While many legacy publications are able to retain print subscribers, they would be fool-hardy not to acquire younger audiences through digital means. Art Stupar, VP of Circulation at The Nation, spoke to Insider about how the progressive weekly, known for its politically-active readership, was able to attract younger subscribers with a targeted free offer for a digital subscription. Not surprisingly, there is a social media success story here, too. This exclusive Case Study also examines The Nation’s entire business model and what news sites determined to serve the public interest can do to ensure financial sustainability. Plus, lots of screenshots and creative samples to inspire your next marketing campaign!
Company Profile
Founded: 1865, online in late 1990s, online subscriptions sold in 2002
Employees: 40, plus numerous freelancers
Business Model: Hybrid –subscriptions, donations, advertising, one-offs
Paying Subscribers: 150,000 across all platforms (print and digital)
Location: New York, NY
Website: http://www.thenation.com
Target Market
The Nation’s target market consists of an engaged, concerned, and influential audience of progressives throughout the United States, with a particular concentration in university towns. Most of them are middle-aged, college-educated, with an average income of $86,000. 66% are men and 34% are women.
The Nation has a secondary audience consisting of young, politically-minded college students.
Content
Founded in 1865, The Nation is the oldest weekly political journal in the US.
The Nation’s website has a variety of multimedia free content, most of which are Web-exclusives. However, half of the print magazine’s content is also free-to-view online. The other half is behind a paywall. What articles go in front of or behind the paywall is up to editorial discretion. Paywalled articles are marked with an icon reading “Subscribers Only.”
*Editor’s Note: This is not a best practice. We strongly recommend publishers divide free and paid content by type, not editorial discretion, as consumers are unsure of what they’re buying with a subscription if a premium content is determined by editorial discretion.
Stupar explained that The Nation has adopted this paywall policy because the publication is most concerned with impacting public policy. To that end, the site also serves a “Take Action” box (below) that instructs visitors on things they can do, read or watch to further progressive causes. The Nation will also allow progressive organizations to host overlay ads requesting petition signatures (below).
* Editor’s Note: Many policy-oriented news organizations (and many newspapers for that matter) cite the desire for wide exposure or public policy influence as the reason behind a porous or confusing paywall. However, paywalled sites like Consumer Reports have been able to maintain their policy impact (through their lobbying arm, Consumers Union) while having a clear paywall. In the same vein, metered paywalls would easily facilitate SEO and trending stories, and have well-known workarounds if consumers really are that interested in a story but unwilling to pay. In the end, public policy influence is rendered naught if free access makes a publication go out of business.
Premium content is available via online or tablet editions. New premium content is added every Thursday. The tablet and smartphone apps are native, and free to download. Consumers must purchase a subscription within the app to access content. In addition to the magazine content, the apps contain feeds of free content from the site, such as videos and blog posts.
From an operations side, The Nation benefits from a hefty cadre of interns, 10 of whom are involved with fact-checking.
Revenues
The Nation generates between $10 million and $20 million in revenues every year.
At least half of their revenues are from subscriptions — both print and digital. Of their 150,000 paying subscribers, 22% (about 30,000) are digital-only (this includes digital subscriptions sold directly through the website as well as third-party platforms, like Apple).
The Nation’s second largest revenue source is donations, even though The Nation does not hold non-profit status. Stupar attributes this to their “loyal, passionate audience” and The Nation’s editorial integrity.
The Nation also garners marginal revenues from advertising and one-off sales of eBooks.
Plans & Pricing:
Marketing Tactics
The Nation has approximately 1.2 million site visitors each month, and the biggest source of new visits is from direct traffic. That’s likely because The Nation has a strong, well-known brand and print publication driving readers online.
SEO + PPC
The Nation has strong SEO, and its articles are listed in Google News. The site also employs some PPC practices, which Stupar told us brings a steady stream of traffic.
Social Media
The Nation has a presence on Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter, and each platform gets a specific landing page for promotions. Remarkably, after one push to Tumblr, about 35 percent of all clicks from the site generated a subscription.
Stupar says social media had a huge influence on the success of its Student Offer (described below), mainly because students were willing to share news of the discount.
Events
The publisher and writers of The Nation regularly speak at events and universities around the country. These events often generate PR for the publication, as well as credibility.
Word-of-mouth
In addition to the student offer describer below, The Nation also has a classroom program, whereby teachers structure courses around The Nation. The Nation pushes email alerts (along with teaching guides) to 2,500 professors across the country about discounts on subscription offers, and used this technique to push the Student Offer described below.
Student Offer
In order to attract and acquire younger subscribers, The Nation created a special Student Offer that allows free access for 25 weeks (the length of one semester) and then upsells trial-takers another 6 months, priced at $9.50.
The offer has a specific URL (http://www.thenation.com/#students), and uses both a catfish (sticky bar) ad at the bottom of the homepage and a take-over ad (both below).
The conversion page also observes a number of best practices, such as removing all distractions from conversion, including the navigation bar, and having a one-column form.
Only prospects with a .edu email address can subscribe through this form (the coding and coordination was handled by The Nation’s subscription fulfillment vendor). While requiring the “.edu” address, The Nation knows that some professors could technically take advantage of the offer, but by offering only a six-month subscription, it’s hardly worth the time for professors.
After taking the student offer, prospects receive an email campaign to get them to convert to the $9.50 6-month plan. Four emails are deployed, two before expiration and two after.
So far, The Nation has 1,800 takers and 400 have converted to 6-month subscriptions so far.
Additional Conversion Tactics
For non-student subscribers, The Nation has a three main conversion tactics.
- The site uses overlays to make subscription offers. Stupar says The Nation gets about 10,000 — 20,000 new subscriptions annually through the site alone.
- Well-optimized conversion pages, which, like the student offer, have no ads or navigation bars.
- The site offers free digital access to print subscriptions for four weeks. As is standard practice in the print magazine industry, prospects can give their credit card or choose to be billed at a later date, after the trial ends.
Retention Tactics
While The Nation did not give us their average account lifetimes, Stupar told us that they have a high stick rate on digital so far, with 85% renewing. All digital subscriptions are on auto-renew (regular and student), although print is not. (The print + digital bundle renewal rate is around 60% the first year, 70% in the second year and near 80% in year three.)
About Art Stupar
Art Stupar has been in the magazine business since the 1980s, after taking a course at NYU in direct marketing. He has previously worked for Scholastic and Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop).
“The fact that our whole industry is in upheaval, I see it as a real positive,” says Stupar. “It’s become so exciting to see our industry changing. It’s like a whole new industry. It’s great that I get to bring direct response publishing knowledge to this whole new way of delivering magazines.”
Vendors & Technology
Fullfillment and hosting of landing pages — CDS (also handles subscriber emails)
http://www.cds-global.com/
Payment processing — Chase Paymentech through CDS
https://www.chasepaymentech.com/
Email management –Lyris
http://www.lyris.com/us-en
Web design & development — In house with Phase 2
http://www.phase2technology.com/
Content management — Drupal
https://drupal.org/
Analytics — Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Donor program — Raiser’s Edge
https://www.blackbaud.com/fundraising-crm/raisers-edge-donor-management
Subscription Site Insider Analysis
The Nation has a long history and a passionate audience, which means that it’s wise for the company to continue its print publication while seeking to acquire new subscribers via digital means. The student offer is a great way to get younger readers, many of whom feel entitled to free content. The 6-month upsell along with The Nation’s classroom program makes conversion easier, along with a number of best practices employed by the site in terms of email marketing and paywall design. We also like their Take Action box — it’s a great way to promote on-site engagement with a politically active crowd, particularly the Facebook generation that’s used to being able to passively engage in activist causes (see slacktivism).
The obvious area for improvement is the porous and confusing paywall, which is determined by editorial discretion not reader benefit. The Nation would be wise to either set up a clearer paywall, determined by content type, or a metered paywall that allows for workarounds. In this manner, they could be sure to safeguard their interest in influencing public policy while also generating enough revenue to grow and influence even more. Given the fact that people donate to The Nation (which is NOT a nonprofit), it’s hard to make the argument that readers wouldn’t pay for online and digital access. The Nation should also look to tweak their landing and conversion pages a bit more, making sure all of them are one-column and have a button that stands out.
