How to Get More Subscribers with the Digital Subscription Management—A Revenue Growth Guide for Digital Publishers

Publishing the News, columns, articles, features, images, videos, and research papers on the websites, social media, app, and other digital platforms change the revenue dynamics particularly, of the news and publishing industry.

Since ever, the subscription has been the revenue model of the print and publications industry. As the display switched from paper to digital platform, so does the forces, interests, and stakeholders behind the news propagation and consumptions have changed too.

The new digital subscription management model is the need of the hour for all the content publishers. Broadcast or print—the news outlets across the world have already made their presence mandatory on digital platforms before discontinuing their paper-based or channels-based existence only.

What, Exactly, is the Digital Media and Digital Media Subscription, and Who is Digital Publisher?

Literally, articles, videos, audios, images, or any other content published on digital platforms is digital media, but more specifically, any content published through the news services providers is considered as digital media, and the publishing entity is called the digital publisher.

The Daily International ‘New York Times’ refers to digital media subscription as access to articles, podcasts, videos, and any more of the platform as Digital Media Subscription.

The digital media subscriptions can have multiple tiers offered by the digital publisher to provide basic or advanced access to the news content.

The Rise of the Digital Media and the Demand of Digital Subscriptions

The availability of the news in its digital form gave rise to the weakening of the print or even satellite news subscriptions, but media consumption, driven by the internet, smartphones, and independent digital news outlet, continues to reign.

Legendary newspaper and magazines either have already shut down their subscriptions or cut down the size of their print editions due to the immense popularity of the digital subscriptions.

However, it soon had to face the challenges again as most of the digital news dissemination cannot be contained or limited. More than 95 percent of Europe has free access to online news. Only 20 to 25 percent of readers pay for newspaper subscriptions in the UK and the USA. Though the financial, investment, science and technology, media, agricultural, engineering, business, fashion, entertainment, sports, or any other niche-specific digital publications still have widespread subscriber base.

Different revenue models are adapted by the digital publishers to offer to their customers based on their needs and interests. Different types of popular digital subscriptions include:

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• Digital Newspaper Subscription

It is the monthly subscription plan offered by the leading newspapers as regular, daily access to the complete newspaper in its e-format.

• Digital Magazine Subscription

It is the monthly subscription plan offered by the leading magazine to its regular access to the magazine or its articles on the web, app, or in its e-format.

• Digital Subscription of News Channels or News Videos

Some news channels offer their monthly subscriptions for the 24/7/30 broadcast news on satellite.

• News or Article Bundles Subscription

It includes B2B and B2C subscriptions.

News agencies offering news bundles or articles to the other news outlets are B2B subscription, whereas the digital news outlets providing access to the limited or unlimited news or articles as bundles are B2C subscriptions.

• Aggregators

Newspapers, news channels, news agencies, or third-party digital news distributors let users access to a huge library for a weekly, monthly, or annual fee.

• Hybrid Subscriptions

It refers to the pick and chooses an assortment of print, broadcast, and digital media subscriptions for any outlet that allows the subscriber to access the news on any platform.

Digital Subscription Model—The Customer Supported Revenue Stream for Digital Publishers

First Newspaper, magazines, annual or limited editions, then broadcast channel subscriptions—in all its forms and stages, the subscription model supported the existence of the outlet but was never enough as a wholesome revenue model.

The news outlets had always relied on the advertisement and consequently influenced, and, in certain extreme situations and conditions, were also dictated, controlled, and propagated by the political parties, non-state actors, and multinational companies as their revenue guardians.

But, the latest digital subscription model establishes another and customer-supported revenue stream that can outlive if data-driven content, pricing and plans optimization, and other services are managed, wisely.

The subscription-based revenue model transition is important as it frees the digital publishers from the pressures of advertisers, government, or political parties, and help them to grow as a more editorially independent news outlet for the free and fair source of information, education, and entertainment.

In recent times, its most successful example is the New York Times that aims to increase its subscriber strength up to 10 million by the end of 2025.

Sticking to the customer-supported revenue model paddles freedom and stability. Besides, it attracts digital ad giants to mainstream news outlets. During the last decade, digital advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, MSN, and others progressively increased its share of the digital ad market with a combination of technical savvy and unrivaled consumer data.

The Digital Subscription Management Requirements for the Digital Publishers

Digital Subscription Management is a complex and tiresome job that cannot be managed manually. Businesses can smartly deal with it through the subscription management software for newspaper and magazines.

SubscriptionFlow is a subscription software for magazines, Newspaper, and digital media are equipped with all the necessary tools and software to resolve the real-time subscription billing, payment processing, and other customer management issues.

Along with the regular subscription management features like subscription billing, recurring payment processing, revenue recognition, automated billing workflow, and integrations for scalability, SubscriptionFlow as the digital subscription software also offers:

• One-Stop Customer Management

SubscriptionFlow provides end-to-end customer management—from interest insights to contacts to billing and payments history.

• Automated Billing and Payment Processing

It is a Subscription software that lets you the freedom of automating multiple repetitive tasks and conserve the resources to spend them wisely for the upscale content and services to loyal readers.

Integrate multiple payment gateways to cater to the readers from across the borders. Also, facilitate your subscribers with different billing adjustments, discounts, coupons, and other add-ons. In case, there is a payment failure, recover the revenue with set dunning rules, and more.

SubscriptionFlow is a complete recurring billing and payment processing solution.

• Self-Service Portal

To help clients a few steps ahead, SubscriptionFlow allows the clients to offer their customers a self-service portal to manage their order, billing, and payment details themselves that can automatically get synced within the client portal.

• Data-Driven Customer base Segmentation For Marketing and Sales

Empower marketing and sales desks with the million-dollar data of the subscriber and achieve the revenue targets and goals.

• Use Data to Drive More Customers and Revenue with the Digital Subscription Software

SubscriptionFlow can add value to the editorial and news management concerning the interests and knowledge of the readers. It also helps you to develop more data-driven content and optimize the revenue with negative churn while retaining the customers and facilitating them with upsells, cross-sells, and re-sells.

Some of the most advanced benefits you can take from data-driven subscription management are:

• Bundle and Unbundle Digital News, Articles, Videos, and Infographics
• Personalized Offers and Promotions
• Data-Driven Content Development
• Targeted Subscription Sales
• Reduced Involuntary Churn

• Delivery and Publication Calendar Management

Manage print as well as an online subscription at one place and organize more with the subscriptions, delivery, and publication calendar management.

• Plans and Pricing Optimization

Identify your reader needs for information and knowledge and offer them a personalized solution with variant pricing fo different plans. Let them choose what serves them well—flat fee, price-per-issue, per-article, per-term, or any.

• Integrations for Scalable Business Processes and Streamlined RevOps

Align your business processes and operations with the subscriptions and subscribers. Integrate any of the marketing and sales applications to leverage the real-time data from SubscriptionFlow.

• Highly Customizable Dashboard and Insightful Reporting

With SubscriptionFlow intuitive dashboards and ad-hoc reporting, find the developments in the subscription and revenue progress, evaluate the customer lifecycle value, monthly or annual recurring revenue and rate, and more about the subscription health and revenue leakages to prevent the losses in real-time.

Also Read: Customer Self-Service Portal for SaaS in 2022