As the curator of the INSIDER Guide to New Product Development, I’m constantly keeping an eye out for bite-size information that will help you develop and scale better subscription products.  Here’s my “Five on Friday” compilation for September 9th, featuring the five best trends, tips, quotes or stats from my reading this week.  

1.  The Times of London Pivots Its Market Positioning to Eliminate Breaking News, Slightly Relax Paywall

This recent post by Digiday, detailing The Times [of London]’s slight relaxing of their firewall to allow non-subscribers to read two articles per week, sheds some light on their market positioning strategy vis a vis free content.

“We don’t use the ‘F’ word here,” The Times digital director Alan Hunter told Digiday. “It’s a way of experimenting with the subscription funnel.”

The Times is banking on a desire – and willingness to pay for – in-depth, well-researched content from highly trusted sources.  The gamble appears to be paying off. With big stories such as the Brexit vote and Prime Minister David Cameron resigning, the most visited “free” pieces were actually the deeper, analytical ones as opposed to surface news.

This dovetails nicely with The Times’ decision to eliminate breaking news to focus on in-depth coverage of major stories. Allowing non-subscribers a taste of the detailed coverage model allows them to experience the new focus without risk, and the results are positive – the number of digital subscriptions has grown from 170,000 to 182,500.

2.  Market Segmentation – It’s all about the Data

Data-driven decisions deliver better results faster, and that includes the world of market segmentation. If you want to get the most out of your market segmentation efforts, this article from MarketingProfs is worth a scan, but the highlights are listed below:

What do you need to do to get the most out of your market segmentation efforts?

• Use clean data
  Basing decisions on data that contains duplicates, data that’s outdated, or data that’s not normalized makes for inaccurate segmentation. Nothing’s more embarrassing than sending two different promotions to the same person at the same time!

• Back up instinct with data
  Although segmenting on the basis of customer profiles or personas constructed on assumptions is a good starting point, especially when you are just starting out, it is unwise to finalize your segmentation without first doing analysis.

  A market segment can be profitable without being a high-growth or even substantial market, so make sure you get the right data to tell the whole story.

• Analyze the data with your goal in mind
  The people in your various segments should be defined and targeted based on different goals within your business. Each of those different segments should then be marketed to in accordance with your goals for them.

  For example, if you have a segment of customers up for renewal that you want to close, you should be sending them renewal information and marketing promos related to their renewals. You wouldn’t send them information about your newest products or upgrades when the goal is renewal. However, once you close them on the renewal, they would go into a new segment that might be sent that info.

• Gather the right data points to segment effectively
  Your ideal segmentation may be based on variables and fields that you have not collected information on yet. For example, if you are trying to attract young male subscribers, but you don’t collect data on the age or gender of your customers, it will be impossible to send an email campaign to the right audience.

3. Be Opportunistic and Authentic – Lessons from the Pokémon Go Craze

I sincerely hope that, by the time this Five on Friday runs, the Pokémon Go craze has gone the way of the dodo. That said, there are lessons to be learned from the phenomenon, as illustrated in this infographic (modified by Subscription Insider) found on MarketingProfs:

4.  Why We’re Learning Lessons from Pokémon Go

51% of players report visiting a business for the first time because of Pokémon Go
— MarketingProfs

5.  Higher Net Promoter Scores Translate to Higher Revenue

Even though it’s been a decade since the London School of Economics revealed that a seven-point increase in Net Promoter Scores (NPS) can have a one percent impact on revenue, the correlation between NPS and revenue endures. A great update on the value and use of NPS, its benefits and strategies for success can be found in this YouTube video interview of Rob Markey of Bain & Company about his book The Ultimate Question 2.0 by Peter Fader of The Wharton School. While even this work is a few years old, the principles are only now being leveraged in the subscription industry.

No time to listen to the interview?  Here are some highlights:

• The NPS is Still a Barometer of Success. The NPS leader in an industry generally outgrows average performers by 2.5:1.

• Keep it Simple. Markey asserts that adding more questions to the NPS process only offers 10-15% greater results accuracy, but significantly degrades your ability to motivate and inspire actions based on the results.

• Building from Score to System. Markey and his team at Bain and Company are helping clients identify the most valuable customers and markets to focus on, in terms of impact and benefit of getting them to give a high NPS. They’re also encouraging clients to think how to activate those “Promoters” to share their enthusiasm with prospects.

• Don’t Forget Employee Advocacy. Thinking about how to create enthusiastic advocates within your own company should be part of the Net Promoter System you put in place.

This Sunday marks the 15^th anniversary of 9/11 – please remember the victims and heroes. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Diane