like these. 

Brand is everything, and Ushakova and her team know this: “Brand is what people are saying behind your back when you’re not in the room.”

Brand builders include:

• Gamification is a focus regarding audience engagement at The Philadelphia Inquirer. For Ushakova, it’s about habit building. Games, puzzles, and crosswords achieve that.
• Newsletters are cost effective and easily make a constant presence in the inbox of the consumers, which makes them get used to the brand.
• Personalisation, registration of users, and first-party data work to keep their audience engaged.

The fundamentals of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s subscription proficiency lie in the intersection of three different aspects: people, process, and technology. 

• People: Their organisational structure is complex, but all under their chief marketing officer or senior vice president of revenue planning and insights. 

• Process: It depends on their integrated approach of SPI (metrics) and their rules of engagement. 

• Technology: Automation is key, so their team has time to focus on more difficult tasks instead of troubleshooting.

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