In 2014, Wyborcza.pl — the Web site of Gazeta Wyborcza, the largest opinion-forming newspaper in Poland — became the first to introduce a digital subscription offer for individual subscribers.

In 2021, in addition to activities aimed at individual users, we started developing digital subscriptions for companies and institutions.

High-quality journalism is the bedrock on which we built our offer for the B2B segment. Renowned journalists writing about politics, the world, business, and the economy drove the sales. We addressed our offer primarily to the heads of large companies and senior employees, promoting it mostly with the advantages of having access to up-to-date and reliable information.

This strategy worked quite well for us; people in high positions willingly invested in the Wyborcza.pl subscription, considering it a token of prestige.

At some point, however, we reached the wall. Although we continued to sell subscriptions to this segment, the growth dynamics decreased significantly. We were looking for a way to encourage employers to buy digital subscriptions to Wyborcza.pl for their employees in the form of a benefit.

At the beginning of 2022, we decided to rethink our strategy. We consulted the department responsible for organic subscribers to find out what content drives the purchases in their segment.

Eye-opening research

Wyborcza.pl is usually thought of as a reliable source of political news. Still, as much as 65% of the Web site content is about lifestyle: health, science, ecology, culture, business, and psychology. Our group also has non-political content from Wyborcza.biz (dedicated to business), Wysokieobcasy.pl (addressed to women), and Instytutdobregozycia.pl (Good Life Institute), which deals with personal and professional development to encourage employers to purchase the offer.

It is no surprise that 82% of organic subscription sales were driven by non-political content.

We compared the sales results of the organic subscription with research on employees’ expectations. It indicated that employees expect their employers to provide them with useful and supportive content on mental health, work-life balance, or professional development.

Boost your employee’s potential

Having conducted our own research, we prepared a one-of-a-kind offer on the Polish market — a digital subscription to Web sites from the Wyborcza.pl group in the form of a benefit for employees packed into the “Boost your employee’s potential” bundle.

We promoted the bundle for employees with content that organic subscribers find attractive. We stopped marketing the offer with mostly political topics and news (although we still emphasise the quality of our journalism).

We wanted the employers to be sure our offer was what they needed, so we allowed them to opt for unlimited 90-day trials.

Win-win results

We have already completed several implementations in large companies, a few are in progress, and more cooperations are ahead of us. After several implementations and follow-up surveys, we can conclude:

• 86% expected their subscription to be renewed.
• Almost 90% of employees said it was the first time they had access to the Wyborcza.pl subscription. This is a huge added value for our company.
• 80% of employees use it at least several times a week, and some of them use it every day.

Introducing the offer resulted in real growth in our segment:

• The number of subscriptions sold in the B2B offer increased by 31% year over year.
• The transaction value increased by 18%.
• The number of pageviews in the “for employees” segment increased by 20%.

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