10:00 a.m.-12:45 p.m.
(New York time)

What is the state of media subscriptions in the beginning of the third year of a global pandemic?

According to the INMA benchmarks, our members on average doubled their online subscriber base in the past three years. Some brands grew even faster. So:

• What does success look like for beginners, intermediate and mature publishers?
• What strategies and tactics led to outstanding results and record-breaking milestones?
• When to focus on acquisition and when on retention? How to coordinate the two?
• Where should you expand – to new geographies or to new customer segments?
• Where to invest your marketing budget – building brand or driving performance?

In this module, we will distill the best practices of the reader revenue leaders, as well as get inspired by the academia and industry thinkers about the next decade of the news transformation to readers-first.

10:00 a.m.-10:10 a.m. (New York time)

Welcome and introduction to the Summit

Robert Whitehead, Moderator, Lead Digital Platform Initiative, INMA, Australia

10:10 a.m.-10:20 a.m. (New York time)

The state of news media subscriptions

Greg Piechota, Lead, Readers First Initiative, INMA, United Kingdom

10:20 a.m.-10:50 a.m. (New York time)

Transforming to digital- and subscriptions-first newsrooms: What it took to make change happen at The Financial Times

Lyndsey Jones, Author, Going Digital, and Former Executive Editor, The Financial Times, United Kingdom

10:50 a.m.-11:20 a.m. (New York time)

Building blocks of reader revenue strategy: The Telegraph’s path to 1 million subscribers by 2023

Chris Taylor, Chief Operating Officer, Telegraph Media Group, United Kingdom

11:20 a.m.-11:30 a.m. (New York time)

Unlocking reader revenue with Google: Best practices from GNI Digital Growth Programs across the world

Arun Venkataraman, Global Strategy Lead, Google News Initiative, United States

11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. (New York time)

Marketing subscriptions across the world: What news publishers can learn from video streaming leaders

Michael Ribero, Chief Subscriptions Officer, The Washington Post, and Former VP of Global Marketing, ViacomCBS, United States

12:00 p.m.-12:30 p.m. (New York time)

Saving the free press with readers’ support: The story behind the journalism crowdfunding success in Hungary

Veronika Munk, Founding Editor-in-Chief, Head of Content Development, Telex, Hungary

12:30 p.m.-12:45 p.m. (New York time)

Summary and takeaways of the day

Robert Whitehead, Moderator, Lead Digital Platform Initiative, INMA, Australia

10:00 a.m.-12:45 p.m.
(New York time)

According to an INMA end-of-year survey, the investment priorities for news publishers are: product (73%), data and research (73%) and content (60%). Many are also seeing opportunities in customer service (47%), promotion (43%) and pricing (40%).

This clearly shows the shift in priorities, as publishers’ subscription programmes mature – from content to product, and from intuition to evidence-based decisions.

In this module, we will review what the current state of art looks like:

• What subscription products – new and improved ones – do publishers see successful in the COVID era?
• What areas of coverage or experiences delight the audiences?
• What data and technology support new product development?
• What marketing mix works best to attract new segments of customers?
• What is the role of customer service in digital relationships?

10:00 a.m.-10:05 a.m. (New York time)

Welcome and introduction to the module

Yasmin Namini, Moderator, Digital Media Consultant and Advisor, United States

10:05 a.m.-10:30 a.m. (New York time)

Winning with fans: Rethinking journalism product for digital subscriptions at The Athletic

Paul Fichtenbaum, Chief Content Officer, The Athletic, United States

10:30 a.m.-10:55 a.m. (New York time)

Mobilising for growth: Lessons about strategy, people, and culture change from Gannett

Mayur Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Gannett, United States

10:55 a.m.-11:20 a.m. (New York time)

Making paywalls agile: Experimenting with access models at South China Morning Post

Adrian Lee, Senior Vice President, Audience Growth, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong

11:20 a.m.-11:30 a.m. (New York time)

Next generation paywalls: What The Globe and Mail Learned From Its Intelligent Paywall Engine

Gordon Edall, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer, Sophi, Canada

11:30 a.m.-11:55 a.m. (New York time)

Focus on acquisition: Developing benefits, segments, and channels at La Nacion

Agustina Roncaglione, Head of Subscription Acquisition, La Nacion, Argentina

11:55 a.m.-12:20 p.m. (New York time)

Raising the ceiling of digital subscriptions: Growth at Newsday after the pandemic

Patrick Tornabene, Chief Consumer Revenue and Strategy Officer, Newsday, United States

12:20 p.m.-12:45 p.m. (New York time)

Building a marketing machine: Connecting strategy, tactics, and organisation at Time

Laurie Truitt, VP Global Consumer Growth, Time, United States

12:45 p.m.-1:00 p.m. (New York time)

Summary and takeaways of the day

Yasmin Namini, Moderator, Digital Media Consultant and Advisor, United States

10:00 a.m.-12:45 p.m.
(New York time)

As a data and marketing technology stack becomes a backbone for digital business of news media, the new core capabilities include data capture, enrichment, segmentation, prediction, and attribution.

Yet data and martech has no value if not used. How do publishers integrate data and tech into their operations? What subscription-specific data products do they build? What are the proven use cases for AI and automation?

In this module, we we will talk about applying data and tech for subscription growth, and then we will split into three parallel workshop sessions:

• For reader revenue and marketing teams: How to plan an ambitious and realistic roadmap for the growth of your business?
• For editors and product teams: How to boost your content offering with smart automation?
• For data and research teams: How to attribute conversion or retention events to articles or features, and finally discover what really sells news subscriptions?

10:00 a.m.-10:05 a.m. (New York time)

Welcome and introduction to the module

Robert Whitehead, Moderator, Lead Digital Platform Initiative, INMA, Australia

10:05 a.m.-10:35 a.m. (New York time)

Core capabilities required for growth: Introducing online news subscriptions to India

L.V. Navaneeth, Chief Executive Officer, The Hindu Group, India

10:35 a.m.-11:05 a.m. (New York time)

Personalising subscriber experiences: How german regional publishers accelerate growth with data and AI

Meinolf Ellers, Chief Digital Officer, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), Germany

Christoph Mayer, Partner and Managing Director, Artificial Intelligence, Schickler, Germany

11:05 a.m.-11:10 a.m. (New York time)

Summary and takeaways of the day

Robert Whitehead, Moderator, Lead Digital Platform Initiative, INMA, Australia

10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(New York time)

Smart pricing strategies are the best-kept secrets of the subscription leaders, and INMA plans to reveal some of those in this module.

Brands that grew online reader revenue the fastest in the past three years often priced for penetration, sacrificing their average revenue per subscriber for the higher share of the total market. The gamble paid off in the pandemic.

In the next phase of the penetration game, publishers see opportunities in bundling and unbundling to boost value for money of their offers and appeal to segments beyond the heavy news consumers.

In the end, as Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale famously said: “There are only two ways to make money in business: bundling and unbundling.”

• What to bundle and what to unbundle?
• What content and benefits sells?
• How sustainable is penetration pricing?
• How to communicate changes in value propositions and prices?
• How to test new ideas?

10:00 a.m.-10:05 a.m. (New York time)

Welcome and introduction to the module

Suzi Watford, Moderator, Former Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice-President, Consumer, Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, United States

10:05 a.m.-10:35 a.m. (New York time)

Maximising subscriber lifetime value: Research and best practices in proactive retention management

Eva Ascarza, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School, United States

10:35 a.m.-11:00 a.m. (New York time)

Dynamic pricing models: Insights from Bild’s pricing experiments

Daniel Mussinghoff, Director Premium, Bild, Axel Springer, Germany

11:00 a.m.-11:25 a.m. (New York time)

Pay as much as you want: Designing and communicating benefits of the Daily Maverick

Styli Charalambous, Chief Executive Officer, Daily Maverick, South Africa

11:25 a.m.-11:35 a.m. (New York time)

Pricing for acquisition and retention: Benchmarks from Piano customers across the world

Patrick Appel, Director of Research, Piano, United States

Maria Sgromo, Head of Subscriptions, RCS Media Group, Italy

11:35 a.m.-12:00 p.m. (New York time)

Embracing experiments: Planning, scaling, and learning from experiments at The Wall Street Journal

Peter Gray, Vice-President, Product, Dow Jones, United States

12:00 p.m.-12:25 p.m. (New York time)

Content that sells: Digital subscription growth toolbox of Dagbladet

Alexandra Beverfjord, Editor-In-Chief and Chief Executive Officer, Dagbladet, Norway

12:25 p.m.-12:30 p.m. (New York time)

Summary and takeaways of the day

Suzi Watford, Moderator, Former Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice-President, Consumer, Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, United States

10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(New York time)

If culture really eats any strategy for breakfast, let’s break down what change to subscription-first, customer-centric, and data-positive culture really requires:

• How to manage changes necessary to adjust the editorial content, product, and marketing to the needs of paying readers?
• How to move our teams’ mindset from transactional to member relationships?
• How to lead teams with metrics, while empowering them to use their best judgment?
• How to win the arms race for the best content and talent with new competitors, such as creators’ platforms?

In this module, we will address the number one barrier for business transformation to customer-centric: culture. Hear stories from the trenches and share your own experiences.

At this end of this module, INMA’s Greg Piechota will deliver a keynote on the outlook for news subscriptions, and distill the biggest learnings of the summit.

10:00 a.m.-10:05 a.m. (New York time)

Welcome and introduction to the module

Nicki Purcell, Moderator, President, Insite, United States

10:05 a.m.-10:35 a.m. (New York time)

News Corp’s growth playbook: Building and scaling new value propositions for the current and new audiences

Brendan Collogan, Director, Subscriptions, News Corp Australia

10:35 a.m.-11:00 a.m. (New York time)

Towards the North Star: How Le Journal Du Dimanche is executing its growth plan

Lisa Boucher, Head of Digital Marketing and Business Development, Le Journal Du Dimanche (Lagardère Média News), France

11:10 a.m.-11:35 a.m. (New York time)

Riches in the niches: Identifying and marketing to narrow segments at Folha de S. Paulo

Anderson Demian Lopes de Souza, Executive Director of Consumer Market and Digital Strategy, Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil

11:35 a.m.-12:00 p.m. (New York time)

The full funnel ownership: Organising for scaling beyond heavy news readers

Darya Ushakova, Vice-President, Consumer Marketing, Philadelphia Inquirer, United States

12:00 p.m.-12:05 p.m. (New York time)

Summary and takeaways of the day

Nicki Purcell, Moderator, President, Insite, United States

12:05 p.m.-12:30 p.m. (New York time)

News subscription outlook for 2022 and beyond

Greg Piechota, Lead, Readers First Initiative, INMA, United Kingdom