The America's Newspapers Senior Leadership Conference was uplifting! We spoke with many publishing organizations that have been examining online consumer data for more than a decade and are now ready to focus on one giant aspect for immediate scrutiny and transformation.
During a conversation with one publisher, they asked “if we use your service, (Make it Free, which pays them for every article they give to a consumer for free), would this cause them to lose customer contact?”
The short answer is no. The long answer much more fascinating.
Publisher paywalls currently turn away more than 90% of daily consumers who do not want to either register or subscribe to a publication. They are at the paywall for a moment (customer contact point) and that moment has become a highly negative experience and generates an immediate exit.
Can you imagine that for every 100 people in line at a bakery, the baker turns away more than 90?
We all understand the necessity of a publisher having a paywall, though this isn’t the net effect desired. But in a consumer’s mind the door was shut in their face.
Nearly every publisher we have spoken to about our service admit they exhibit the identical consumer behavior when confronted with other publishers’ paywalls.
In a consumer’s mind, they were enticed to click link and came to your site to read your article, and they were told no. The size of this audience being told no massively dwarfs the size of your current subscribers and registrants combined.
These consumers simply refuse to give you their email and or a credit card for good reasons; they don’t want to pay for a single or several articles, and they don’t want to be hounded to subscribe for months on end if they register. We all understand this behavior.
So yes, your publication does not immediately get the gratification of receiving a consumer’s email, though the consumer has already repeatedly declined to give it to you … so the answer is really no.
What you do achieve is a truly transformational change in the consumer — publisher relationship, behavior and net revenue potential.
You can forgo your immediate “aspiration” to get their email or credit card (something you’re not going to get 98% of the time), and instead earn immediate net revenue and generate an engagement with the consumer by giving them a solution and access to your great story.
Turn a negative consumer contact into a positive consumer contact. Immediately get paid and get consumer engagement, the only difference is that you get paid by us instead of the consumer!
You’ve now achieved consumer alchemy!
With Make it Free, you employ a solution on your paywall that pays you to gain consumer engagement, while the consumer received what they wanted to get at the price they were willing to pay, nothing.
How much does your organization spend annually in marketing to get a subscriber?
Why not use this transformational approach to positively convert the consumers already at your door and openly wanting your product, into immediate revenue! The longer it takes for a consumer potentially become a subscriber, the more net revenue you earn.
This is a paradigm shift for the publishing industry!
How does Make it Free make money?
Each consumer agrees to receive four branded emails or maybe download an app with a single activation email. Brands want this positive-minded consumer that they just enabled to get something they wanted for free via Make it Free. Each time a consumer opens an email they receive a reward coin that when accumulated can then be exchanged for electronic gift cards.
Why are we getting a 32% average conversion rate when a consumer clicks our button on your paywall?
We believe it’s because we tell each consumer up front that we will not sell their data and the reason they currently reuse the service an average of four times per month is because of your great content.
Even more exciting, we have a universal signup. The more publications using the service means the easier it is for more people to use the service at your site, even though they may have originally signed up on a different site.
Let’s transform your current paywall into the massive net revenue generator you expected it to be.
Everyone wins when you Make it Free!
Connect with Kevin Smith, regional president, at kevin@mifpartners.com.
