The New York Times learns to think like a consumer brand:
How an old school publisher is delivering a customer experience worth paying for.
Business and cultural shifts have sparked a fundamental shift for The New York Times — and of the brand’s unique value proposition and strategy. By adopting a digital product mindset, managing the customer experience, and creating value in a new context, the company ultimately seeks to optimize engagement and subscriber-growth.
The Times has set itself an ambitious goal: convince 10 million subscribers to pay for its quality journalism in an era when so much can be had (and read) for free. Although admittedly late to embrace digital transformation, the Times’ subscriber count currently stands at around 2.8 million by their latest figures — enough to claim the self-appointed title of “most successful digital news subscription business in the world.”
Trailblazers like Axios, The Washington Post, and the Times are creating a market for online subscriber-funded journalism that simply hasn’t existed at scale before. “Digital-savvy” is a new look for a brand still referred to in media circles as the “Grey Lady,” a nickname anchored firmly in the print era.
To achieve this success, the Times has started to think more like a consumer subscription brand. With this strategic shift there are more changes to come as the brand continues to build towards 10 million.
Converting readers in a subscriber-first strategy.
The New York Times has had the subscription model pegged as the future of the business since 2015. Since then, The Times not only benefited from the industry-wide “Trump-bump,” but also successfully converted the momentary uptick in traffic to actual paying subscribers. As hoped, those additional subscribers are sticking around, offsetting a decline in digital ad revenue.
A major part of that success has involved rethinking customer relationship management . The brand took a page out of the marketing playbook of popular consumer subscription platforms like Netflix, HBO, and Spotify, especially with the promotion of Meredith Kopit Levien to Chief Operating Officer. In her role, she oversees the entire customer experience, as well as its monetization.
February 2018.
The paywall is the primary point of conversion in the customer journey, but the company has become increasingly sophisticated in its appeals , personalizing targeting tactics based on each user’s behavior and content preferences.
A prime example of habit-forming relationship management is the Times’ portfolio of regular emails, which has grown to include more than 50 distinct offerings. “That growth matters,” according to Ben Cotton, Executive Director of Retention and Customer Experience “because newsletter [email] subscribers are twice as likely as regular New York Times’ readers to become [paying] subscribers.”
An insight like that, born from measurable testing, allows the Times to allocate time and resources to products that best encourage promising user engagement, with paying subscribers as the ultimate goal.
Retaining subscribers, reducing churn.
Having acquired millions of subscribers in 2018, the Times is turning increasing attention toward retention, keeping the costs of new acquisition down by finding ways to reduce cancellations , or “churn.”
A team of 25 people are devoted to retention, a number that tripled between 2015 and 2017. Many were brought in because they think like consumer marketers, according to a recent interview with Cotton.
This increasing focus has lead the team beyond targeted offers and behavioral nudges to the content itself. To help make the subscription proposition sweeter, the Times introduced a number of subscriber-only features and guides. According to Cotton, tests indicated that subscribers who engaged with subscriber-only features — and even those who just received messaging about them — experienced a reduction in likelihood to churn.
Content that’s worth paying for.
With the introduction of value-added content like subscriber-only promotions, Ms. Kopit Levien and her team are thinking beyond core journalism to experiences that complement readers’ lifestyles in addition to their knowledge. At Social Media Week in New York, Ms. Kopit Levien delved further into the topic during her talk on “Why The Truth is Worth Paying For.”
“Good digital subscription products expand your tastes or broaden your horizons,” she explained, “get you interested in things, direct your attention in interesting, rewarding ways while learning from you.” Given this, what’s the unique value the Times could add on such a scale? For her, it comes down to judgment — the brand’s ability to answer the question: “what’s important, right now?”
The test will be expanding the Times’ judgment, harnessing digital tools to make it more personally and contextually relevant without sacrificing the caliber of reporting. “Truth” worth paying for will be interpreted in broad and nontraditional ways — wherever the brand “can offer expertise, content, and utility well beyond news.”
