Mediahuis is a large publishing corporation that owns a range of titles across Europe. One of these titles is NRC, based in the Netherlands, with about 300,000 subscribers primarily aged 50 and above. As a publisher, Mediahuis strives for independent, high-quality journalism, providing educational clarity and making a positive contribution to people and society.

In recent efforts, their strategy for NRC was focused on conversions with various demographics for their digital newspaper. To do this, Mediahuis needed to improve their paywall strategies. This led to the necessity of deploying an agile solution that was capable of easy testing and rapid iterations of their paywall strategies. Not only did this solution need to be technically sophisticated and able to handle complex user journeys, it also needed to be easy to integrate and not cause any hindrance to the on-site user experience e.g. slow page load time.

Mediahuis noticed that for their NRC title, around 50% of their subscriptions came directly from their own domain (www.nrc.nl). With this substantial percentage from direct traffic, it became clear there was significant potential to convert more users to subscribers through better optimization of their site. This meant identifying the most favorable strategy to capture these audiences at the right time, and with the right subscription offer.

However, Mediahuis faced a challenge with NRC as they had a strong dependency on their in-house technical teams to make any changes to their paywalls, which required time and ample resources. Before Zephr, they attempted to implement a new paywall in-house and it took over eight months to add additional features and updates. A process that was too long for effective optimization.

To avoid this laborious process, Mediahuis needed a tool that allowed their commercial team to manage their paywall strategies, decrease the time to market for new user journeys, and amend paywalls with ease. Mediahuis was looking for an agile solution with the ability to conduct rapid A/B tests and track user behavior, enabling them to quickly make effective and data driven decisions with real-time insights. This would allow for quick and proven iterations to their paywall strategies and help them gain a leading edge over competition.

When assessing solutions, Mediahuis identified one provider that offered integrations with their tech stack and the adaptability they required. Zephr was the choice due to their agility and ease of use with an intuitive interface. With Zephr, Mediahuis could make changes to their paywall strategies as and when needed.

“[Zephr] has the ability to integrate easily with our tech stack. This enables us to smoothly create custom journeys and paywalls as we see fit.” Olivier Schwaanhuyser, Strategic Product Owner, Digital Acceleration, NRC

This adaptability enabled Mediahuis to iterate quickly and even make changes to their paywalls on the go. Olivier, a strategic product owner at NRC explained how Zephr helped him solve a problem with website subscriber conversions while he was on vacation.

Zephr’s platform enabled Olivier to respond quickly to a payment issue. Originally, NRC had conversions run through a subscription shop page, but when payments failed through that method, NRC implemented an alternative payment method that ran directly through a paywall instead. With the help of Zephr, Olivier was able to create new conversion flows to the paywall and save what could have been a significant loss in conversions over the weekend due to failed payments. In total, this level of flexibility and agility meant Olivier could quickly adapt to changing circumstances and make changes to customer journeys on the fly, recovering around 200 conversions that could have otherwise been lost.

“Being able to do this on the go at the airport was incredible. Saving those 200 conversions that weekend was simply down to being able to create new journey flows and alternative conversion routes within half an hour.” Olivier Schwaanhuyser, Strategic Product Owner, Digital Acceleration, NRC

This is a clear demonstration of the value of having a platform that empowers businesses to adopt an agile mindset and be responsive to changing circumstances. A mindset that Olivier says is now being implemented across the business.

“[Zephr] not only helped our team to make rapid iterations, but also helps other marketers within the wider organization to think more strategically about customer journey flows and how to optimize them for greater conversions”. Olivier Schwaanhuyser, Strategic Product Owner, Digital Acceleration, NRC

With Zephr, NRC and Mediahuis are now able to boost conversions with minimal data collection and a single offer with streamlined processes. They tested this new structure, running social media ad campaigns to a younger mobile audience in a funnel that led to a paywall. Simplifying the process from social media ads straight to subscriber conversions in this way, and streamlining the paywall conversion form itself, meant NRC reported that they were able to see double the conversion rates for these younger audiences in the test compared to their previous conversion journey.

In addition to improved conversion rates, Zephr’s functionality has enabled Mediahuis to build dynamic registration forms that encourage users to register for free trials and give access to articles for free. This enables Mediahuis to gather first-party data and develop a deeper understanding of their audience in order to create an even better personalized experience. This process forms a robust progressive profiling data strategy, gradually enabling Mediahuis and NRC to gain personal insights on users without being intrusive.

Mediahuis and NRC now have visibility over when a user is logged in to their site, and through which sources they register. Whether that’s an audio app, or directly through the website, Mediahuis can build specific journeys with targeted messaging for each of these registrations. In the long term, it is Mediahuis’ belief that registration and personal experiences will generate more engagement, and lead to increased subscribers overall.

“Through this [registration] process, we have seen more than doubling in the number of subscribers acquired after a six-month period.” Olivier Schwaanhuyser, Strategic Product Owner, Digital Acceleration, NRC

The focus for the future of Mediahuis is both on reducing churn and increasing retention:

“[In future] we want to action more of our user data in Zephr. By integrating user data from additional sources in our data warehouse and tech stack, we aim to utilize Zephr for not only acquiring new subscribers, but for retaining existing ones too. Once we have integrated data from different sources, Zephr will enable us to intricately tailor every step of the user experience.” Olivier Schwaanhuyser, Strategic Product Owner, Digital Acceleration, NRC

In summary, the deployment of first-party data strategies, rapid user journey testing, and agile paywall forms has enabled Mediahuis to expand the digital side of their business without the extensive lead time. Mediahuis and NRC now have the means for improved impact and conversions with the younger audience they were targeting. In addition to this, Zephr enables them to integrate with other tech solutions as their needs grow and expand, helping to future-proof their digital business.