Sell Subscriptions Customers Want to Buy

It’s not what you sell. It’s how you sell it. You see, the words you use speak louder than the things you say.

If you sell news subscriptions, what customers really want to buy is an experience. The better you tie the experience to the subscription, the more successful you’ll be. The benefit to you the publisher is recurring revenue, so start by asking your customers to try your news brand.  A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. You can’t win a long-time subscriber in the first day, week, or month. But you can certainly lose them. At Local News ROI we help you generate strong promotional interest, remove the friction from the buying process, and help you speak the language of the customer.

Customers know that local news supports and spreads the good of our communities. So consequently, how you sell “the experience,” creates interest, unique value and retention.  When you don’t sell subscribers what they want, all they’re buying is “the news.” News is free, the experience is not. Customers want to support you, but they initially may not be thinking “subscription.” If you’re out there peddling subscriptions without the strong interest and value, you won’t get to reap the long-term retention value. So the dilemma is how you meet new customers in the middle. In order for that to happen successfully, you must do these three things.

Talk your customers’ language

• Personalize the buying experience by reaching them where they are. Local News ROI provides solutions to reach your best prospects 24/7.
• Tell and then show how you plan to provide ongoing value.
• Explain to customers how to get out if their expectations are not met.
• Remove all barriers to subscribing. Activation fees, high-priced offers, and jumping through too many hoops won’t net you many new customers for long.
• You must make it totally and completely simple by making it a ‘no-brainer.’
• Customers will buy subscriptions if you’ve convinced them that the ongoing variety of content, coverage areas, and impact in their personal lives is far more valuable than the price of the initial subscription.
• Prospective subscribers won’t know this until they have tried your product. Make it easy and simple for them to try.
• REMOVE ALL RISK. Drive conversion higher with aggressive, ‘no-brainer’ subscription trial offers. The last thing your customers want is a bunch of problems just for trying your product for the first time.

Make it memorable

• The new subscription order is only the beginning.
• Focus on relentlessly educating your newest customers over the first 100 days of their subscription.
• You must deploy your content across a variety of media channels to create lasting memories. Follow these steps: Introduce, Invite, and Incentivize. Use the three Is to drive adoption for your e-edition, apps, newsletters, and dot com experiences.
• Make your new customer look forward to enjoying your platform. Remember how exciting it was when you first signed up for NetFlix?
• An absolute must have: immediate fulfillment. If the product is digital-only, provide necessary support to get them up and running quickly. If it’s print, then first delivery is within 48 hours of the order.

Not just subscriptions. Make them sticky subscriptions.

• Drive return visit frequency. Make it your enterprise-wide goal.
• Unfortunately print gets read only one time every day. Ironically, print subscriptions are falling while digital-only subs are rising.
• Invite customers to use your e-edition, newsletters, apps, and dot com site to stay connected 24/7. Remember: Introduce, Invite, Incentivize.
• Increase your frequency, increase your engagement. Newsletter readers are 5X more likely to subscribe than your non-newsletter cohorts.
• Growing engagement is the pathway to growing retention.

The Consumer Marketing Acquisition Bundle

At Local News ROI we increase your consumer revenue by selling your customers what they want. You simply provide us with a strong subscription offer, approve your creative, and we reach and convert your highest-propensity customers where they are. We use targeting technology to locate your best prospects and convince them to subscribe. We sell subscriptions your customers want to buy.

Why Choose the Acquisition Bundle?

• No IT resources required.
• No tech team involvement.
• Extremely fast to bring to market.
• The model uses your “formers” and “actives” subscriber data (lists) to target and clone.
• Unleashes supplemental data to spot new opportunity.
• Targets, re-targets, and clones against a cross-channel, cross-platform mix that appeals to subscribers.
• Drives new subscribers to your landing page- or ours- for seamless conversion to a paid subscription order.