Le Soir experiments with a pricing strategy aimed at rewarding loyal, long-term readers
“We are deliberately putting more focus on loyalty and less on acquisition volume for its own sake,” Coralie Vrancken, CEO of the Le Soir Division within Belgium’s Groupe Rossel, told participants at our World News Media Congress in Marseille. (Vrancken also became a WAN-IFRA Board Member last week).
The Brussels-based publisher is currently experimenting with its pricing strategy while also redesigning its app.
At the moment, both the app and the pricing strategy are works in progress, but Le Soir’s pricing experiments are especially noteworthy when so many news publishers are still prioritising acquisitions with incredibly low offers, such as “1 euro for six months,” just to take a random example. After the very low introductory offer though, most publishers then charge a substantially higher continuation rate, such as 27.99 euros every four weeks.
Building long-term relationships
Le Soir, however, is more interested in attracting readers with whom they can build a long-term relationship.
“We moved away from the ultra-low 1 euro per month, and then we went to 1 euro per week, and then afterwards we even tested going directly to full price from day one for three months, and it gave us a very useful answer: it was too severe,” Vrancken said.
This led to a more nuanced approach, which Le Soir is currently running more tests with various prices over longer time frames, with the most attractive deals requiring a one or two year subscription.
Le Soir is also changing their mix of subscription offers and now have a focus on premium weekends, which Vrancken said is basically the digital offer with a print edition, which is delivered to readers on Saturdays. There is also a premium family offer that is digital only.
While these experiments remain ongoing, Vrancken said the first signals after six weeks are positive.
“Basically 61 percent of subscribers selected the two-year commitment offer. And even better, 78 percent of acquisitions came from commitment-based offers.”
“We don’t want to use the discount with a very high percentage strategy anymore,” she added. “So, basically no more 50 percent discount, no more 20 percent discount.”
Deepening habits by making the app a destination
Le Soir has around 175,000 daily subscribers, and the publisher has a broad reach within Belgium, with some 1.1 million registered users in a market of about 4 million people, Vrancken said.
“Our challenge now is to turn that reach into deeper habits. Stronger loyalty,” she said.
This is especially crucial today, as she noted, “habit matters more than ever.”
The app is essential to this effort, Vrancken said, “because it is where we can truly connect with our communities. If we want to create a direct connection with our readers, the app is where it has to happen.”
“The goal is not to have a nicer app or a more beautiful app: The goal is to make Le Soir more of a destination, something that people come back to several times a day. That is very important, whether they have five minutes or 20 minutes and whether they want to be informed on a complex topic or relax,” Vrancken said.
“Sometimes you have five minutes because you are in a subway and sometimes you have 20 minutes because you are at home and have more time, and sometimes you are cooking and you want to listen to something. We want to be there in the micro-moments that people have in their daily life,” she added.
‘We want to reward loyalty’
Le Soir is aiming to launch the app within a few months, and is designing it to improve both the experience and value – both real value and perceived value, she said.
“We are putting attention first, and we want to reward loyalty more than short-term opportunistic entry. That means less effort on people who come in for one or two months and then leave immediately and more effort on the people who are likely to stay,” she said.
“In practical terms, we are narrowing the funnel earlier in the journey,” she added.
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