The Washington Post Amps Up Its App Strategy

The flagship app of The Washington Post is the stuff of publishers' dreams: It converts readers into subscribers and subscribers into repeat customers. To take advantage of this, The Post is investing more resources into its mobile strategy team, with the aim of shepherding new users onto the app and improving the app experience for existing users. The Post, whose billionaire owner Jeff Bezos is renowned for his attention to digital detail, has seen significant growth in its number of app downloads over the past year—an 86% increase, according to a company statement. About half of those using the app are subscribers, a rep confirmed. Kat Downs Mulder, a managing editor for The Post who oversees its suite of digital products, attributes this growth, in part, to a variety of behavior-based prompts to download the app. “Taking casual users and making them loyal is something that apps can do really well,” Mulder said. “It's a higher barrier to go and download something, so the trick is figuring out the right moments to introduce that.” As The Post continues working to convert casual readers into paying subscribers, the role of its app in that mission has grown increasingly prominent. No longer just another vehicle for presenting readers with content, The Washington Post app has become one of the most effective tools the publisher has at its disposal for growing its paying audience. App readers read more and stay longer Subscribers using The Post app are more likely to read more and continue subscribing than subscribers who only read The Post on the web, according to data shared with Adweek, though the publication declined to provide an exact metric. Subscribers who access The Post via its app also give the company a higher net promoter score compared to those who read on the web, a figure that indicates that subscribers prefer the app to the mobile browser. The Post, which has about 3 million digital subscribers, already sees the majority of its subscriber pageviews occurring on its app, partly because The Post's mobile strategy team uses data to tailor content preferences on the app. By following what articles a user reads, how long they linger on those articles, what spurs them to close the app, and a litany of other behaviors, The Post can improve the user experience, which encourages repeat visits. Subscribers who use the app now consume 128% more pageviews than subscribers who only access Post content on the web. Given how effectively its mobile product advances readers along the conversion pathway, the publication wants all of its mobile readers to migrate to its app, regardless of whether or not they are yet subscribers. To do this, The Post employs different strategies for its different reader “buckets”: non-app users, new subscribers and ongoing subscribers. The Washington Post Expands Technology Team Nudging in nonsubscribers To encourage casual readers to move onto the app, the mobile strategy team has begun exploring methods to better “activate” nonsubscribers, nudging curious readers toward the app before they have signed up for a monthly subscription. They accomplish this by serving readers behavior-based prompts to download the app, as well as by cross-promoting it throughout their content channels. Once a reader has downloaded the app, it uses behavioral data to suggest relevant content that has a higher likelihood of getting the reader hooked. These suggestions, combined with its paywall and native advertising for its subscription program, are key to the app converting casual readers into subscribers, said Mulder. Aim to retain Once a reader subscribes, The Post shifts its focus from getting them onto the app to keeping them on the app, which it does by “building habit,” or getting the reader into a routine of consuming its content. To do this, The Post encourages new subscribers to sign up for newsletters, download its podcasts and receive push alerts, all low-effort commitments that give The Post recurring opportunities to take root in its readers’ lives. Publishers like The Post often see new subscribers as critical but precarious: They have taken the initiative to subscribe, but they could easily backslide if they are not sufficiently engaged. Getting new subscribers onto the app gives The Post its best chance of converting them into recurring customers. "It's important that shortly after someone becomes a subscriber, we help them find day-to-day value in The Post," Mulder said. "The app is a great way to do that." After several months of subscribing, the technology behind The Post app becomes key. The more a reader uses the app, the better it will understand its user, turning “stickiness” into “lock in.” When a user is locked in, they are theoretically so accustomed to receiving their news via the app that moving to another newspaper or platform requires more effort than staying put. At this point, the app is doing the lion’s share of the work in retaining that subscriber, allowing The Post team to devote more of its attention to reaching and activating new potential subscribers, while methodically collecting subscription revenue from a growing base of satisfied subscribers. The third-party cookie push Efforts at The Post to corral readers onto its app come at a time as the future of data collection faces uncertainty, analysts point out. New rules regarding third-party cookies and user-tracking have prompted ad-based businesses, such as news publications, to move readers off the open web and behind the closed walls of their mobile apps, which more effectively track, store and utilize user behavior data. Tracking users across different app environments, of course, is not long for this world. The Washington Post Beefs Up Contextual Targeting in the Post-Cookie Era “How are you, as a digital publisher, going to convince brands to advertise with you? When you have an app, one of those elements is that you can have richer data and targeting capabilities,” said Eunice Shin, a digital strategy partner at the growth consultancy Prophet. “But the other element is that you can create a bespoke customer experience that makes it super compelling.” The Post's efforts to move readers onto its app mirror larger trends in the digital advertising ecosystem, Shin said, to remain competitive not just with Google and Facebook when selling ads, but also against every other product trying to capture users’ attention. As part of this process to strengthen its app strategy, the D.C.-based publication is shuttering its image-heavy Washington Post Select app, a product it unveiled in 2014 but recently decided to fold into its primary app. The Post team is incorporating elements from the Select app into its flagship product, such as increasing the number of visual elements and making the experience more interactive through products such as widgets that let readers thumb through stories. “We want the app to be more visual, personal and useful,” said Mulder. “Those are the three areas we want to concentrate on.”

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The Washington Post Amps Up Its App Strategy to Drive More Subscribers

The goal is to reduce subscriber churn and prepare for a cookie-less future

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