News subscription
Whether it’s a newspaper, magazine or radio show, people are willing to pay for content if it adds value to their lives. The majority of people who pay for news are newspaper subscribers, with the oldest two age cohorts most likely to have a print subscription (54 percent in the US and Norway). A significant minority of these subscribers also buy a digital version or subscribe to two to four other sources of news – often local or specialist titles alongside their national ones.
What’s more, the experience of paying for news online needs to be seamless and streamlined. A cumbersome subscription process can deter people from continuing their purchase; the median checkout flow efficiency rate for news sites is 18%, according to INMA’s 2023 benchmarks. The problem is that many potential subscribers fail to see enough unique or valuable content in the offers they are offered to justify continuing their subscription, or may not even find the opportunity to do so.
To address these challenges, the 14 metro newspapers participating in Facebook’s Subscription Acquisition Accelerator shared their best strategies for growing new subscriptions, and we’ve compiled them here into an actionable guide. These ideas — which publishers said they “stole” from each other during in-person group gatherings, 1-on-1 coaching sessions and Slack conversations — can help other publishers make their own newsrooms more subscription-friendly.