Newspass was developed to help News Corp Australia continue its year-on-year subscription growth. The news company has one of the highest per capita subscription penetration rates globally — over 4% — making typical cycles of high acquisition and churn detrimental to net subscription growth.

Newspass supports subscription growth by sifting out low-quality subscribers and converting them into higher-quality subscribers through sampling. Upgrades from a free product (where credit card details aren’t required) mean a more conscious decision to subscribe from customers, versus the need to pay for a cheap introductory offer to unlock a paywall.  

Newspass offers a limited amount of premium content (articles, videos, podcasts) over a fixed period. It converts low-quality subscribers into higher-quality ones in two ways:

• Firstly, it’s offered to audiences instead of a hard paywall as a soft front door into the brand. Low-converting editorial content is identified, and Newspass is displayed alongside subscription options.
• Secondly, it’s used in retention as an alternative to cancelling customers, providing a winback option to entice customers back onto a subscription. Users are given a personalised engagement journey throughout the fixed period.  

Creating Newspass

Newspass was developed collaboratively by subscription and product teams. It was initially rolled out in the call centre as a retention initiative to gauge interest in the product and gain early learnings on save rate, customer sentiment, and engagement.

Following this, Newspass was tactically deployed across essential editorial initiatives. Historical data-driven analysis highlighted that content didn’t drive subscriptions, or it was used to build audiences for new editorial initiatives. It’s also used in customer winback journeys and e-mail marketing campaigns.  

There were a few challenges to rolling out Newspass. One of these was in retention, where the importance of maintaining marketing permissions was uncovered.

Without appropriate marketing permissions, engagement with the free articles and conversion to re-subscriptions hovered around 2% for customers who cancelled. Training in the call centre was implemented to reframe the benefits of marketing permissions, with the majority opting in, which led to a 5% increase in subscriptions.  

A second challenge was in helping editorial teams understand the benefits of registration and the appropriate content and scenarios where registration should be used.

Initially, this resulted in many opportunities for registration being missed, but as newsroom education has grown, so has the proactivity in identifying registration opportunities. Conversion of Newspass users to subscriptions from editorial initiatives has grown to 8% on average.  

Impressive results

Through all of these learnings and over 12 months of the Newspass programme being in full flight, we have seen some impressive results.

From June 2024 to June 2025, through a programme of test and learn, weekly Newspass sign-ups have grown by 233%, reaching 100,000 total users.

The conversion rate to a subscription across all channels sits at an average of 6%, with individual newsrooms within the News Corp Australia family reaching as high as 14%. 

Crucially, subscribers who graduate from the Newspass programme are more engaged. They are more active daily on average by 11% versus subscribers who don’t go through the programme, and read a wider range of sections each day when on site.

This results in stickier subscribers, with retention after 12 months of subscribers on pay-as-you-go plans improving by 7% (points). Users also opt for longer-term subscriptions, with a higher share choosing 12-month offers versus those that don’t go through the programme.

Ultimately, Newspass doesn’t result in fewer subscriptions; it results in better subscribers.

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