Publisher Missteps Undermine Online Subscription

Subscription marketing is a goal for most B2B and B2C publishers, but a recent Publishing Executive (PE) magazine article warns that publishers' common online errors are undermining circulation marketing investments. Access to premium content should be online but limited to subscribers, urges PE author Eric Shanfelt, founding partner of eMedia Strategist. After all, why subscribe if you can go to the website and see all content for free? Unfortunately, some publishers are so baffled by the technology of locking down content as subscriber-only that they don't even put their premium content online--losing a big selling point with digital traffic. Others are worried about reducing Google search traffic or ad impression dollars by limiting content access but not factoring in the cost of lost subscribers, argues Shanfelt. For success with subscriber-only premium content, the website must then prominently promote that premium content and its subscriber-only status via clear incentives and calls-to-action. A website or mobile subscription page should not be just an order form, Shanfelt advises. Remember that most people who visit a subscription page are just considering subscribing. They need to be sold. Visitors should clearly see the benefits of subscribing and what they get. Plus the page should generate a sense of urgency to sign up and use FOMO (fear of missing out) to push orders. Equally important, the subscription process should be quick and easy. Make the subscription link easy to see and navigation simple by putting an obvious menu item and widget on every website page, with a link directly to a single-page subscription form, not a multi-step process. And finally, make sure the subscription page is not only secure but loads quickly on desktop or mobile. If it doesn’t load in 2-3 seconds, up to 50% of potential subscribers could be lost, warns Shanfelt. In order to test and adjust marketing tactics, online subscription and confirmation pages should use Google Analytics to see how people get to subscription pages and how well they convert from different sources. Subscription/confirmation pages should also use tracking pixels from Facebook, Google, Bing and other digital sources, as well as from customer data platforms and e-mail systems. More important, circulation data needs to be integrated with the website subscription pages. If the website is synchronized with the circulation system, people can log into the site by authenticating against subscriber data to get access to premium content, for example. Integration also allows for conditional content blocks in follow-up e-mails to upsell non-subscriber leads and a sync of subscriber lists with programmatic ad networks. See the full post at http://www.acculistusa.com/publisher-mistakes-undermine-online-subscription-efforts/