In 2018, MishMash Media’s L’actualité was ready to make the jump from a legacy paywall provider to a dynamic subscription platform.
To quote Edouard Jordan, Manager of Technology & Innovation at MishMash Media, “Pelcro is a game-changer in this industry. They’re challenging decades-old models and bringing technology to the forefront.”
Its previous subscription manager historically focused on print subscriptions and brought limited online experience. L’actualité, along with its parent company MishMash Media, wanted an adaptable, tailored solution that would give the publication the power to experiment and iterate with its subscription strategy.
By April 2019, L’actualité had a subscription experience powered by Pelcro. Six months later, it witnessed the following benefits:
13 percent increase in gross revenue
134 percent increase in customers paying by credit card and activating auto-renewals
64 percent decrease in customer tickets thanks to self-serve subscription functionality
Two key factors went into achieving these results: excellent content delivered by a long-standing Canadian publication and Pelcro’s user-driven subscription platform.
Increasing Conversion Rates Through a Streamlined Subscription Experience
Paywalls don’t scare away readers. Poor user experience does.
Prior to working with Pelcro, L’actualité only had a small number of articles behind a limited paywall. The news magazine hesitated to implement a full paywall due to limitations from their legacy provider and an understandable fear among publishers: Will an aggressive paywall increase a visitor’s chances of leaving the site?
L’actualité engaged Pelcro with the goal of implementing a full paywall without scaring readers away. Our technology provided a user experience that set both the reader and the publisher up for success.
To meet this goal, L’actualité needed a subscription page that took online engagement behavior into account. Most media subscription paywalls redirect to a new tab or window, but this causes conversion rates to drop.
The average human attention span is almost three times lower than the average internet load speed time.
Since April 2019, a Pelcro paywall greets L’actualité readers on the same page. It also breaks up the process into manageable steps and only includes the minimum amount of fields required to make the transaction. We recommend a maximum of three fields, which carries an average conversion rate of 25 percent. Just one more field can lower a publication’s conversion rate by five percent. Of course, Pelcro’s system is completely customizable, so publishers can add fields, if necessary.
Pelcro’s optimized user experience makes it 3 times faster for a reader to subscribe. It also makes it straightforward to select the appropriate subscription package. Notably, Pelcro’s platform offers and fulfills both physical and print subscriptions.
Designing a navigable conversion funnel also helps transition longtime subscribers from paper-based payment methods to online payments. One of the benefits of encouraging readers to pay by credit card is offering the auto-renewal option. Renewal rates increase by 87 percent when publishers offer an auto-renewal option.
L’actualité experienced a 134 percent increase in customers paying by credit and opting for auto-renewals.
Moreover, since Pelcro’s introduction in April 2019, L’actualité’s gross revenue has jumped up by 13 percent.
Pelcro equipped L’actualité with a single source of data truth to inform future marketing campaigns and enable integrations with 3rd party software.
Successful businesses make data-driven decisions, but many publishers struggle to capture the information needed to generate revenue in a strategic manner. With the right data, publishers can understand their readers better and improve the overall experience.
Pelcro provided L’actualité with a back-end system that combined data about its subscription service, email newsletter service, and customer account details into one single source of truth.
In addition, Pelcro’s platform makes it easy for different sets of information to relate to each other. Publishers can link multiple platforms and activities like commenting systems, accounting software, Facebook ad campaigns, and more.
Pelcro’s dashboards improved L’actualité’s ability to understand subscription strategies, but it also made it simpler for the team to execute on specific insights.
For example, Pelcro set up an email paywall for L’actualité. This is a paywall that requests a reader’s email address to access an article. New visitors receive two metered (free) articles before encountering a paywall. If they aren’t ready to subscribe, they can enter their email (and any other information the publisher deems valuable) in exchange for two more free articles.
This interaction provides L’actualité with the information they need to continue nurturing this reader until they become a paid subscriber.
With a single source of truth that integrates data from all sources – including print subscriptions – L’actualité can glimpse the entire funnel to understand which pieces of content encourage readers to provide their email and which email campaigns generate the most conversions and over what period of time.
L’Actualité Readers Access a User Experience Similar to Their Most Frequented Online Platforms
Today’s digital media consumers expect online experiences similar to those found on their favorite streaming platforms or e-commerce stores. This is especially true for younger audiences. They expect full control over their accounts, including the ability to change their account information and manage their subscription without calling in.
Pelcro’s subscription service provides L’actualité’s readers with the ability to log in and carry out several tasks on their own such as:
Create a new password
Update their credit card information
Manage their email newsletter subscriptions
Upgrade their subscription package
Add new articles to their favorites
L’actualité experienced a 64 percent decrease in customer tickets since implementing this self-serve solution.
Ready to Deliver a Modern Subscription Experience to Your Readers?
Now you have a better idea about what a modern subscription experience can add to your business. Thus, it’s time to get a closer look.
Every publisher is different. As such, you can schedule a demo with a member of the Pelcro team to see what that would look like for your business.
Ensuring that your subscription model fits both your business and your readers is the key to gaining higher reader revenue.