10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(New York time)

Master Class moderator

Grzegorz (Greg) Piechota
Researcher-in-Residence and Head of Readers First Initiative, International News Media Association (INMA)

Key themes for this module

• Beef up your value proposition for retention
• See new ideas for on-boarding campaigns
• Discuss best practices in cancellation journeys

10:00 a.m.-10:15 a.m.

Welcome and Introduction: Subscriber Retention in the Post-Pandemic Era

This is the year of retention. In the past three years, a median news brand more than doubled the number of online subscribers. For many, the sales slowed down. Publishers are seeing audiences news-fatigued, busy with post-COVID life, and cash-strapped as costs of living increased. Let’s look into the priorities for 2022: how to save the trialists? What content or features to add to make our subscriptions indispensable? How to predict who’s at risk of churning and personalise communication? Are there ways to increase prices without losing more subscribers?

Greg Piechota, Readers First Initiative Lead, International News Media Association (INMA)

10:15 a.m.-10:55 a.m.

Keynote: The building blocks of a modern subscriber retention program

Our keynote speaker, Haakon Johansen, is a walking encyclopedia on customer loyalty with experience in running subscription businesses for telecoms, such as T-Mobile, and news power houses, such as Amedia in Norway. Amedia is the world’s leader with two million daily readers, including 660,000 subscribers, in a country with five million people. In his presentation, Johansen talks about when news brands should focus on acquisition and when to focus on retention, and offers practical advice: How to measure retention in ways that help prevent churn? What areas to prioritise? How to best tackle voluntary and involuntary churn? How to organise a retention team?

Haakon Johansen, Founding Partner, Ageda, Norway

10:55 a.m.-11:30 a.m.

Interview: From understanding user needs to measuring engagement and preventing churn

Northwestern University in Chicago and professor Edward Malthouse have been leading groundbreaking studies of news engagement for decades.He and his team created a research-based taxonomy of experiences with news, a trove of insights for customer-centric brands that see users visiting sites with different needs. His new research initiative is searching for ways to grow subscriptions for local news organisations in the United States, with surveys, data analysis and benchmarking. In this live interview, professor Malthouse shares the biggest insights: Why is regularity of reading more important than intensity for retaining a subscriber? What role does the habit play and how to help form it? What user needs should the news media focus on? What type of content attracts the loyal readers?

Prof. Edward C. Malthouse, Research Director, Medill IMC Research Center, Northwestern University, United States

11:30 a.m.-11:40 a.m.

Driving reader loyalty across the world: Notix’s case for push notifications

Re-engagement is key in making a reader visit regularly, and web push notifications offer an effective channel that works alongside e-mail. But it offers broader opportunities – you can retarget users who abandoned a subscription check-out, you can bridge digital access to an e-paper product, you can even redirect traffic between a group of websites. Karina Arkhangelskaya discusses what the software vendor, Notix, learned from working with publishers.

Karina Arkhangelskaya, Head of Project, Notix, Cyprus

11:40 a.m.-12:20 p.m.

Driving reader loyalty in South Africa: News 24’s case for e-mail

E-mail is a workhorse of news subscriptions – it helps to acquire, engage, and retain subscribers. News 24, the biggest news site in South Africa, uses advanced analytics and automation to segment subscribers by interests and behaviours, choose which e-mails to send to whom and when, and to curate the content. In his presentation, TinaShe Makwande reveals what e-mails engage his subscribers more? What messages help nurture the value of a subscription and prevent churn? How to use data to design a robust on-boarding and re-engagement series?

TinaShe Makwande, General Manager, Digital Subscriptions and Transactions, Media24, South Africa

12:20 p.m.-12:30 p.m.

Takeaways of the day

Greg Piechota, Readers First Initiative Lead, International News Media Association (INMA)

10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(New York time)

Key themes for this module

• Understand your churn with better metrics, analyses
• Predict who’s to churn and who’s worth saving
• Automate and personalize your communication

10:00 a.m.-10:10 a.m.

Welcome and Introduction
Greg Piechota, Readers First Initiative Lead, International News Media Association (INMA)

10:10 a.m.-10:50 a.m.

The Italian masters: How Corriere della Sera halved its churn

With 384,000 digital subscribers, Italy’s Corriere della Sera is one of the world’s leading news brands. After rapid growth, Maria Sgromo’s team felt the urge to improve retention. The new approach combined the power of data insights, algorithms that drive content personalisation, and human touch of its call centers. A structured program and internal re-organisation helped to reduce the churn rates by half. In her presentation, Sgromo describes in detail what they did: What worked best? What didn’t work? What’s next?

Maria Sgromo, Head of Subscriptions, RCS Media Group, Italy

10:50 a.m.-11:30 a.m.

Subscriber experience: Digital client area at Portugal’s Público

Most get there on and off. Some railway stations have become more, though – iconic destinations for travelers. Will that be the case for Público’s Área do Leitor? After launching its new reader account management section, Inês Espojeira saw more subscribers retained, using features, leaving personal data, and sending fewer calls and e-mails to customer service. In her presentation, Espojeira presents the killer features and their performance, and explains how the digital client area fits its broader engagement and retention strategy.

Inês Espojeira, Product Manager, Subscriber Engagement and Retention, Público, Portugal

11:30 a.m.-11:40 a.m.

Data-driven decisions with MPP Global: The case for predicting who is likely to churn and automating the retention process

Using data to predict who is at risk of churning is only half of the job to be done. It’s worthless without the effort to save a subscriber. In his presentation, Mark Walker discusses the primary churn categories and the data sets that can serve as indicators for predicting who’s at risk and why. Based on the data, automated retention processes can be implemented and experimented with. Practical examples promise to showcase wicked problems, like what to do when subscribers cannot be easily renewed when they use a prepaid card for payment, for example.

Mark Walker, Vice President, Product Subscription Management & Billing, MPP Global, United Kingdom

11:40 a.m.-12:20 p.m.

Subscriber off-boarding: What Poland’s Ringier Axel Springer does when a reader tries to leave

In surveys, publishers usually point to onboarding as the single most effective retention tactic. What if subscriber offboarding was equally important? For Ringier Axel Springer, the leading news publisher in Poland, the moment a reader tries to cancel a subscription is an opportunity to learn more, but also provide good reasons to stay, like adjusting the subscription to the reader’s needs and making sure they can keep in touch. In his presentation, Tomasz Gaweł shares the set-up and results from his company’s experiments with new off-boarding journeys.

Tomasz Gaweł, Managing Director, Paid Content, Ringier Axel Springer, Poland

12:20 p.m.-12:30 p.m.

Takeaways of the day

Greg Piechota, Readers First Initiative Lead, International News Media Association (INMA)

10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
(New York time)

Key themes for this module

• Rethink your product line for upgrades and downgrades
• Target subscribers for price increases
• Avoid payment failures and save relationships

10:00 a.m.-10:10 a.m.

Welcome and Introduction
Greg Piechota, Readers First Initiative Lead, International News Media Association (INMA)

10:10 a.m.-10:50 a.m.

Growing digital subscriptions at Times of India: Proven ideas for price-sensitive markets

In India, people love news but reluctantly pay for it, and prices are low in comparison to the Western markets. Digital subscriptions are relatively nascent, but publishers have made huge leaps, thanks to data analytics and AI, mobile focus, and innovative pricing models. The leading publisher, Times of India, figured out unique ways to acquire subscribers: bundling news with other services, charging via telecoms, or selling collections of articles. A relentless innovator, Rashika Shukla, is now experimenting with retention tactics focused on shifting the readership to auto-recurring payments, longer contracts, and upgrading their bundles.

Radhika Shukla, Head of Subscription Growth, Strategy and Analytics, Times of India

10:50 a.m.-11:30 a.m.

Building communities around subscription products: Arizent’s riches in the niches

American Banker, National Mortgage News, Accounting Today … Arizent’s brands have passionate readers in the United States and internationally. This specialist news publisher aims to advance professional communities through powerful content and databases, educational experiences, and meaningful connections between peers and industry leaders. Gemma Postlethwaite and Jeff Mancini present the case for bundling traditional journalism with other services, and building communities on top of it.

Jeff Mancini, Chief Strategy Officer, Arizent, United States
Gemma Postlethwaite, Chief Executive Officer, Arizent, United States

11:30 a.m.-11:40 a.m.

Winning back subscribers with Piano: The case for targeting past customers

No matter how successful your subscription program is, you’ll always have customers on the edge of churning, or those you have to win back. How can you re-engage them and convince them to re-subscribe? Katelyn Belyus dives into proven tactics to target churned users and drive resubscribes, based on insights from Piano’s proprietary benchmark data.

Katelyn Belyus, Associate Director, Piano, United States

11:40 a.m.-12:20 p.m.

Data-driven news product design: In 2022, focus on breadth

Internal research at Los Angeles Times, one of the great American mastheads, found that breadth of content matters more to retention than depth or frequency. No wonder – the Times and many other publishers are searching for ways to expose readers to more diverse content, features, and offers. Lauren DeLong is using data to orchestrate discovery journeys for subscribers, optimizing the key channels such as e-mail, app, and web notifications, and will share what she’s learned in this presentation.

Lauren DeLong, Senior Manager, Marketing and Technology, Los Angeles Times, United States

12:20 p.m.-12:30 p.m.

Takeaways of the day

Greg Piechota, Readers First Initiative Lead, International News Media Association (INMA)