In 2020, subscription revenue for publishers grew 16%, according to a study by subscription management platform Zuora; around a fifth (21 of American adults now pay for at least one online news outlet in the U.S., according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021. The majority of those paying have an average of two subscriptions.To get more news about Robot Subscription, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

But how many subscriptions can one reader pay for? And how many will they keep, especially without the rollercoaster of 2020 to keep them locked into the news cycle?

Retention rates are holding steady — for now. But to ensure that they can keep the customers they’ve won over the past 18 months, publishers are hiring more people focused on keeping and bringing in subscribers and also investing more in content across multiple formats to add to the value of a subscription.
Several publications have made additions or changes to their leadership ranks to keep their subscriber momentum going. On Aug. 16, Michael Ribero took on the role of The Washington Post’s first chief subscriptions officer, tasked with overseeing the company’s digital subscriptions business. Karl Wells was promoted to a new role at Dow Jones, chief subscriptions officer, in April, and he will have three new vp positions reporting to him starting this fall: vp of WSJ Core Subscriptions, vp of Barron’s Group Subscriptions and vp of International and Young Audiences.

Others are investing in large teams to improve specific functions. The Los Angeles Times, for example, had a “significant uptick” in digital subscribers last year, CMO Joshua Brandau said, though he declined to share specific numbers.

“Like most news publishers, we certainly saw more attention and time spent with our content in 2020 —specifically, breaking news about the pandemic and the local openings [and] closings for L.A. neighborhoods,” he said.

The focus now? How to keep them. “Subscriber growth comes from finding new prospects but also, largely, from keeping more of our current subscribers,” Brandau said.

The L.A. Times is using first-party data “to inform creative messaging and perform content tests with specific user segments,” Brandau said. That same data is used to create benchmarks that it uses for spending in acquisition channels.

In the last year, the Times has hired “around 10” people each to its creative services and growth marketing teams to support its subscription strategy, including designers, copywriters, acquisition marketing managers, retention marketing managers, a media director and media planners, among others. Brandau expects the company will need to continue to increase the size of these teams through the next year, especially when it comes to figuring out how to retain subscribers — churn was a big challenge for the L.A. Times a few years ago.