With a history stretching back to 1780, Switzerland’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) is rooted in tradition. But that hasn’t stopped it from looking to the future and forging ahead in the rapidly evolving media landscape.

During the recent INMA Webinar Unlocking premium: How to elevate your digital product — and its price tag, NZZ’s Eva Günther shared how and why the company retooled its digital strategy with the addition of a new premium offering.

As head of digital product, Günther knows the importance of a strong digital presence. But, with its print product commanding a significantly higher perceived value than digital subscriptions, the team faced a significant hurdle: “The challenge we wanted to pursue was how we can bring the same perceived value into the digital world,” Günther said.

The second challenge was market-specific. In Switzerland — a country with four official languages — NZZ already reaches 40% of German-speaking households. With growth potential in the domestic market approaching its limits, that meant finding a way to shift the focus from volume to increasing the average revenue per user (ARPU).

Building a premium tier

That led to the launch of a new premium product, called NZZ Pro, that fundamentally reshaped its digital portfolio.

To achieve this new approach, Günther said NZZ adopted the “good-better-best” model.

“We wanted to create the flexibility to better create upsell opportunities for those willing to get more out of NZZ but also provide options for users that might look for more flexibility or for maybe more price-sensitive options,” she explained.

Now, a limited subscription to the NZZ app is available for about US$22 per month, and the premium Pro tier is offered at about US$58.

Although the prices are higher than many might expect, Günther said that is intentional: “Our goal is to build a sustainable digital-only business model. So that’s why we aim for these higher prices.”

And the strategy is working. As of early 2025, NZZ Pro is nearing 15,000 active subscriptions — a strong indication that audiences are willing to pay when the product delivers something exceptional.

Inside the relaunch

Günther took INMA members inside the strategy of the relaunch, which happened in August 2024. One of the most critical parts of NZZ’s strategy is that it didn’t want the premium Pro vision to diminish the standard app.

“We believe that introducing a premium tier must go hand-in-hand with providing a great experience across all tiers,” she said, emphasising that high engagement was essential to helping upsell the premium product.

Although the Pro tier was the main focus of the August relaunch, the refresh of the standard NZZ app elevated the user experience across the board. New engagement features include story features that showcase the latest articles by topics.

“At the moment, this creates three to four million views per month,” Günther said. “So we were really satisfied by how people adopted this well-known UI feature.”

NZZ also introduced a context feature that offers additional background on topics on authors and an automated summary.

To support personalisation, the “My NZZ” section gave users more control, allowing them to follow specific interests and streamline content relevance.

The product team even designed it with future premium integration in mind, building containers and interaction zones ready for exclusive content and features.

When it came to the Pro version, Günther said the team viewed it as “the business or first class that exists alongside economy, offering additional benefits while still allowing economy users to reach their destinations just as well.”

Pro features include such things as exclusive articles, a finite edition she explained is a digital presentation of curated print articles, as well as badges and community tools, including special markers in comment sections to help Pro users stand out. Pro also provides an ad-free experience.

Designed from the top down

One of the most innovative parts of NZZ’s journey was that it approached development through what Günther called a “top-down product strategy.”

“We always aim for this trickling down so [we looked at] what kind of Pro features maybe can come to the other tiers at some point to always make sure that also the overall experience is uplifted.”

This structure allowed NZZ to develop a differentiated experience without neglecting the base audience. It also ensures a continuous evolution of Pro, ensuring early adopters would keep getting new reasons to stay subscribed, while users of the NZZ app still have incentives to continue using it.

New tools have been developed to bring the Pro content to the forefront of editorial planning, and that will help further evolve the editorial concept, Günther said. Metrics like article traffic engagement help inform what type of stories convert and will shape the future selection of content. And that, she said, is helpful in balancing what serves the user’s interests while also helping achieve strategic goals.

Results tell the story

The numbers show that these changes are working, Günther said. Beyond the 15,000 Pro subscribers, NZZ has seen conversion rates of up to 60% from trial to paid users.

“That is a really nice number and also shows how strong the product or perception is,” she said.

Some of the credit can be pinned on busy, favourable news cycles and marketing campaigns, but Günther is quick to point out the product itself played a central role in the way users have embraced it: “The combination of content and the experience itself seems to convince people. It’s really nice to see.”

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