Surfline started out as a pay-per-call telephone service, providing surf conditions to surfing enthusiasts, but entered the Internet age in 1995 with live HD streams of surf breaks. Vice President of Subscriptions and Product Marketing George Roletter spoke to us about how Surfline has used A/B testing to get 30% of visitors who enter the trial funnel to convert. Plus, discover how this B2C site is able to retain up to 93% of subscribers!
Company Profile
Founded: 1985, online in 1995
No. of Publications: 4
Employees: 50 full-time, plus a few contractors, part-timers and interns
Business Model: Hybrid (ads and subs)
Paying Subscribers: Tens of thousands
Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Website: www.surfline.com
www.buoyweather.com
www.Fishtrack.com
www.beachlive.com
Target Market
Surfline targets surfing enthusiasts, mostly males between 25 and 50 years of age, who are looking for up-to-date weather and ocean forecasts. Its secondary market consists of related outdoor enthusiasts.
Content
Surfline started in 1985 as a pay-per-call telephone surf report. In 1995 Surfline became an online service, offering live video streams of surf breaks in addition to written surf reports.
The site’s most popular feature is its networks of HD cameras, which allow for a live feed of approximately 150 surf breaks around the world. Surfline also provides 2- to 14-day forecasts, a dashboard for swell, wind, tide, weather, and water temperature, and discounts for members on merchandise and travel. Surf reports are written by expert meteorologists, and the site even systematically tests the accuracy of its forecasts against competitors. The site is also optimized for mobile viewing and uses royalty-free music for background audio.
The HD cams generate live video streams on a continual basis, and forecasts are updated at least twice daily. The site uses the largest network of HD cameras (outside of the porn industry) in order to provide 99% uptime (the details of the equipment and network architecture remain a trade secret). The company is also working with major Internet TV platforms such as Roku, Boxee, and Apple to create channels for their devices. Written content on the site (which mainly serves content marketing purposes and is not paywalled) is updated five to seven times a day.
The site follows a freemium model. Free content is supported by advertising. Premium membership allows subscribers to view content without ads for both online and mobile editions. Moreover, premium subscribers get deeper, more comprehensive content such as 14-day forecasts versus the 2-day forecasts available in the free edition. These subscribers particularly value the accuracy of the reports and the no-ad environment.
Revenues
Surfline generates 7-figure revenues on an annual basis, and has a 50/50 revenue split between subscriptions and advertising (the latter is supported by an average of 220,000 monthly unique visitors).
There are two subscription plans available:
- Monthly for $9.95
- Annual for $69.95
The annual plan is the most popular, chosen by around 80% of subscribers.. Despite the site’s international popularity (subscribers hail from more than 180 countries), all of the plans are listed in US dollars. Both plans are on auto-renew; subscribers can call/email to opt out.
The site has not run pricing tests, and the price points have remain stable over a long period of time.
Marketing Tactics
The majority of Surfline’s traffic is direct, but new traffic usually originates through organic search or word of mouth (although the site does not have any formal word-of-mouth program). Social media also contribute a significant amount of traffic.
SEO & PPC
Surfline invests a lot in SEO, training each employee who touches content in SEO tactics. These SEO tactics do a lot to support the site’s free content, from two-day forecasts to written articles and live HD streams.
The site has run small PPC campaigns when launching new products or to kickstart new features, but Roletter told us these campaigns have never acquired many new customers for Surfline though they have been successful for the company’s sister site Buoyweather.com.
Social Media
Surfline has a variety of social media accounts, all of which drive traffic to the site:
- Twitter: Following 1,039; 42,000 Followers
- Facebook: 122,680 likes; 12,398 “talking about this” (which means posting information from the Surfline site, regardless of whether they like the site’s Facebook page)
- YouTube: 14,578 YouTube subscribers; 6,583,957 video views
- Google+: 2,144 in circles
The company has employees who work exclusively on social media. Given the site’s extremely visual B2C content, it makes sense that they’ve put so much effort into this brand awareness tactic. But Roletter says it’s still hard for them to connect the dots when it comes to whether a social-sourced visitor converts into a paid subscriber.
Events and User-Generated Content
Surfline sponsors a number of surf contests around the world, usually in exchange for being listed as the official forecaster — a great way for the site to establish credibility and name-brand recognition in the surfing community. The site’s forecast team helps these events with decisions on which days are best to run the contests since there’s usually an open periode.g.., Sept 1-22) when the contest will take place, depending on the weather. The site will also give away swag with Surfline’s logo, such as T-shirts, hats, or even premium subscriptions to the site.
In addition to PR, the surfing contests often provide the site with content as well. While it’s hard for the site’s small staff to attend and cover the events, contestants, non-competing brands (e.g. Quicksilver), and even professional surfers will often record and submit their own video, which Surfline’s team then uses as free content marketing.
You can view an ad-sponsored slideshow created solely through user-submitted photos here: http://www.surfline.com/surf-news/hollow-holidays_90718/.
Other Advertising
Surfline also supports a lot of local initiatives for surfing and the coastal community, such as free Premium accounts for high school surf teams.
Conversion Tactics
While Surfline does not require a site visitor to register with an email address, users must register to comment or upload photos.
Surfline also offers a free 15-day trial, requiring a credit card number. The free trial conversion takes place in a four-part cart, and incorporates a number of best practices. The first page asks the visitor to set up an account with an email address, password, name and zip code. The page also has some benefit copy on the left side panel. Note the absence of a navigation panel.
The second part asks the trial prospect for more identifying information. It also includes a strong testimonial from a pro surfer, with his photo, and an email address for customer support (though a telephone number would be better).
The third part of the cart repeats the professional endorsement panel and asks the trial prospect to choose from the monthly or annual plan (the default is set for annual).
The last page of the cart asks for credit card information. It also makes it clear that this is the last step in the funnel by stating “One step away from skipping ads and seeing your spot in HD longer.” Roletter told us that previously, Surfline would tout the many benefits of their premium service — a list of about 10 items. But an A/B test found that marketing individual benefits, such as “ad-free cams” or “3 more days of forecasts” got 30% more of the people who entered the funnel to convert.
Since the site has split its trial conversion cart, it’s also able to market to prospects who don’t complete it with limited time offers through a series of emails (see sample).
Retention Tactics
Surfline has impressive retention rates between 88% and 92% for monthly subscribers and between 70% and 80% for annual subscribers. Roletter told us the site has spent a lot of time and effort creating “visual” cues after a subscription lapses, which alerts subscribers that they are no longer members.
“When people expire, you need to change the experience so that they understand that they are not part of something anymore. You want them to think hard about why they joined in the first place. That’s going to be the motivation for them to renew. Also, how easy is it to renew? Is it 18 clicks or one?”
Roletter recommends subscription managers of freemium and metered sites sit and go through their site as an expired subscriber to see what it looks and feels like.
Surfline offers limited time discounts to expired subscribers.
About George Roletter III
George Roletter began his career in the early 1990s with AOL, where he “lived and breathed the subscription business.” He then worked at Autobytel, and began his career at Surfline in 2008.
Roletter says his biggest lessons learned was to never take away from the free users, but instead give more to premium subscribers. “We ran some tests where we made free more painful so they’ll go premium, but it was a really bad strategy.”
His advice to other subscription professionals is to keep in mind that the subscription business is less about sales and more about relationships. “Your job is to keep machine going. It’s not a business that explodes overnight. But it can be AMAZING if you grow a little bit every day. If you’re somebody that wants a big win (like a $2 million account), it’s the wrong business.”
Vendors & Technology
Surfline handles a number of functions in-house, from web design & development to content management. Here is a list of the third-party vendors they use.
CRM — Vindicia
http://www.vindicia.com/
Payment processing –Litle
http://www.litle.com/
Email management — Exact Target
http://www.exacttarget.com/
Analytics — Omniture
http://www.omniture.com/en/products/online-business-optimisation
Subscription Site Insider Analysis
We applaud Surfline for staying nimble enough to adjust its services for the Internet age, and for investing heavily in the type of technology that make sense for its market and will sell subscriptions while using user-generated content smartly. We also like that the site has emphasized SEO training for all employees who touch content and A/B tested in trial funnel to get more conversions. And we love their retention numbers, which are impressive for a B2C site.
Moving forward, the site would be wise to conduct some price testing (although the simplicity of two plans may be worth maintaining). We also think that it might benefit from exploring alternate payment methods in international markets. Direct Debit (which debits subscription fees directly from a consumer’s bank account) is more popular in the U.K., Germany and other European countries, and offering it may help convert skeptical buyers. And given the site’s strong word-of-mouth referrals, it would be wise to start a formal tell-a-friend incentive program.
