Lee's paid content launch successful in six markets, going Lee-wide
Summary: Lee Enterprises successfully launched paid access to digital content using the metered model at six small properties, and based on positive results is now launching paid content models Lee-wide. This approach is more conservative than Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's forced upsell for print subscribers. The main focus was on converting digital only via the metered model, with a discounted opt-in for print subscribers, "Have the convenience of clicking for your news for just pennies a day." Here is how the launch was put together and prelimary results.
Company: Lee Enterprises
Key Executive: Suzanna Frank, VP, Audience
Challenge: Lee Enterprises wanted to test paid circulation strategy for many of its small markets. The objectives were three fold:
1.Don’t lose advertising
2.Create a new revenue stream
3.Establish the value of content
Strategy: To test the initiative Lee chose six markets in Montana and Wyoming that had at least 82% to 90 percent penetration in term of total audience: Billings, Butte, Helena, Missoula, Hamilton (Ravalli) and Casper, Wyo.
The audience breakdown for Billings, within that universe was fairly typical - and a good indication of small market, middle America newspaper audiences:
47% print exclusive
25% both print and digital
10% digital only
5% non-readers, but newspaper "brand users." That is, this last category are people who don’t consume news on the digital platform but answered a survey that they do “use it in some way.”
That means that in Billings, 72% of the audience reads print, and only 35% uses digital products to access news online, whether or not they also read a paper.
To give idea of how this breaks down by age group, take a look at the following study of the Billings audience, given that the green area is digital only, the green and white area is digital and print. Both these areas are the core market for the unforced upsell, with the age group 30 to 39 years old having the largest share, and the 18 to 29 year-olds statisticaly equal to the 40 to 59 year olds in digital usage:
Lee employed Press+ to set up meters on six websites. Print subscribers did to pay for digital access for the first time, but at a reduced cost. Digital only rates were monthly and yearly. Obits did count, however, the meter was not set up for the mobile web or apps.
Here is the initial model for the number of pages viewed before the welcome, warn and stop, and pricing:
A broad internal and external public relations campaign explained the program. Internal communications included:
*Informational all company staff meeting
*Internal only "faq" on the initiative
*Sales training with talking point for advertisers
External communications included:
*Letter from the publisher to readers
*Print and online advertising with the slogan, “The choice is yours”. Here is an example of a print ad:
Results:
*As of March, 2012, .28% of UV's were now paid subscribers.
*There were 6700 total digital subscribers in the six markets
*The least successful market, Casper, Wyoming, was the one with the highest pre-existing e-paper sales
*A column to communicate changes with the community got about 50/50 positive to negative comments.
*Page views dipped and returned , with net loss of 11%.
* No loss of visitors or advertising, though visitors are “learning to work the meter” by waiting until the next month to continue viewing.
*Most successful category of subscribers are non-print subscribers who account for 66% of purchasers.
*Not much impact on home delivery. Did see slight improvement in single issue sales in 5 of 6 markets, especially Sunday, but it was hard to say that was the reason.
Lessons Learned
*Lightbox warnings after three pages created a high exit rate, they were dropped (note: light boxes overall have 51% higher conversion rates industrywide, so this is an a/b test for the warning page, not the use of light boxes which are shown to improve results). Prices are now included in the 15th page, which look like this:
.
*Next step is to try a lot of different things, including a 99 cents per week offer to kick start subscriptions. Look at bundling Sunday with digital.
*Will be implementing paid and metered across most Lee markets within the year
Many thanks to Suzanna Frank, VP, Audience, who presented this information at NAA MediaXChange 2012.
The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and MediaExecsTech, developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine, to showcases perspectives from around the world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.
