Minal Bopaiah

Email Marketing for Subscription Content: Getting Past the Basics

As we’ve discussed before (and detailed in our Retention Handbook), there are some easy best practices when it comes to email marketing: Create a clean list with double opt-ins, have a welcome series for new members, A/B test your subject lines, make sure the first email contains nuts and bolts information, etc. But what do you do when you’ve implemented all the best practices and you still think you have room for improvement? Michael McCurdy of TestingMom.com…

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Newspapers Generate $10.4B in Circulation Revenue, Increase Due to Online Subscriptions

The newspaper industry generated $10.4 billion in circulation revenue last year and saw big gains in digital revenue growth from online subscriptions, according to a new report by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). While there was still a decline in newspaper revenue of 2% over 2011, that decline was not as steep as previous years (2010-2011 saw a decline of 6%). I The most optimistic news, however, was that HUGE growth in online subscriptions. Digital-only…

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FT Focuses on UX with New iPad App, Promises Payment Innovation Coming

The Financial Times (FT) released a second iteration of its Web-based HTML5 iPad app this week that focuses much more on user experience as the way readers prefer to interact with the digital publication’s content. The new app lets readers toggle between live viewing of the site’s content and a static page based on the paper’s layout (called Morning Edition, which displays the layout of the print paper each morning). The app also lets users clip…

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Case Study Lessons: With Hard Paywall Sites, Use Downloadable Reports to Generate Traffic and Leads

The preference for metered paywalls usually stems from fear of losing SEO traffic with a hard paywall. Yet, there are some sites — particularly B2B information publishers and Big Data sites — that are not conducive to metered paywalls. For those publishers that need (or prefer) to lock up their quality content, we recommend you take a look at PitchBook. The B2B research firm and data-driven subscription site doesn’t let much out. There’s no free trial…

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Court Rules Against ReDigi’s ‘Resale’ Model

A federal court ruled this past weekend that ReDigi was engaging in copyright infringement by selling “used” iTunes tracks, saying the “music locker” could not use the first sale defense to justify selling consumers’ iTunes downloads. ReDigi facilitates sales of iTunes music by copying customers’ tracks into a cloud-based “locker.” When someone purchases a track, the song is transferred to the new owner’s locker and wiped from the customer’s locker and computer. ReDigi takes a 60%…

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How High Can Your Conversion Rates Go on Save Attempts for Cart Abandons?

One of our favorite best practices is to trigger “save attempts” on site visitors that abandon your shopping cart for online subscriptions or other paid content products. But knowing when and how to initiate these save attempts requires finesse and a certain amount of restraint. That’s why we’re happy that Tod Cooperman, President of ConsumerLab.com, will be speaking on this important topic at Subscription Site Summit. ConsumerLab set up its “save attempts” protocol a year ago. At…

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YouTube (Quietly) Launches Online Movie Rentals in India

The best kept secret in online content for the past week has been Google’s launch of paid movie rentals via its Indian YouTube channel. The news was first reported a few hours after the launch on March 28, 2013, by Real Time News, a “web-oriented news source” catering to Indian audiences. The rentals seems to be only offered on a one-time basis so far; there’s no subscription billing. There’s also a higher price for “foreign” films, i.e.,…

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Google News Won’t Index Sponsored Content

While numerous free and paid content sites explore native advertising, or sponsored content, to raise revenues, Google News seems to be the one policing editorial integrity these days. Google announced on its blog that it will block entire sites posting “affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party),” unless such content is separated from news. Google recommends hosting sponsored content on a different directory, blocking it from Google News bots by using…

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Online Subscriptions Generate $18B/Year Despite Low Conversions, Report Finds

The online subscription industry is generating $18.3 billion in revenues, according to Subscription Site Insider’s recently-released 2013 Online Subscription Benchmark Report and detailed in the chart below. The report, released this month, has over 300 data charts, and covers a variety of niche sites –from news to B2B to consumer digital publications to eLearning and database sites. Moreover, the report provides benchmarks and stats on various operating and marketing concerns. For example, the report — based on…

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Bloomberg Businessweek Launches Metered Paywall on iPad App

New and exciting news for those of you interested in iPad apps! Bloomberg Businessweek has just re-configured its iPad app to allow three free articles, in effect launching a metered paywall on the most convenient digital platform for consumer magazines. Now, instead of committing to a monthly or annual subscription, prospects can download the current issue’s app to access a table of contents and view three articles. All other articles remain locked unless the user pays…

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