Too often media strategists picture memberships and subscription strategies as a flow from one point to another — when they should consider multiple funnels.
When we talk to media companies who are planning future paywall systems, a common assumption we hear is that they are considering an approach with a simple flow that moves audiences from non-paying to paying to upsold. This approach does not reflect the complexities of their audiences needs and will likely fail to deliver sufficient revenues for the business.
An audience segmentation exercise should reveal different needs for different audience members and this should be the starting point for your Subscription FunnelS planning. Funnels that employ paywalls/membership system could include:
A Newsletter funnel — that shifts certain members of the audience from free Newsletter sign up to paid access to the content that is linked in the newsletter, and beyond
A Report funnel — that moves a core group of folks from free samples to paid access to regularly updated libraries of content, and beyond
An Event funnel — that moves from free webinars to event tickets, and beyond
An Affiliate funnel — that moves Wont-Pay-Never-Pay folks out of the other funnels and into a free subscription offering that personalizes the newsletter, app and CMS content so that the user is only shown affiliate link content. This approach could also be used for AdBlockers.
Of course, there are several more streams that could be developed but the idea here is that media executives need to be drawing multiple funnel diagrams on their whiteboards not just one.
If you are considering the use of membership software like Piano, Wallkit, Memberful or Recurly, it’s important to check which systems can handle multiple funnels that drive different offerings for different types of members. For a start, contact the Wallkit team today via www.wallkit.net for some friendly advice on both the strategic and technical aspects of membership systems.
