Members of the BSME came together last week to discuss the secrets of subscriptions and how to execute them. The panel was hosted by Dan Green, editor of The Week Junior Science+Nature, featured insights from Catherine de Lange, editor of New Scientist, Nick de Semlyen, editor of Empire, Maisie McCabe, editor of Campaign and Abi Spooner, strategy partner at Atlas. Bauer Media hosted the panel discussion at the company’s recently-opened London headquarters, The Lantern.
The discussion ranged widely, exploring the recent shift to subscriptions and the many facets of serving high-quality editorial content to subscribers. The panel brought out the importance to brands of understanding their audience, and how to build long-term authentic relationships with customers to create a "membership mindset". Along the way, they touched on strategies around paywalls and pricing, diversifying revenue streams and building out bespoke subscription tiers, the evolving role of AI in content creation, and much more.
Download the presentation from the event. Photos and video below.
Key Takeaways
Create multiple tiers Sometimes giving subscribers unlimited access to all of a brand’s editorial content with a one-size-fits-all model isn't the best solution. Campaign, for example, has invested in multiple tiers, with different price points and data-rich special reports, in order to provide specific digital content to cater to its audience’s different needs. Meanwhile, Empire has pioneered bespoke print covers for premium subscribers who are willing to pay more.
Give people experiences to connect with the brand New Scientist, along with being a magazine and website, invites subscribers to enter the “planet of science” by taking them on journeys they’ve never experienced before – from exclusive trips and live chats with scientists to videos, courses and newsletters, plus it runs flagship event New Scientist Live over three days. Meanwhile, Empire has partnered with cinema chain Cineworld to give readers a discount on tickets – so even when people go to watch a movie, they’re still engaging with the Empire brand.
Make subscriptions as easy as possible New Scientist has an app that means people can subscribe and gain easy access to its premium content – without having to apply for a subscription via its website. But what works for some brands may not work for everyone – for example, Empirehas engaged super-fans by developing special, subscriber-only podcasts but some of the other brands have not gone down that route yet.
Focus on the three pillars of marketing It’s about taking the customers on a journey, pricing of the products and conversion rate optimisation. As long as these three are well balanced, you are guaranteed to attract customers to your brand, according to subscription experts Atlas. Think about customer needs – the subscription product should be the solution for a problem their customer is facing.
Lifetime Value is the most important subscriber metric LTV is a combination of all the key subscriptions metrics. It shows how long customers are staying, how much they are paying, and how much it costs to get them on board. In simple words,it is the measure of how much profit a customer is going to bring you over their lifetime of being a loyal customer.
Artificial intelligence could be a benefit While most of the editorial leaders on the panel were wary of using generative AI in their journalism, they saw some benefits from AI – such as transcribing text to speech or translation. Their caveat was to be transparent with subscribers about where and how AI has been used in the creation of content for which they are paying.
Takeaways from the discussion written by Devangi Sharma, MA magazine journalism student at City, University of London.
Photography: David Cotter
