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Year-End Sales Tip: Tie Your Gift Subscription Offers to Your Renewal Efforts

News, Subscriber Acquisition, Subscriber Retention /

We just love what The New Yorker is doing this holiday season to increase their renewal rates. The publication is tying its gift subscription offers to its renewal efforts, giving existing subscribers the chance to renew their subscription and give a gift subscription for free! That’s two subscriptions for the price of one! The offer was sent via email and are intended for the print publication, but its easy to adopt for online and digital subscriptions. And…

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Financial Times Hits 300,000 Digital Subscribers with 6% Conversion Rate

Business Services, FInance, News, Subscriber Acquisition /

The Financial Times had a 17% jump in its number of digital subscribers this past year, reaching 313,000, according to Robert Andrews at paidContent.org. That means that the London-based financial news site (straggling both B2C breaking news and the B2B niche) has outpaced its print subscription numbers, which were 280,124 in August of 2012 (ABC-verified). It also means that, with 5 million registered users, the site has a conversion rate of 6% for registered-user-to-paying-digital-subscriber, which is…

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Two Paywall Software Providers Circumvent Cookies in Metered Paywalls

News, Technology /

Like all other online technology, paywall platforms seem to be ever-evolving. This week, Tinypass, a Web software company that helps manage paywalls for small publishers, announced that its rolling out a metered paywall option for its clients. The new meter function will be offered as a plugin for Wordpress or Drupal platforms, or a separate API, and publishers can choose to run the meter by number of articles retrieved or by time frame (e.g., 24 hours). But…

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Should NYT and Local Papers Drop Their Paywalls for Hurricane Sandy?

News, Subscriber Acquisition /

This week, a number of news sites, including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, and Newsday, dropped their paywalls in response to Hurricane Sandy, which seemed like a highly ethical move. After all, journalism is meant to inform the public, and it’s a bit unseemly to keep news about impending destruction behind a paywall. But this may not just be an ethical/PR move. After releasing its Q3 financial reports, it looks…

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Netflix Pushes International Growth, But Shares Fall as U.S. Subscriber Growth Slows

Business Strategy, Entertainment and Streaming, FInance, News /

Video streaming subscription site Netflix has been aggressively launching in international markets in recent months, which seems like good business sense. But unfortunately, the company’s expansion coincides with declining subscriber growth in the US, leading to its lowest stock price in three months. Shares fell 12% to $60.12 on Tuesday, despite the fact that the site acquired 1.16 million new US streaming subscribers in the third quarter. In fact, sales actually rose 10% to $905.1 million,…

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Top 4 Reasons Subscription Sites Should Integrate Social Media Sign-Ons

News, Subscriber Acquisition, Technology /

Site visitors really seem to love signing-on with a social media account. But should paid content and subscription sites be offering this technology? The consensus seems to be “Yes!” In general, allowing site visitors to sign-on with a social media account will: Get you higher site-visitor-to-registered-user conversion rates (up to 50%, according to the Harvard Business Review). Get you more customer data. (Most sites will give you a personal email address, along with data you probably don’t collect but…

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Chicago Tribune Launches ‘Paywall’ That’s More Like a Membership Plan

Industry Announcements, News, Subscriber Acquisition /

The big news this week out of Chicago is that the Chicago Tribune is putting the “pay” in paywall starting Nov. 1, with a $14.99/month subscription price for digital access. However, upon closer inspection, the Tribune’s paywall looks less like a paywall for valuable content and more like a membership or rewards incentive program — which could be a better bet. As you can see from the pricing structure above, visitors, free registered users and premium subscribers…

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Google Play Launches Web Reader for Subscription Magazines

News, Subscription Apps, Technology /

Consumers without access to smartphones or tablets (whether temporarily or enduringly) are often barred from viewing digital magazine content on desktop computers, even after purchasing a subscription. But Google may have solved that very needless deliverability problem. This week, Google Play launched a Web Reader for its digital magazines (which themselves are a new feature, dating back to June of this year).  After purchasing a subscription, readers can launch the Web Reader, which has a sidebar…

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Are You Using Social Media Logins? Tell Us About It!

News, Technology /

Hi Subscription Site Central Readers, I’m currently working on a story on social media logins — you know, when a site lets you register with a Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter account. Or perhaps another platform is more popular for your site — like StumleUpon or Pinterest? Either way, I’d love to know what your experience has been with social media logins — the good, the bad and the ugly. So I’d be ever so grateful if you take…

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LinkedIn to Add $600m to Subscription Revenues With New Premium Service

FInance, News /

LinkedIn (LNKD) new premium service is doing more than increasing revenues for the subscription site — it’s increasing stock prices, too. Sales Navigator lets paying users contact anyone via InMail — even people outside their network — and search LinkedIn’s database by seniority, function, industry, company and location. The service also lets you integrate LinkedIn with Salesforce, see who’s viewed your profile, and see more profiles when you search. The new tool (a great retention tactic, by…

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