Strategic onboarding strategies engage news readers, reduce churn

By Michelle Palmer Jones

INMA

Nashville, Tennessee, United States

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By Mira Lazine

INMA

Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

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By Paula Felps

INMA

Nashville, Tennessee, United States

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By Sarah Schmidt

INMA

Brooklyn, New York, United States

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By Mary Jackmann

INMA

Honolulu, Hawaii, United States

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Engaging customers early through a strong onboarding strategy is one of the most effective ways to reduce churn. On average, nearly 43% of users disable auto-renewal within the first two months of subscribing. About 13% of them do so on day one.

“This data is going to vary by publisher type and size, but the top line point here is that it’s important to start engaging users immediately because you’re going to lose about 13% of them at the end of their subscriber period unless you stay engaged with them and give them a reason to stay,” Katelyn Belyus, vice president of strategy and analytics for Piano, told attendees of the recent INMA Subscription Retention Master Class, part of the Readers First Initiative.

It's critical to give subscribers a reason to engage with and continue to invest in a product from the beginning of the relationship, Katelyn Belyus, vice president of strategy and analytics at Piano, said.
It's critical to give subscribers a reason to engage with and continue to invest in a product from the beginning of the relationship, Katelyn Belyus, vice president of strategy and analytics at Piano, said.

This is where onboarding can play a critical role. An example from Harvard Business Review shows the publisher engaging with new subscribers immediately at point of purchase by highlighting subscription benefits and varying the engagement depending on the type of subscription the user purchased.

“For instance, if they bought a print subscription, they will highlight the benefits of the print magazine here,” Belyus said. “So they’re now, from the beginning, segmenting those types of users to craft messaging that makes the most sense for them.”

Diring the master class, Belyus and media leaders from Newsday, Handelsblatt, The Hindu, and Göteborgs-Posten shared how their companies are using onboarding and other strategies to reduce subscriber churn and engage customers.

Newsday uses calls-to-action to engage new customers

Newsday in Long Island has optimised onboarding through iterative testing, Ginny Dymek de Hernandez, digital consumer sales manager, told master class attendees.

The onboarding journey was born from a simple question: If a subscriber is never more engaged than they are at signup, how can Newsday create more engagement from a new subscriber as soon as they click “submit?”

The goal became to build engagement while the consumer was still in transactional mode. That was done by rolling out a series of Web pages with cards that contain a call-to-action. Newsday immediately asks subscribers to tell what interests they have and which newsletters interest them, offer SMS breaking news alerts, invite them to watch Newsday TV or download the app.

An improved onboarding experience with specific calls-to-action has lowered churn for Newsday, Ginny Dymek de Hernandez, digital consumer sales manager, said.
An improved onboarding experience with specific calls-to-action has lowered churn for Newsday, Ginny Dymek de Hernandez, digital consumer sales manager, said.

Last December, Newsday began looking at how to improve the series and developed a test series that added three more cards: one with a QR code to get the Newsday app, one to sign up for breaking news (“Breaking news alerts are subscriber favourites, so introducing this card was a must-have.”), and one to introduce users to a relatively new product, the Newsday TV+ streaming service.

Six months later, de Hernandez said the data offers insight into churn rates for those who went through onboarding compared to those who did not.

“Those that did not go through the process have a churn rate of 8.1% versus only 4.5% of those that did, which is a decrease in churn of about 44%,” she said. “We obviously know it’s working; now, we just keep working on improving.”

Handelsblatt creates a new onboarding process

To reduce the churn rate on the first day of subscription, the team at Handelsblatt aimed to enhance product awareness among new subscribers and foster habits that would encourage regular usage of their offerings.

Katharina Starke, topic owner engagement, said the development of a new onboarding process began with a Google Design Sprint. During this concentrated effort, the team created three prototypes which were subsequently tested with users to refine the design.

The design process for a new onboarding experience was the result of a concentrated sprint, Katharina Starke, topic owner engagement, said.
The design process for a new onboarding experience was the result of a concentrated sprint, Katharina Starke, topic owner engagement, said.

“We had three, full, packed days where we looked at our competitors, what they did well, what were the best and worst practices in the industry,” Starke said. “We looked at our personas and talked about user needs and came up with three prototypes that we then tested with our users.”

The final product was a user-friendly, clean onboarding process consisting of a series of tips aimed at helping new subscribers get the most out of their subscriptions. An impressive 32% of users who started the onboarding journey completed it, and 59% chose to begin the onboarding process.

Overall, the new onboarding process led to improvements in various soft KPIs, including visits per subscriber, page impressions per visit, and newsletter registrations. It also reduced day-one terminations and increased app store clicks, demonstrating a positive impact on subscriber engagement and retention.

The revamped onboarding process at Handelsblatt, and its successful adaptation for another brand WirtschaftsWoche, demonstrated the effectiveness of a well-designed, user-centric onboarding experience, according to Starke: “This whole product from the start to going live was really a motivator for the whole team.”

The Hindu experiments with its free trial onboarding experience

Ankit Nama, a growth product manager at India’s premier news outlet The Hindu, said the company’s onboarding journey of its free trial offer has gone through a gamification process.

During this process, the team tried various experiments. One varied a little bit in its implementation across users based in India and users based internationally.

“It’s all about leveraging the loss principle to motivate our free trial users to convert to subscribers,” Nama said.

The Hindu experimented with its free trial onboarding journey, Ankit Nama, growth product manager, said.
The Hindu experimented with its free trial onboarding journey, Ankit Nama, growth product manager, said.

For those based in India, they gave users an initial discount of INR500 that decreased with every two articles read. The discount entirely ended after the 13th pageview.

For international users, the original discount was US$15 that decreased by US$2 for every two articles read.

How successful was the experiment?

“We saw our first conversion on the sixth day, and then the result stabilised after two weeks,” Nama said.

Göteborgs-Posten’s 360 specialists help maxmise content engagement

Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten created a new role called the 360 specialist to work with the newsroom to maximise engagement while allowing journalists to focus most on editorial work.

Louise Sköld Lindell, head of editorial development, said specialists are not involved in the journalism itself and do not try to influence what reporters cover, who they interview, or how the article is written. Instead, once articles are complete, the specialists actively project-manage engagement, reach, user experience, and sales.

Different tools can be employed based on what is appropriate for the particular content. Social media may be used to broaden a story's reach, for instance, or graphics and video can be used to improve user experience. A quiz might be included to increase engagement. Popups can be deployed for sales when appropriate. The specialists then coordinate with the company's experts in those fields for further support.

Göteborgs-Posten's 360 specialists help maximise the potential of content, Louise Sköld Lindell, head of editorial development, said.
Göteborgs-Posten's 360 specialists help maximise the potential of content, Louise Sköld Lindell, head of editorial development, said.

“All of these are things that a normal editor would not have time to do,” Lindell said.

As a result, Göteborgs-Posten gained 1,860 new subscribers compared to 412 last year.

Though it is not possible to isolate the effect of the 360 specialists, Lindell is confident that they have played a part in the improved subscription sales, traffic, and conversion that Göteborgs-Posten has seen since the role was added: “Maybe more importantly, we have inspired the editorial offices to go the extra mile with their published content.”

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