When a Quebec publisher invited subscribers to ‘pay what you can’, it discovered users valued its services more than they thought.
It launched the project to offset falling subscriptions, encouraging audiences to discover the quality and usefulness of its content. The result of the offer was a 4.2 per cent boost in subscriptions.
In an INMA Ideas blog, Les Coops de l’information principal director, audiences and platforms, and publisher of Le Soleil Marc Gendron explained the background.
“A little more than a year ago, we were looking ahead to the next 12 months, aware we had a few important milestones we couldn’t miss: We were planning our first subscription price increase since introducing our digital reader-revenue model five years earlier, and we were seeing our growth rate fall slightly below what was needed to meet the ambitious subscriber and revenue targets we had set,” he said.
“We knew we needed an innovative and bold plan, one that would hit more than one target at once. We needed to increase perceived value to retain existing subscribers while accelerating the conversion of new ones.”
That is when the ‘Pay what you can’ project was born – including new features, stricter content gating, and a flexible pricing campaign – with the “perfect moment” to launch it, the upcoming municipal elections in the autumn.
“Beyond the commercial objective, the campaign was rooted in a simple belief: a strong local 21democracy requires exhaustive and impartial coverage of municipal elections, and that coverage must remain financially accessible,” he said..
An increase in perceived value came through new features designed to foster engagement, account creation, interaction, and, ultimately, retention and conversion.
These included:
-a daily poll with local news-related questions requiring users to be logged in with at least a free user account.
-text-to-speech versions of our articles, a benefit exclusive to mid-tier and premium subscribers, but visible to everyone to encourage engagement and conversion.
-a new cross-device bookmarking and “keep reading” feature that also required users to log in.
‘La question du jour’ was a daily poll with local news-related questions requiring users to be logged in with at least a free user account, added to websites and mobile apps. More than 9,000 people answer questions every day.
“In addition, we tightened access to some of our most valuable content,” said Gendron . “Our chroniques –opinion pieces written by our columnists and editorialists – along with all content published more than 30 days earlier, became exclusive to paying subscribers. Simultaneous active logins were also limited to four devices per account to reduce account sharing.
“With these new perks and content restrictions in place, we needed to lower the barrier to entry so more people could experience the full value of our subscription offering, and discover the quality, relevance, uniqueness and usefulness of our content during the intense editorial period of the municipal elections.”
The project brought together product, editorial, marketing, customer services and technology teams, along with partners Wizeline and deRabane, to align product development, content, and promotion around a single, time-bound objective.
To give the project more impact, reach, and visibility, the ‘Pay what you can’ message was pushed consistently across channels. “Our partners helped us design a messaging and advertising campaign.
“Revolving around the message ‘Un média qui vous ressemble, un média qui vous rassemble’ (“A media that looks like you, a media that brings you together”), the campaign was deployed over a five-week period through thousands of marketing e-mails sent to newsletter subscribers and free registered users, retargeted off-platform advertising, dedicated Poool paywalls and a subscription landing page.
Some of the messaging was directly inspired by customer feedback, such as one comment saying that our ‘employee-owned, cooperative model gave back its meaning to local journalism’.
By highlighting our status as an employee-owned cooperative, we anchored the campaign in transparency and long-term trust rather than short-term discounting.
“The boldest part of the project was undoubtedly the flexible pricing component, bold because we have always been cautious about pricing and the impact of aggressive discounts on ARPU.
“Despite requesting a minimum of US$1 (A$1.40) per month for the first three months, the average monthly revenue from these promotional subscribers was initially US$3.12. It increased to US$3.39 when we added a suggested amount of US$5, and to US$3.50 when suggesting US$6.
“While the ARPU from this promotion remained below what we usually get from fixed-price offers, the campaign confirmed both our readers’ willingness to pay and the importance of carefully managing internal expectations around flexible pricing.
“We were fascinated to see that four out of five people opting for US$6 per month did so after we set that amount as the suggested choice, proving that removing friction and making choices more evident can greatly contribute to success.
“The results of the campaign met our most optimistic expectations. With a 4.2 per cent increase in total subscribers over the course of the promotion, we were extremely satisfied with the outcome. Even more encouragingly, 84 per cent of these new subscribers had never been subscribed before, showing us that there’s still ample room to grow.”