This document discusses strategies for publishers to increase revenue through content walls, registration, and newsletters. It outlines different types of content walls like hard walls, metered walls, and hybrid premium models. An adaptive metered wall is proposed that uses machine learning to determine how many free articles a user gets before being asked to subscribe to a newsletter. The document also discusses using email as a way to develop audiences at scale and drive subscription conversions since email allows long-term marketing and monetization. It provides examples of clients growing their email lists and subscriptions significantly through PostUp's technology and strategies. In summary, the document proposes using content walls and email marketing to maximize audience growth and monetization for publishers.
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About PostUp
The leader in email platform technology, strategy, and services for Publishers
“PostUp is a great option for publishing,
media and entertainment companies.”
-The Relevancy Group 2015 Buyer’s Guide
153 clients and over 500 brandsBest in class for publishers
+200B emails delivered
+1B active email addresses
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“With ad-driven media business models
under pressure, how can publishers
evolve while also increasing the Average
Revenue per User of their properties?”
Publishing Industry at a Turning Point
The Big Question
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What content is walled off?
Wall Types
2. Soft (Metered) Wall
3. Premium Subset
1. Hard Wall
ContentTraffic
4. Hybrid Premium Meter
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Wall Types
Pros and Cons
Pros Cons
• Very stable revenue stream
• Cuts off social and search traffic
• Requires already dominant brand
• Realize full search and social traffic
• Hybrid ad / subscription revenue
• Lose potential subscribers to free
• Lose ad revenue to bounces
• Retain some search/social traffic • Must have high quality content
• Search and social for all content
• Ad revenue on premium content
• Lose potential subscribers to free
• Complex to implement
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“Digital Paywalls can be personalized
experiences. Don’t assume that you must
have a one-size-fits all approach, or even
that the reader must pay at all. What
matters is maximizing reader flow down
the lifetime revenue funnel.”
Publishing Industry at a Turning Point
Challenge your Paywall Assumptions
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The Adaptive Metered Content Wall
Anonymous → Newsletter → Registered User → Paying Subscriber
X # Free Articles/mo
Metering is the most flexible approach to drive audience “graduation”
Machine Learning is well suited to determining X in
real time, based on traffic channel and user history.
Anonymous
Newsletter
Subscribers
Registered
Users
Engaged Users
Paying
Subscribers
3
8
6
Lowest
Hurdle
Highest
Hurdle
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Content consumption appetite varies by channel, optimize to just below satiated
Optimize Meter to Channels
• FB visitors get one
article before stopping
and asking for email
• Google get 3 per day,
for better search rank
• First time direct not
limited, to make a
good impression
• Repeat direct visitors
are get a meter
Newsl
Subscr
Regis
Us
2/day
6
Lowest
Hurdle
3/day
Anonymous
Traffic
Unlimited
3/month
First Time Visit
Repeat Visit
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Page Views /
Session
% Repeat
Visitors
Window
Lifetime
Page Views
1.2 48% One and done Sessions 2.3
2.1 28% Occasional Seeker 2.9
2.2 54% Loyal to another 4.8
2.3 33% Loyal core, majority are not 3.4
2.5 95% Invitation to Inbox 40.8*
For each channel, how many opportunities to monetize or cross sell into subscription?
Audience Monetization Window
* Includes email opens as page views
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What segment of your audience can you:
1. Reach at a time of your choosing?
2. Control exactly what they see?
3. Know who they are when they visit?
4. Monetize off-site (sponsored mail)?
Email is an invitation to the Inbox, the right
to market long term, and the foundation of
registration and subscription models.
Social
Referral
Email
Direct
Search
Email’s long monetization window is perfectly suited to driving subscription conversion
Email as Paid Subscription Driver
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Revenue performance cascades from top of funnel, starting with list size
Email Revenue Strategy
Email list size is strategic because gains here cascade through the entire funnel,
whereas other levels are constrained by performance of previous level.
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$10 CPM Page View
Display Ads
12,000
Page Views =
1 Subscriber
$10/month
Subscription Fee (First Year)
New York Times: “Email subscribers are twice as likely to convert to premium subscriptions”
Just convert 1 in 12,000 page views to a paying subscriber
Could you Double Your Revenue?
Email and optimized paywalls are
key to the conversion process.
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Rapid audience growth through application of PostUp technology and strategies
Client Performance Examples
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Jul-16 Aug-16 Sep-16 Oct-16 Nov-16 Dec-16 Jan-17 Feb-17
From Campaign Monitor PostUp Audience Development
0
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
Jul-16 Aug-16 Sep-16 Oct-16 Nov-16 Dec-16 Jan-17 Feb-17
From MailChimp Registration PostUp Audience Development
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Premium Subscription Paywalls
Audience
Development
Monetization
Content Distribution Platform
First Party Data
Turnkey Ad Revenue
List as Ad Inventory
Ad Block Mitigation
CMS Integration
Brand Advertisers
DFP Integrated
Editor Workflows
Automatic Curation
Direct Audience Relationship
Business Outcomes
Efficiency and Flexibility at Scale
Personalization
The only enterprise engagement solution specifically for publishers
The PostUp Solution
Integrations
Partners
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Your partner in what’s next for publishing.
For more information, contact:
Tony D’Anna
CEO
tdanna@postup.com
Hinweis der Redaktion
Paywalls seem simple on the surface, but there’s a lot of options to weigh when you unpack the business model
All paywalls (or registration walls) are variants of one of these 4 types.
Hard wall and subset gate access to specific content, whereas meters constrain the amount of consumption.
It can be difficult for publishers to choose the right business model, and high profile failures like The Sun and Variety make the perceived risk high.
Examples:
Hard Wall – Financial Times
Metered Wall – Boston Globe
Premium Subset – Wall Street Journal (most content is premium), TheHill
Hybrid Premium Meter – no good examples, this is an R&D area for PostUp
Hard, Metered Wall, Premium Subset, Hybrid Premium Meter
With any meter system, the main risk is losing revenue to either having too low a meter (lose potential ad impressions to non-converters) or too high a meter (lose potential subs because enough is free).
On balance though meters are best unless you have a stellar brand and must-have content (Financial Times).
Try to set the meter to just below each individuals appetite for your content.
Many publishers have realized that metering is a strong approach.
The key variable to optimize is “meter size”: how many articles can be consumed.
However, publishers don’t go beyond a one-size-fits-all meter (e.g. 3 articles per month).
The power of metered paywalls lies in graduating users to where you want them to go.
For example, asking for email is a low hurdle: “enter your email to read this article”; but has very high potential, segue to next slide
Google rules of 3 per day “first click free” so avoid being listed as a “subscription site”
This is traffic channel behavior data drawn from over 2 dozen PostUp client properties of varying types. Size of the arrow relates to Lifetime Pageviews, the “Monetization Window” that we want to maximize
Facebook = surprisingly high number of repeat visitors, but “page depth” is extremely low, visitors consume one article and go back to the Facebook feed.
Google = visitors are searching for something, and may browse a couple of articles, but rarely come back.
Referral = traffic regularly coming from a handful of sites that consistently link to your content: “loyalty halo”
Direct = only a surprisingly small subset of Direct traffic is your “loyal core”, lots of tire kickers that don’t come back, big opportunity here
Email = traffic from email is by far your most long term audience, showing the importance of driving email signups
Email opens are counted as page views because they contain ads and other sponsorships that generate revenue (part of monetization window).