The Globe and Mail Case Study

Founded in 1844, The Globe and Mail is Canada’s premier news media company and an  integral part of its citizens’ daily lives. 

Covering everything from day-to-day happenings to massive national and global events, The  Globe and Mail shares its stories in print and digital media formats that reach more than 6  million readers each week. The Globe and Mail has won more national newspaper awards than  any other news organization in Canada and has received multiple Michener Awards for public service journalism. 

Like many traditional news outlets, The Globe and Mail has had to evolve to succeed in the new  media environment. The Globe and Mail business team wanted to modernize its legacy system  and adopt a SaaS solution to prioritize subscribers and digital journeys while also diversifying its  product offerings. 

Searching for the right solution 

To unleash the full potential of the digital subscription business while still sustaining its print  model of operations, The Globe and Mail team needed to remove bottlenecks imposed by  previous systems. They sought a solution that would help the company continue its journey of  subscription management modernization and digitization — both to improve the subscriber  experience and to monetize subscription-related activities. The Globe and Mail team was also  looking to retire in-house code wherever possible, by absorbing it into a vendor-supported  platform. 

The team realized their ecosystem — a complex mix of in-house and third-party platforms that  was becoming increasingly difficult to support — had functionality restrictions hindering their  ability to be agile and responsive in a world of fast-changing online content and news. The  system had run its course, and it was time to find a solution that would allow the news media  company to continue to deliver relevant stories in a timely manner. 

What The Globe and Mail needed 

The Globe and Mail team sought a solution that could help them:  

• Maximize content delivery and habituate content consumption by subscribers 
• Deepen subscriber relationships and gain more robust data on each subscriber’s  preferences and usage patterns 
• Identify opportunities to increase revenue per subscriber
• Create new offers without system-level restrictions 
• Decrease the administrative load of supporting current and future subscriptions and  monetization activities 
• Improve order-to-cash life cycle support for subscribers  

The Globe and Mail found a trusted solutions partner in Zuora. 

Zuora enabled The Globe and Mail to deliver: 

• Diverse acquisition offers with increased speed to market 
• Free trials: The Globe and Mail previously did not offer free trials, which put it at a  competitive disadvantage. 
• Gift offerings: The Globe and Mail already had a rudimentary gift offering, basically a  normal subscription with a custom code wrapped around it. This meant that revenue  recognition was not captured properly or accurately. With Zuora’s help, The Globe and  Mail could correctly complete revenue recognition, as the gift purchase was treated as a  debit memo that was applied to the subscription when the gift was redeemed. 
• Non-subscription product sales like the Globe Leadership Institute executive training 

The results 

Zuora helped the Globe address its challenges in a number of ways. Zuora delivered out-of-the box capabilities to manage communication with customers through each step of the subscription  life cycle. The Globe and Mail could now quickly onboard additional payment providers,  creating a more seamless payment experience for customers. The business team appreciated  Zuora’s agility and ease of use, which lacked the complexity of the previous solution, particularly  in regard to reporting capabilities. 

“Zuora has performed consistently, we feel we are only using a fraction of the product’s  capabilities,” said Susan Kelly, Vice President, Information Technology at The Globe and Mail.  “We find that Zuora delivers on commitments and has consistently introduced new features that  will help us improve efficiency and services to our valued customers. 

Interacting with Zuora has been excellent, “Their team’s involvement ensured we had everything  we needed to achieve great results. They worked with us as a partner during our  implementation and existing knowledge about the media business was one of the main reasons  behind our successful implementation.”