The advantages of synchronization for media and publication subscriptions

Print is dead … many have claimed. As far back as Roger Fidler’s 1981 groundbreaking essay titled “Newspapers in the Year 2020,” analysts and experts have been predicting the demise of print in favor of digital formats. Well, here we are 40 years later.

Yes, print sales across all markets are generally down. And, yes, digital sales across all markets are generally up. Nevertheless, looking closer provides a less clear picture. Here are some other factors to consider:

• Analyzing print vs. digital becomes particularly interesting and important to publishers when considering the difficulty of monetizing digital subscriptions. Over the late 90s and early 00s, we saw many clients begin offering free digital subscriptions, almost as an afterthought to their core print offerings. This was perhaps a devasting miscalculation that has perpetually shaped consumer expectations.
• Print book sales have ticked up over the past two years, largely thought to be an effect of the coronavirus pandemic. It remains to be seen whether that trend can continue or will start to fade.
• Existing subscription companies increased their overall customer base by 31% in 2021. This reflects the focus on consumers’ ability to participate in subscription services rather than purchasing a product, service or content in full.
• Niche content publishers are reporting print circulation stabilization as well. The numbers are not as robust as in days past, but they are no longer dropping at alarming rates. You can find some positive (or at least neutral) outlooks for print in most markets.

It would be nice to generalize these trends with specific indicators, but that’s simply not where we are in 2022.

Are digital publications the future of subscriptions?

From our view of the subscription market and trends with our clients, print still has a significant role to play with publishers for the foreseeable future. Some people still want print — either the demographic and/or preference. Additionally, the print component may still represent the flagship of the publisher, which is important to maintain. Going completely digital can dilute brand awareness. Publishers still need to be everywhere that people want them to be.

However, to position themselves for a bright future, publishers are cleverly bundling their print and digital content. This seems simple enough, but there is often tremendous sophistication behind those bundles — handling different periods of time when content is served, delivering, varying combinations of content, supporting migration paths for customers looking to swap content at any given time, offering different pricing plans that change from month to month, handling complex customer service requests (such as suspensions or billing the customer before/after content delivery) and much more.

Many subscription platforms simply do not address this business model and opt for a simplified billing model of digital-only content, which forces publishers to figure it out on their own through bolt-on products or clunky integrations.

Conversely, Advantage provides hundreds of features to manage both print and digital subscriptions with ease — either separately or combined. These features are all designed with considerations for marketing, customer service, fulfillment and finance. When combining print and digital, we simply call this … Synchronization. We introduced this concept in our software five years ago and have seen a steady increase in development demand. In fact, our most active client’s adoption is about 40% with additional projects on the horizon.

Optimizing your publication subscription through synchronization

Fundamentally, synchronization is serving subscriptions while keeping all digital and print content in sync.

For example, bundling a print newspaper with digital access that automatically renews each month, with a credit card payment, that sees a 5% increase over the first six months until leveling off — is supported by synchronization. Or imagine a weekly subscription that includes digital content and a monthly print subscription — again, synchronization is the answer.

Migrate from a bundle including print to digital-only? Yes! Migrate from digital-only to a bundle that includes print? Yes! Suspend the bundle for a week? Yes. Accurate earnings/liability? Flexible renewals? Recurring payments? Yes. Yes. Yes!

Advantage is specifically designed to support both straightforward and complex models using the same set of concepts and features. Platforms unable to keep these aspects synchronized present many headaches for publishers — renewals, billing, distribution, customer service issues, changing content queries and many, many more.

AdvantageCS has taken the time over our past 40+ years to understand all aspects of the workflow so that synchronization satisfies, not only the customer, but also the entirety of back-office operations. Additionally, we’ve leveraged many of our existing software principles to incorporate synchronization into our base product as a core offering so that it is available to all our clients. If you think synchronization might be the right model for you, reach out to your account manager or email us for more information.

Is synchronization the right strategy for my publication subscription?

• Do you serve print and digital content together?
• Do you and/or your customers think about a bundle as content that just gets fulfilled regardless of medium?
• Do you think about subscriptions over time vs. issues?
• Do you need comprehensive customer service options for upgrading/downgrading/swapping content regardless of medium?
• Do you need end-to-end management of a subscription from promotions to fulfillment (digital or print) to financial handle earnings/liabilities?
• Do you need flexible models for synchronization, non-synchronization, print only, digital only and print + digital?

If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then Advantage’s synchronization is the right move for you.