"Really, the move to Audience+ came from wanting the best of both worlds," said Nic Stevens, director of audience/distribution/subscriber services for NPG Newspapers. "For print subscribers, users can sign up using our existing circ system and have immediate access to the website. For digital-only subscribers, users don’t need to go through any extra steps. Audience+ lets us do both."
Earlier this year, NPG Newspapers migrated four of the group’s publications — St. Joseph News-Press, Atchison Globe, Hiawatha World and Green Acres — to Audience+, the dynamic smart meter from TownNews. The latter three are using Audience+ exclusively for paywalls, subscriptions and offer pop-ups. For the larger site, NewsPressNow.com, NPG chose a split workflow that uses Audience+ for paywalls and digital subscriptions, but redirects users for print packages.
Subscribers can choose from a trial offer, best value, print/digital combo, or register for free.
"For print subscribers, there are several steps to go through after the paywall link takes you to a different page," Stevens said. "Digital subscribers aren’t used to an experience like that. We were finding readers would start filling out the order form and then just stop."
With Audience+, subscribers can fill out key fields, purchase digital access and return to reading all within a few clicks. "That ease of being able to sign up on one page helps keep subscription abandonment down," Stevens said.
"The easier you can make it for the end user to sign up, the better off you're going to be. Audience+ eliminates so many different roadblocks and reasons to not subscribe."
Purchase a subscription using the one-page payment with Audience+.
Using Audience+, NPG Newspapers can target different audiences with customized offers, an ability that’s not available with standard, "hard" paywall systems. "It was quite laughable to show existing subscribers the pop-up asking them to subscribe. Plus, it was just a bad user experience," Stevens said.
Each site can now change the messaging for individual non-subscribers, users with ad blockers, or just to remind subscribers to login. "If you have a user who comes in all the time, you can give them one offer. If somebody just visited your site today, you can offer a registration or a newsletter signup."
Stevens can customize the personal experience and avoid giving readers "the one-size-fits-all" treatment. By tailoring the experience to different users, the new paywall helps get people in the door and subscribing more often.
"The other thing we gained with Audience+ was the ability to ask for a registration earlier than with the regular hard paywall," Stevens said. Asking for registrations allows users to continue reading for free simply by providing an email address. "This helps us grow our marketable audience. Before we were only collecting from contests, if we happened to get someone’s email address from a newsletter sign-up, or if our Customer Care team collected it during a phone call."
Since moving to Audience+, NPG Newspapers has seen a steady 19% increase in email registrations. "Now we can offer users one more option before locking down the paywall. It’s nice because we’re collecting that information," Stevens said. "User information is sometimes more valuable than the subscription itself."
For NPG, digital access is included with print subscriptions. Print subscribers are reminded to register their account for easy and free online access. Plus, users on the Green Acres site are able to register, order home delivery or make contributions using the one-page payment.
"I have to decide, what do I have time for and what can TownNews do?" Stevens said. "With Audience+ I can make these beautiful customized offers without knowing how to code. I can be an audience department of one and have this powerful paywall."
Audience+ is also fully integrated with Data Insights and BLOX CMS. With Data Insights, sites get 24/7 access to near real-time dashboards and actionable information. "I like the new dashboards. It gives us a lot more information and the subscription dashboards allow us to see who to target for retention."
For Stevens and NPG Newspapers, an all-in-one audience solution that’s fully integrated with their site’s CMS is a massive advantage. "Because we are such a small team here, we lean hard on our vendors. We rely on TownNews to perform the best in order for us to be able to do our jobs. I always say BLOX CMS was built for editors. You get all the great tools, all the great support, all the great stuff with TownNews. It's very reassuring."
