Newspapers
Background
Newspapers and publications are cornerstones of democratic life. In a digital age, they continue to provide important services, they; fund investigations, ensure a quality information environment and hold power to account.
Over the past decade, much has been written about the difficulty of monetising quality content. Although emphasis is placed on monetising digital offerings, we forget print editions remain profitable. In some cases print is responsible for the majority of a title’s profit. This justifies investment in marketing activity to convert occasional ‘casual’ readers into subscribers.
Be inspired
Consumer brands recognise that the majority of purchase decisions are made at the point of selection. This is where competitors' offers, shelf position and a host of other factors have a major influence. By using an i-movo subscription system, brands can ensure consumer loyalty by moving the theatre of decision making online. Here, they control the environment. A consumer who has pre-selected (and pre-paid) for a product is highly unlikely to be influenced by other factors when in store.
The opportunity
Newspapers have been offering voucher-book based subscriptions for decades. In this system, a subscriber receives a pack of vouchers in the post and redeems these paper vouchers at their local newsagent. However, these print books are expensive to produce and distribute, they are inflexible for the subscriber and susceptible to fraud. Crucially, the insight into a subscriber’s usage is minimal. This leads to high levels of cancellation.
By switching to a digital vouchers, redeemed through i-movo, publishers could stand to save 47% of operational costs per annum compared to paper. This does not include any further savings through significantly reduced fraud, of which we know there is significant activity. At the same time, detailed data produced by i-movo, leads to better insight into reader behaviour which translates into negligible levels of subscription cancellation.
The solution
Instead of a paper book of vouchers, where one voucher can be redeemed for one newspaper, i-movo provides two vouchers: one is a magnetic stripe card and is used by subscribers who collect their copy every day in person, typically using which ever newsagent is convenient. The subscriber also gets a letter containing a barcode that they give their newsagent if the same newsagent supplies most of the copies to that subscriber. The subscriber can use both letter and card in whatever permutation suits them and the i-movo platform tracks this.The same system manages payments back to retailer to the retailer without any effort on their part
The impact
Costs of producing & distributing cards can be reduced by 80% and transaction costs by 7% compared to paper vouchers.
Insight into subscriber behaviour has seen subscription cancellation reduce by over 70%
Fraud and bad debt is reduced to zero from current level as cancelled subscriptions become immediately inactive and vouchers cannot be claimed beyond their expiry date.