The risks of subscriber conversion incentives for editorial teams

Publishers are increasingly exploring ways to incentivize editorial departments to help drive subscription conversions, including handing out targets and quotas they're expected to meet, and offering performance-related bonuses and other perks. These approaches can prove highly effective at encouraging (or forcing) editorial staffers to adopt more marketing-centric mindsets and to perpetually consider the commercial impact of their output during the course of their day-to-day work. But at the same time, orienting editorial team output around subscriber conversions comes with inherent risks, and any publisher doing so should remain cognizant of the long-term (and often unforeseen) impact it may have on their content, products, subscriber bases, brands and editorial operations. Fo