Outside Media Bets on Bundles With Latest Acquisition

Whether biker, runner, skier or surfer, there has never been a better time to be inside the Outside bundle. The publisher announced Wednesday morning that it has acquired Pinkbike, a Canadian mountain biking brand that also owns a secondhand marketplace for mountain bikes, a website called Cycling Tips and a mapping service for mountain bikers called Trail Forks. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The addition marks the latest in a series of acquisitions by Outside, which now comprises 39 outdoor enthusiast brands, ranging from Women’s Running to Rock and Ice magazines. The publisher has bundled its offerings into a tiered subscription product, Outside+, the price of which has remained consistent even as its perks have grown. Retention is a key metric for subscription publishers, and as a result, according to the publisher, the bundle has helped Outside retain 95% of the members who signed up for Outside+ last May, when the product was known as Active Pass and included fewer offerings than it does currently. The publisher declined to specify the total number of Outside+ subscribers. “In the switch to membership in general, you have to create bundles to create real value for the customer,” said Robin Thurston, CEO of Outside and former CEO of MapMyFitness. “And the reality is: There’s a lot of room to add value as you get to millions and millions of customers.” Bundles increase subscriber value, boosting retention Subscribers to Outside+ can choose from two membership tiers: $49 or $99 annually. The $49 option functions much like other digital subscriptions, granting members unlimited access to paywalled articles, a monthly print magazine and discounts on select gear and apparel. The more expensive subscription offers a laundry list of perks that extend far beyond access to digital content, such as access to Outside TV, free books from endurance sports publisher VeloPress, a subscription to mapping service Gaia GPS and much more. With the acquisition of Pinkbike, Outside will fold its editorial offerings into the Outside+ bundle, giving subscribers access to its editorial content, use of its trail-mapping service, early access to gear, discounts and free listing in its marketplace. Despite adding more benefits to its premium membership offering, Outside plans to continue adding new products to its membership program without charging more, a strategy it hopes will net new subscribers and encourage existing ones to stay. Outside Magazine currently has 500,000 digital subscribers and 1 million print subscribers, Thurston said. Economies of scale keep bundles viable How can Outside continue to add new products to its bundle without raising the price of a subscription? So long as it keeps adding subscribers and monitors its margins, Outside can maintain this strategy, said Sean Griffey, CEO of media company Industry Dive. “It’s like software,” Griffey said. “Once the software has been built, the marginal cost of giving it to one more person is low, so it’s a great way for a content business to scale.” Outside currently reaches about 200 million unique visitors a year, the publisher said, and it hopes to convert between a sizable 5%-10% of its readers into subscribers. It also hopes to shift its funding from about 70% ad-supported to 70% subscription-supported in the coming years. “We can add more value for the same price because the economics work as you scale the business and get more users,” Thurston said. Bundles do have natural limits, Griffey said. What draws in a backpacker might not appeal to a yogi, meaning Outside needs to know precisely what value propositions attract its various constituencies. A bundle can also reach a point of diminishing returns. If Outside continues adding new products without raising the price, those new offerings need to bring in new subscribers. Retention revenue adds up, but increasing the size of a bundle needs to result in net new subscribers, Griffey said. "There are more than 2 billion people on the planet in the active lifestyle category," Thurston said. "We have a lot of room to grow.” Pay Attention, Publishers: Outsiders Are Redefining What a Magazine Can Be

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Outside Media Bets on Bundles for Subscriber Retention With Its Latest Acquisition

Its first cohort of year-long subscribers have a 95% retention rate

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg