Category: Community

Unfortunately, that’s not the typical path of users today. Inundated with options and slow to trust any given content site, most take a longer journey toward subscription, if they get there at all. To help them along, media brands need to offer content that connects. But they can also demonstrate added value that gives users further reason to invest – creating a community experience that drives loyalty to their brand.

Understanding the Path to Subscription

The path to subscription isn’t the same for everyone. Some readers might visit a site for months before they choose to subscribe, while for others it just takes a visit or two. Some never choose to subscribe at all. For content creators, the key is to find ways to increase the value of their service, and encourage a quicker journey to conversion.

To do that, modern media companies need ways to maximize the value of their product, in turn reducing churn and minimizing the number of visits it takes to convert. They might do that by offering exclusive content, like a daily crossword puzzle or expert Q&A, or go even further to improve their reader experience overall, through live content or better ways to connect. In fact, an informed balance between those two things – maximizing value and improving the user experience – is often the key to building their subscription base. And they’re closely linked.

Put simply, paying subscribers want to feel that they’re getting extra value, and that sense of value is tied closely to the experience they have.

Adding User Value

It’s no coincidence that over 80 percent of registrations happen on pages that have value-add features.¹ In fact, it’s just common sense.

Consider, for example, a sports site that reports baseball scores in real time. Now add in live chat functionality that allows fans to discuss a game as it unfolds. Suddenly you have a gathering spot – a community of like-minded individuals. Users aren’t just checking the scores, but also engaging in commentary and sharing ideas with each other. Add a livestream of the game itself, so that everyone can watch together while they chat, and you’ve created even more value. Make it so users have to be subscribers before they can participate at all, and it’s only natural that they’ll want to join up.

These are the types of value-add features that can help enhance the user experience to grow audience engagement and subscriptions. But it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation. Building up a subscriber base is reliant on understanding the needs of your audience. For one site, direct access to exclusive content might be the key, for another it may be turning off advertising for subscribers. Direct engagement from journalists or a personalized profile with custom notifications to grow an onsite community presence are other value-add features that can ultimately sway anonymous users to convert and grow a relationship with your brand.

Whatever strategy media providers use, building a direct audience relationship and creating a valuable experience on their owned and operated channels not only impacts engagement – increasing the frequency of user visits, encouraging return visits, and adding to the overall time spent on site – but can also create conversions and ultimately affect their bottom line.

Congratulations, You Have a Subscriber

Converting a user into a subscriber may take some extra effort, but that effort is worth it, because subscribers have value. Besides being more loyal and engaged readers, subscribers grant you access to the details of their behavior on your site. Capturing their engagement metrics can drive media companies forward to even more growth.

So understanding the path to subscription, and the value you can add at every step, is more important than ever. But what happens when you succeed and manage to create enough loyalty to build your subscription base?

Hint: you can’t stop adding value then.

Acquiring a customer is only half the battle. Keeping them is the next step.

To find out more about the value of subscribers and four ways you can keep them engaged, read our next blog post in this series: What’s In a Premium Subscription?

As media companies look to differentiate their offerings, diversify revenue streams and focus on their readers, many are choosing to push their premium content behind paywalls – available only to their subscribers. Others are choosing a hybrid experience, with metered visits that offer a hint of their site’s value before also making it available through subscription only.

In both cases, they’re saving their best content for a small percentage of their readers. And for a lot of media providers today, it’s a smart move – but it’s only the start.

The Value of Subscribers

Industry reports show that subscribers, on average, make up only about 5-10% of a publication’s unique visitors. That may seem like a tiny fraction of your readers, but ultimately it’s this segment that drives most of your overall revenue. That means it’s not a group you should ignore.

Not everyone will become a subscriber, but those who do feel a closer affinity to your brand, content and contributors. They’ve also been presented with the right offer, at the right time, to the right person on the right channel. But getting them to subscribe is only the first step. These loyal and engaged fans still need to be entertained, delighted and surprised. Maintaining them as subscribers can take just as much work as gaining their loyalty did in the first place.

That may start with offering them the premium content not available to anyone else. But there are other ways to keep your subscribers coming back as well.

Earning Subscriber Engagement

Content counts, but to keep your subscribers engaged you need to go beyond that. And that begins with understanding what engagement is in the first place – and what converts that engagement into a subscription.

For media providers, engagement isn’t just a single metric, but rather a combination of how many times someone comes to your site (frequency), and how long they spend interacting with your content once they’re there (time spent). Both play key roles in a user’s decision to convert, and – as a result – can greatly affect your bottom line.

To accomplish that, modern news media companies and lifestyle brands promote engagement in four unique ways. All expand the value of their subscriptions by increasing the frequency of visits and building deeper attachment overall. These include:

To find out more about the best tools to help you build your own subscriber engagement, contact us.

Building Community Through Live Conversations

Audiences want instant access. That means when sports journalists are reporting on a game, sports fans want to be right there with them and discuss the game as it happening and when popular television shows air, avid viewers want to chat about them immediately.

Whether it’s a subscriber-only offer, or a registration path for readers who want to participate, live conversations provide a direct route to creating a connected and personalized experience. Through informed discussions led by journalists and experts, media sites can offer community members the chance to join a live conversation they care about in real time – from wherever they are and on whatever device they choose. All of which adds brand value while creating user loyalty. After all, when you’re the source of not only the story, but the conversation too, you create and strengthen the community that is connected by your site.

The stats back that up as well.  Live conversations not only drive registrations but also result in twice the time spent on page.* And that’s only the beginning.

*Analyzed data compiled both before and after the introduction of Viafoura Live Chat during a live event

Trust. In today’s media environment, it’s the cornerstone to growing a loyal community of registered users and paid subscribers.

Users today crave a direct relationship at the source of information, with a brand that provides a safe environment where they can connect and consume information. More and more, users are willing to pay for exactly that, while advertisers are also making it a priority.

But – in an age of “fake news,” data breach scandals, and information overload propelled by social media – site visitors will only become registered users and paid subscribers with brands that they trust. And building that trust means changing up the traditional revenue models a lot of online publishers rely on.

So how do you create enough trust to convert anonymous users into registered subscribers? Then how do you keep it?

Trust begins with data handling, privacy policies and regulations

Trust is a driving issue throughout the web today. Social media sites like Facebook have already faced public scrutiny for how they handle the privacy of their users’ data, gaining disfavor after allowing third parties to access users’ personal information for both commercial and political gains. When Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to testify before US government officials over the Cambridge Analytica data breach it became clear he’d broken the public’s trust.

And publishers and content producers are just as accountable to their audiences. Those based in the European Union, or who are targeting or monitoring the behavior of audiences in the EU, are also accountable to European regulators. With the newly implemented GDPR regulations, media companies now have a fiduciary responsibility to uphold these laws when engaging with European audiences, and must remain transparent in how personal information data is collected and handled through privacy policies, or face harsh financial penalties. This is a new precedent impacting the web globally, with more countries expected to follow suit.

Whether forced through regulation or the threat of a tarnished public image, online publishers have to earn trust to gain loyalty. And to earn a registered user means providing the details of how their personal information is shared, stored, tracked and deleted.

Engagement builds a sense of belonging

Trust is multi-faceted, though, and the right data policy is only the first step. Advertisers, journalists and loyal community members also want a safe environment where healthy and productive discussions can take place, and where they can get to know your community and develop that trust naturally.

When your writers and journalists participate in the online commenting section, community engagement goes up. With so much time and money being spent on discovery, enabling your audience to connect with both your content and writers through real-time conversations goes a long way in building a loyal relationship with users. Providing author engagement to drive loyalty and trust with your audience keeps them returning and spending more time on your site.

But also ensure that the community you offer is a safe one. Upholding community guidelines in real time with automated moderation can save community members and writers from personal attacks, hate speech and harassment, creating a positive user experience they can all trust. Community management standards can be maintained automatically through moderation technology that will protect your brand and audience from malicious behavior, while auto moderation also offers internal efficiencies so newsrooms no longer have to invest time managing the comments section but can instead focus on high-quality engagement and reporting.

Monetization begins with loyalty

The value of trust and brand loyalty goes beyond just audience engagement, too. In today’s world of big data and robust analytics, advertiser expectations are more sophisticated than ever, and monetization itself relies on users’ relationship with your site.

It’s no longer enough to just get clicks on a page – especially with click-bait and bots inflating those numbers. Instead, advertisers want to see growth in brand loyalty before partnering with publishers. For proof of that, they want and expect to see assurance metrics that prove that audiences are loyal enough to stick around long enough to consume their content. And not only do they want to see engaged users, they need to see brand safety standards in place that will support partnering with the publisher representing their brand.

Advertising isn’t the only monetization model that benefits from trust, either. There is a shift in the publishing world that goes back to the original roots of monetizing the relationship with an audience through paid subscriptions. Today, that takes form through the incorporation of paywalls and a new focus on reader revenue.

Audiences seek out coverage from trusted sources that allows them to actively participate and engage in the conversation as it unfolds – and they’re often willing to pay for that. By offering a seamless personalized user experience, introducing low page-load times and focusing on UX design, media companies can grow audience loyalty through engagement by offering user-centric features that help maintain that relationship. By engaging your users through content and personalized features, you can keep loyal registered users coming back.

Loyalty and trust go hand and hand

Attaining trust and driving a user to become a registered subscriber requires a value exchange between the online publisher and the reader. By giving your community different ways to consume content and interact directly on their trusted channel of choice – your media site – you power that exchange and encourage loyalty and revenue.

By offering protection for users to safely engage while delivering a personalized brand experience, media companies can grow their audiences by developing trust – converting unknown visitors into registered users, and maintaining that trust through the loyalty of a subscriber.