How to build a successful premium offering
4th Episode Audience Development Deep Dive
We Like Mags and Purple in conversation with André Lux, Head of Sales & Marketing at Heise Medien
Heise Medien publishes the industry magazines c't and iX, Technology Review and Telepolis, among others. Since 2019, Heise Medien has been offering the subscription service Heise +. For an additional fee, interested readers can delve deeper into industry topics than was previously the case via the free portal Heise Online. The maxim here is: "We are deep divers and get to the bottom of things. To this end, a dedicated online editorial team was created to deliver just that to the target group: Articles and background reports with even more depth.
Price juggling not without consequences
The pricing was still bumpy at the beginning: Interested subscribers had the option of paying a temporary price of 9.95 euros, which was to increase to 14.95 euros at a later date. However, this tended to cause confusion among readers, so Heise Medien quickly switched to a fixed price of 9.95 euros. But that was not to be the end of the story: When the prices were increased by three euros in March 2021, the company quickly felt the reactions. Digital subscriptions plummeted and Heise Medien realized that online offerings have a different sensibility than the print market.
André Lux also reports on the intersection of print and digital subscribers and the migration from print to digital and vice versa. This is a challenge that the company must face if it wants to continue to consistently retain and build up readers. In addition, the online editorial team of heise+ works with a topic radar that provides the editorial team with important information about relevant and actually interesting core topics in order to reach users.
But that's not all: in order to retain new customers, their on-site behavior is measured, albeit not on an individualized basis, but in "mini-cohorts. According to André Lux, the aim is to offer Next Best Content (NBC). This is content that is so exciting that interested parties accept the Next Best Offer (NBO) in the next step in order to secure access to the exclusive content. Currently, heise+ has 46,500 active subscribers.
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Episode content
What awaits you in this episode
00:45 - The big difference: heise and heise+
04:06 - Subscription and pricing: why the online market is more sensitive than the print segment
09:11 - The difference between One- and Multibrander
15:25 - Collaboration between marketing and tech team
17:11 - Print versus digital subscribers
19:48 - Why a topic radar is useful
26:21 - Customer Audience Management: How to nurture and woo customers
29:41 - Open sesame not or how Heise + works with paid and gated content
33:49 - Newsletter Marketing
36:05 - A/B Testing: What Works and What Doesn't
38:37 - Traffic - Mobile or Desktop
40:21 - Customer Journey & Warning Signals
44:47 - Acquisition t3n: What follows the takeover of the successful industry magazine.
46:39 - André Lux private