Building a Personalized, Dynamic Paygate in Switzerland

By Anisa Holmes

Today, the most successful paygate models are those that are highly personalized, dynamic, adaptable, and data-driven. But, they haven’t always been this way. In his presentation, Group Head of Digital Product at Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Rouven Leuener, provided a quick look at the evolution of their paygate over the past 5 years, and where it’s heading in the future.

NZZ’s traditional paygate model, in place from around 2012 – 2014, was a fairly rudimentary subscription model with a conversion rate of below 0.5%. The “Optimized Traditional Approach”, introduced more nuance to the model including personalized prompts and calls-to-action based on users’ reading behaviour, yielding a conversion rate of 1.2%. By phase 3, “The Optimized Approach” phase, NZZ was deploying A/B tests, and reiterating those tests to improve their rules engine and boost conversion. Phase 4, “The Paygate with Propensity Scoring”, achieved a >2.5% conversion rate by employing an A/B test to users who have a high propensity to purchase a subscription. In the upcoming year, NZZ plans to boost their conversion rate to a target goal of >5% via a strategy that focuses on engagement and orders for anonymous users and retention for paying subscribers.

Along their paygate journey, NZZ also discovered some key learnings. For one, Leuener says, “don’t sell anything on Saturdays, not even if it’s free.” And, on Mondays users tend to only convert on a reduced offer. Content released around lunchtime usually performs better, and simple prompt styles generally work the best. But above all, in order to have a high conversion rate, media companies should strive to stay relevant to their usership, adapt to customer’s lifecycles, and focus on engagement.