Toolkits asked a selection of publishing leaders what trends and challenges they believe will shape the year ahead for content-based subscription businesses.
A handful of key themes emerged, including why transparency and clarity are crucial for building trust and credibility with subscribers, how to convince audiences to register, and the importance of optimizing for the long-term.
Contributors included:
- Fiona Spooner, Financial Times - managing director of consumer revenue
- Julia Beizer, Bloomberg Media - chief digital officer
- Emilie Harkin & Rachel Sturm, The Guardian - svp of growth & director of consumer revenue
- Samantha Winkelman, The Daily Beast - svp of product
- Michael Ribero, Condé Nast - svp of consumer revenue
- Steve Hayes, The Dispatch - editor and chief executive officer
- Corinne Osnos, Foreign Policy - head of subscriptions
- Heidi Strom Moon, Slate - director of subscriptions
- Matt Lindsay, Mather Economics - chief executive officer
- George Di Guido, The Information - vp of growth
- Stephanie Solomon, Foreign Affairs - chief revenue officer
Putting trust and transparency first
Fiona Spooner, managing director of consumer revenue, Financial Times
Trust and credibility: 2024 will be a consequential year for democracy, and there’s a huge opportunity for trusted publishers to be a source of truth. At the FT, we put trust and transparency first - not only with our gold-standard journalism but also throughout the customer experience. For example, we’re enhancing our cancellation journeys to make them as easy as possible for customers to cancel, pause, and renew their subscriptions. Although stricter governance of subscription contracts could lead to higher churn rates, lower conversion rates, and additional operational costs and complexity, greater transparency increases customer engagement and loyalty, which is at the heart of everything we do.