How to motivate your free registered reader to become a full paying subscriber with a drip email campaign

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All right, we're back. In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to motivate your free registered readers because you're getting free registrations to become full paying subscribers with a drip email campaign. Hey, welcome to episode 40 of the Paywall Podcast. I'm Pete here with Tyler and we're gonna, we're gonna talk about how you can engage and motivate those free registered readers that are on your site enjoying your content to become full paying subscribers. This is a very important episode and this morning I actually, Bo Sachs published or republished an article about what the Washington Post has done with their drip, their new, brand new drip and onboarding campaign to do exactly that. To keep, this is really more for paying subscribers, but to keep them from churning, which is, which is all, all the same stuff. And what, what we're gonna talk about here is, is this big challenge of, okay, you have free registered readers that are coming in. And anytime we turn on free registrations on a publication, they pour in, right?

Like every, every single time almost, they, they pour in for.

Yeah, it's like you're building your audience. You're getting, you're, you're, you're introducing a piece of friction. And yet people are saying, yes, please, I want in. Give me your newsletter. Give me your, give me some, some free content. They're not paying yet, but this is, this is what happens. Now. Some of the data points around this are really interesting. Free registered readers have a much higher chance for, for a full subscription. Typically down the road, you know, you have your super fans, which will pay you right away, but most of, the, most of the sort of unsure readership, I call them super casuals. They love you, but they're not quite ready to pay you. For you. They'll, they'll pay you down the road. And the data point for that is about four months. So if you take care of them, they will convert. Some, of course, sooner and some later, but that's the average number, four months. So let me just, before we jump in and Tyler, I know you have been very much involved in working with, setting up drip campaigns for local news publishers. And I want to Jump into that. But before we do that, I just wanted to find what is a drip campaign.

Yep.

So a drip campaign. It's a drip email campaign. And the way it works is like you'll go to any website and you'll, you'll drop off your email address and then you'll get a series of emails that are, that are sent to you, that are dripped to you over time, like maybe over a week or a month or something like that. So typically you'll, you'll drop off your email address and you'll get like the, well, the initial welcome email. And then you'll get another, you know, maybe the next day you'll get another email about something else, and the next day you'll get an email about something else. Maybe a week later you'll get an email about something else that's a drip email campaign. And it's super powerful for a lot of reasons. Okay, so the Washington Post reported three things and then we'll jump to you. One is that they had, they now have the ability to over, over time with all these emails is create a positive experience with an introduction to the benefits of being a paid subscriber. That was one big result for them. Two, it was. It reduced their churn. Now that they were exposing subscribers to what they had, it was reducing their churn and also increasing the life, which increases the lifetime value essentially of the subscriber. So. All right, so now you've been working with the Salem reporter right there on the West Coast. There are, there are a news publication, right?

Yep.

And I think you have some experience with their drip campaign. Anything you want, Anything in particular? Yeah. Did they always have a drip campaign?

Yeah. You know, honestly, I don't know the specifics around what they've done. I just know that they have a drip campaign that they partially. I know this because I signed up as a free member on their site and started getting these automated emails. So I didn't actually set this one up, but they send out, I want to say, maybe seven to 10 emails that are on an automated basis. So like, maybe when you first sign up, you get a welcome the email that you have listed here and sort of detailing what they're about and, you know, welcome to the community kind of thing. And then maybe two days later you get another email and it's, it's more like, you know, this is why we're here. This is. We're independent. We're focused on our community. You know, we, we value, we value your support. And this kind of messaging goes far beyond what you typically see. Like most of your readers are getting your newsletter and they're getting your content, but they're not oftentimes getting your mission. And this is where a drip campaign can shine. If someone's on the fence about whether they need to support you, maybe they like the content, but they're like, yeah, I don't know. But then they start seeing these drip campaigns and it's like, we're independent. We value your support. All of these mission statements that come through, that is super powerful and that can be enough to drive people to ultimately subscribe.

I've heard, I think you're, aren't you paid by the government or doesn't the town pay you?

Yeah, you'd be surprised how many local news publishers tell me that they're some of their, not all of their audience, but some of their, their, their readers will tell them that, you know, aren't you publicly funded by the government? Are our tax dollars helping subsidize your, your news? And no, no, that's not a thing yet.

Yeah, we talked to a school, school high school sports news publisher and he, he, his, one of his big pain points is he, he, he. People were just, they're constantly asking him, so does the school pay you to do this?

Yep.

Like, nope.

The business model is very elusive to those outside the industry. It's like, how are you guys staying in business?

People think that, people think that you're doing great. Like you're cash, you know, you're, you're this high profile publisher, so everybody knows about you, which means the money magically flows to you.

Yeah, right?

Yeah. Not true.

It's definitely not true. And that's, that's why the whole paywall experience has to be something that publishers jump on board.

Yeah.

And you know, that's pretty much why we both exist.

So the Salem reporter you mentioned you had gone to and signed up. But it probably a good thing for, for really anybody listening if they want to kind of take a look at what the emails actually look like, we could step through them here as well. But it's Salem reporter.com and one of the things that, you know, I think I'm going to bet that a percentage of listeners, I bet you have a welcome email and that's it. So somebody, maybe you have a free registration. Well you should and maybe just have a paid subscription. You, maybe you're just sending a welcome email and that's it. And I think the big risk is that people miss it. You know, I mean, sure, it could go to spam but even if it doesn't and it lands in your inbox, you know, we're all flooded. I think my Gmail inbox has like, you know, a hundred thousand unread messages in it could not because I need to read them, but just because they're there, they just, you know, stuff pours in and you scan your email and try to pick out what's important. So the drip, I mean if you're, if they're sending 7 to 10. As a Salem reporter saying 7 to 10 emails, there's a pretty good chance you're going to see a few of them, right?

No, no doubt, no doubt. And I think what's important in, in these drip campaigns, especially the way that they do this is. Yeah, you're, you're talking about, you know, your support is crucial. All of these different, you know, different points. But there's also almost, I think almost every single campaign or email that goes out has an option or a button to subscribe or sign up.

That's a good point.

There's a call out every single, every single message. So something to think about if you're, if you're setting one of these up in mailchimp or any other newsletter service.

Yeah. So let's. Actually that's a good segue. Why don't we take a quick look at each one. And this first one is, is the general welcome email, which is sort of like a thank you and a little bit about the mission. And, and to your point, like there's there is a, there is a like hey, please subscribe call out. Right, right in that one.

Yeah, yeah. And what's like. Yeah, yeah. What's really like awesome about having these drip campaigns is like if someone does convert and you can do this with leaky paywall and mailchimp or any other newsletter platform, if someone does convert, you can move them out of that free list into the paid list and these drip campaigns stop. So they're no longer being, you know, bombarded with like these mission driven statements about subscribing they get out of that, that feed. So you know, these, if someone does upgrade, you don't have to continue to blow them up with this.

Yeah, you can, you, you move them via tagging to a different list.

That's right.

They get now the subscriber messaging instead of the free registration messaging. That's a very good point. And that's, that's. And, and can you automate that?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. Anytime. One of the easiest ways to do that if you're, if you're in the leaky paywall world is we, we have an int with Zapier. And so, you know, if, if whether you're using mailchimp or something else, you can easily as a subscriber is updated. You can update them in, in your preferred newsletter platform.

Yeah, it's built in with our mailchimp integration. And then you can set it up with Zapier to do the same thing. Yeah, so somebody, somebody pays, the tag gets changed to paid and then they no longer get pestered with the free stuff.

That's right.

To get your, your paid messaging. All right, so let's just click over to the. So the second email. Do you know how far apart these are spread?

Are they like daily or they get. So in the beginning they're like a couple of days apart and then they get really far apart. Oh yeah. So it starts out like you get the welcome email like 5 minutes after you sign up, and then like a day later you get the next one. And then like, I think like two or three days later you get the next one. And then it might be 12, 15 days before you get the next one. So they're, they're, they're trying to space these out so they're not blowing up your inbox over the course of, in this case, if you had 11 emails, you don't want to send these out, you know.

Right, right.

One day at a time. That would, that would drive people crazy.

So, so it almost sounds like a few months before all of them get sent.

It's like a month and a half or so. I think before maybe, maybe you might be right. It might be two months, three months before they complete that cycle.

Which, which matches that data point pretty well of four months. Where.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

It takes four months for some, on average for someone to convert. So I think that's a good point. If, if, if you're setting up a drip campaign is spread these out over, I'd say at least three months. Go to four if you can.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, keep them. I mean, you're, you know, at the same time you're sending your content. Right. Like, here's all the latest news. If it's daily or if it's a, if you're a magazine, it's maybe once a week or whatever. Yeah, but, but have that sort of that specific contact point to introduce your, your content and your mission and.

Yeah.

Your paid, paid messaging.

Yeah. And in their case, I mean, they, they have an incredible newsletter operation. I believe they have two different newsletters, one for Free and one for paid. So, you know, not only are people getting the general mission drip, but they're also getting, you know, these, these high value newsletters that they send out. And they're not just like latest post happens, send it to mailchimp. These are, these are well thought out newsletters that they, they put together and the open rates, I think show that for them.

Good. Yeah, well, I know, I know from our previous conversations. It seems to be working for them because, yeah, they're doing well. And, and that's, that's an important point too. You know, if you have a free registration, you have a paid, you have a free newsletter and you have a paid newsletter by, by default because you're free. Your, your, your free newsletters are going to be, have the subscription messaging which we'll look at. The paid newsletters will not have subscription messaging because you're already subscribed.

Right.

And you can send them out at different times a day to paid or you can have full text for news for paid. Which I think every time I talk to a publisher about it, they really like the idea of a full text newsletter for only for paid subscribers.

Yeah.

Adds value because now you have a premium newsletter.

Yeah. And you don't have to log in. I mean it's pretty nice, but it's, it's just in your inbox and ready to go. Love it.

Okay. Email number two, Drip. Email number two. I noticed this one was like a big mission dive.

Yep.

How the how and how, like your publication is crucial to your audience. Like, how do you make your reader. This is also very reader centric. Right. How do you make your reader's life better? And I think in this case there's a mention about, hey, again, like we need subscription, paid subscriptions to survive the big mission. Again, call out to subscribe. Yeah.

It goes back to what we just said earlier. You have to tell people that you need their support. You can't just assume that they know that you need your support or their support. So focus on that when you're, when you're putting that, that drip campaign together.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, so number three, I really.

Like this, this is, this is so the other, I think two articles or two. Two articles, two emails came from the editor.

The publisher. Yeah.

And this one is an introduction to the managing editor, which I thought was great. Like you're getting to know this, the, the team a bit. And that, that goes, I mean, above and beyond. I think what I typically see in drip campaigns, like letting your team be involved in what These, These drip campaigns look like. And personalize them and introduce your. Your, Your team.

Yeah, this is the education reporter. And there's also. I. I noticed an invitation to connect and call.

That's right.

So, yeah, just hit reply. Right. And like, hey, I actually read every email.

That's right.

Very personal.

Yep.

Really, really good. Good engagement. Okay, so that was number three. So number four, let's see who. What my notes say. Okay. Who we are. It's who we are again. And topics we cover. So let me just. So the thing about, like, repeating your mission statement, you might feel like, oh, my God, I'm just. I'm just like, saying the. I mean, it's different words, but you're. You're covering, like, what you do. But the reality is, is people miss stuff and they need. We need to hear. We're just bombarded by information, and we need to hear stuff over and over again for it to sort of sink in. So you. And so that, you know, in marketing, you need to repeat messaging. Even back in the day, like, even 20, 30 years ago, like, you needed to repeat a message seven times, 12 times for it to sink in. And today it's even worse, probably. I don't know what the latest data.

Yeah, Yeah, I like this. I mean, he's. He's. Yeah, you could say it's repetitive, but it's also. He's adding another layer of. Of why you should subscribe. Like, here are some exact things that we cover in the community. It just goes to a different layer of.

Yeah.

Of depth.

So. Yeah. And what I noticed on this one is they have links to their topic.

That's right.

You just link off to your categories and it's like, hey, these are the things we focus on. Very specific. It's like, oh, yeah. Local politics. I'm interested. Definitely interested. Economy events calendar.

One thing I really like about the way that they structure their content is it's very simple. Sometimes you'll see news publishers, and they'll have, like, 75 different categories. Like, they'll have five different categories with, like 500 different subcategories. Like, they keep it simple. It's like four or five different categories. That's what we cover, and that's what we focus on. Right, Right.

Yep. Yeah. Keep it simple. Yeah, we don't have. There's. There's the temptation to get more complicated is. Is huge. It's a challenge to. To really sort of throttle yourself. All right, so number five, I thought this one was pretty interesting. They do a survey.

Yeah.

Their readership, their Free registered readership.

This is, I mean, you can do this in many different ways, but if you want to know more information about what your reader wants or what they're interested in, yes, you can track analytics and you can do things with insights through leaky paywall, and you can get a very good understanding of what they're clicking on and what they're converting on. But you'll get more comment this way. Ask some questions. What do they want to read? What do they want you to focus on? What's important to them? What are we missing that maybe our analytics aren't telling us some of those anecdotes that you might get in a reader survey? So I think this is fantastic.

It is. And communities, like, especially local communities, but all communities are passionate about whatever subject matter you're publishing about. So when you ask, when, when you, the publisher, you know, the, you know, you have that monopoly sort of presence in your, in your, in your audience. Like, hey, what do you want? That's like, yeah, I'm interested, I'm engaged. Let's. And we'll tell you. That's what you want. You want people to tell you. So they're doing an 11 question. I didn't go actually look at it, but they say it's mostly multiple choice, which I think is smart. Like people just check off answers and then, yeah, have a comment.

Like, you know, yeah, you definitely don't want like 11 different boxes we have to type in. No one's going to do that. So you need this to be fairly simple. And maybe it's not the most scientific survey on earth, but you need people to complete it.

Right.

To get through it.

Yeah, give them a, give them a comment box at the end and they'll. Yeah, they can comment.

That's right.

Yeah.

I actually just survey up for another publisher about a week ago. She was specifically interested in, you know, what, what do you want more of? And one thing that was interesting that she was not covering was the local business. Like stories like what? Like small mom and pop shops that are opening and closing and things that are happening in that arena. She had no idea that her audience was interested in that. And this is where a survey comes in handy because she would never know that from the insights because she didn't cover it. So. So these are things outside of the box that your analytics just can't track.

Right.

Yeah.

That's good. That's great stuff. Yeah, I think I didn't even think about a survey, honestly, when I was working with drip campaigns, but that's it's definitely the way to go. Okay, number six, this one is a value based newsletter. They sort of, it's sort of mission based, but it's talking about like how, how the work of putting this together is more than a job. And it's like, you know, it's sort of a calling and the principles and reporting. And then I noticed on this one that this again, there's a call out to subscribe that, you know, we need your support. Please subscribe.

Yep, yep.

So that one's a good one. Let's see, next one, foreign.

Let's see is this, this one is.

Become a subscriber today. It's an invitation. It's essentially an invitation to subscribe. And you know, they have the pricing in there. And then there's a final email, email8, which I don't have up here, which is a promotion. So let's talk a little bit about like, okay, how do you. So let's say you're at three months or four months and your final email is like going to be the, hopefully the closer. Like now maybe they have subscribed already.

That's possible. The hope is that maybe they've only gotten halfway through this and they've, they've subscribed and they've, they've gotten out of this, this series of emails. But if they haven't.

Yeah. So I want to ask you, Tyler, so what would you do? What were you running the publication? It's your last email. They haven't subscribed yet. You, you want to kind of push them over the edge. What would you do?

Yeah. So the inclination, I think, for a lot of publishers is to offer them some insane discount on the subscription price. Please do not. Do not, I repeat, please, please do not do that.

Begging. You're begging.

Yeah. The reason I don't like that is it devalues the reporting and the work. Everything that you do. You're saying that it's ultimately worth 50% less than what it is on the site. And so if you, if you want to send out a discount email at the very end to nudge people, I would recommend instead of doing a 50, 60, 70% discount, offer them a trial, maybe an extended trial. Don't put a number on it. Because the moment that you put a number on it, you're telling people that my content is only worth a dollar for three months.

Right.

But if you do a trial, right, 30 days, people are assuming, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a trial. It's not actually worth zero. It's. Right. I'M I get to test this out. So the psychological difference there is key when it comes to doing this. So that would be my, my recommendation. What do you think? What would you do?

I support you 1000%. Absolutely. Do not give it. Don't do a dollar. Don't do 60% discount, 40% discount, 25%. If you discount, discount, you're just, you're essentially instantly training your, your, your readership that your content doesn't have value.

And let me tell you, as a consumer, it puts such a bad taste and especially in my mouth when I go through like, I, I just got rid of using mailchimp. And they, at one of the things they do when you pause or cancel your subscription, they throw this, like, you know, an additional two months for free.

Yeah.

And I'm like, well, where was that the last three years? It almost feels like an insult that they were hiding this, like, special deal. So I would much rather see publishers offer a trial and let readers take a dive into what you offer versus doing the crazy discount. And I think you'll see better results as far as, like, churn goes.

Yeah. Because Audible did the same to me. I've, I've tried to cancel a couple of times. My Audible. And I, and I like Audible and I, and I like. And that's how I listen to, that's how I read books. It's Audible. But it's. Every time it's the same thing. It's like, okay, well, I have, like right now I have four credits and I need to spend. And I get through a book a month or something like that. And, and it's like, well, I'm, I'm a little, I have a little, I'm a little, you know, flush on books. So, you know, I want to cancel for the moment. And then they, they sort of walk you through 12 screens and you end up like, not canceling and you're just pausing for three months or I forget whatever it is. And, and it's like, wait a second. I get that it works for them. Like, it totally works because it got me to pause instead of to cancel.

Yeah.

And then I had other options, like get one, get one credit every two months. And they give you, like, all these options. Like, wait a second, why isn't this upfront? Why can't I just go into my account page and just select okay, pause like, without having to? I mean, it's, it's, it's. We live in a world of, of where we're just getting more and more time strapped every day. And, and it's getting worse. It's not getting better. We just have less and less time. So we need, we need ways to, we don't need the government saying, hey, you publishers need to provide a cancel link on your my account page. That's not what we need. We need, we need publishers to do these things automatically and to provide the, you know, sort of the manage the quick management options that you can, you can do. Okay. Wow, I just went down a rabbit hole. Very sorry about that. But, but anyway, where were we? So, yes, I agree with you. You know, try for 30 days. You gotta drop in a credit card. You get 30 days or 60 days or 90 days or however generous you want to be to basically get that person to convert and then it's full price from there. Because. Because it's worth it. It is absolutely worth it. And yeah, you know, don't be afraid. Our, our, our local news publisher here charges 15 bucks a month. We live in, in, in a very remote part of New Hampshire, very small towns. I mean our total, the total coverage area for, for the Valley News is 75,000, something like that for. And they charge 15 bucks a month for digital. Yeah, right. Go for it. Full price. We pay full price. I don't, they don't discount, you know, it's good. The print side is. It seems to be a different story, but I don't engage on that.

So what is, what is that print thing you talk about? What is that?

Anyway, okay, so final thoughts on this? I'll just say start it.

Start a.

You know, mailchimp has it built in. Most email providers have these functions built in and I think a few don't. I know drip.com we use for a while. That's a good one. Activecampaign, all these HubSpot, you know, they all have the Drip built in and all you got to do is write the content. So again, go to Salemreporter.com register, look at what they're doing and put together three months minimum. I'd say three to four months of emails. Eight to nine emails. Spread them out, do a couple of real quick. Focus on mission, focus on value, focus on your, you know, what, what is the content categories that you cover? And always have a, have a. Hey, you know, please subscribe. We need your help. You know, make it clear that you need your audience to pay you to survive. This is, this resonates. This has always resonated. Okay. Anything else?

I think that's it.

Just do it.

Yeah, just do it. And don't be afraid to. Like, if you can only come up with a couple of emails or if mailchimp wants you to upgrade because you've created three drips or whatever. Like, if you can only create three, then create three and see how it goes. And if you start to see an increase, then upgrade your newsletter plan and go from there.

Hey, I also want to mention that if you are listening to this and you want to. You want to talk a little bit about Drip or anything else to drive subscriptions, get in touch. I. I'm a little afraid to say this, but. So I set up with an automatic calendar scheduler. It's called Calendly. It works well. And if you go to our website, LeakyPaywell.com and just go to book a demo or contact us, you can. You can. You can book a meeting just like, bam. Just my. My. My calendar is open and I. And I really welcome that. Please do. Favorite thing to do, talk about subscription strategy. So we'll. We'll have. Hope I can help and we'll have a good time chatting. Okay. Thanks, Tyler.

All right. Thank you.

Till next time.

All right.

Yep.

Thanks for listening to the Paywall podcast. If you'd like to get in touch to discuss subscription Strategy, go to LeakyPaywall.com see you next time.