Digital publishing beyond software

The Danish media group Jysk Fynske Medier is characterized by their consistent work of improving their digital business. Especially in terms of monetization and attracting new subscribers. Learn about their latest onboarding campaign in this customer case.

In Mid 2016, Jysk Fynske Medier created a Data & Audience team with the mission of optimizing advertising and subscription sales. It was a large investment of 30M DKK (4M €) over a three-year period, but the return on investment have already proven to be significant for Denmark's second largest media company.

Read also: Jysk Fynske Medier earned millions on ad sales with very little effort

Most recently, Jysk Fynske Medier have been running a voucher campaign offering potential customers a month complimentary access to their subscription newspapers.

“We made a thousand vouchers for each of our 13 daily newspapers and offered these through various channels. That being on a landing page, through Facebook campaigns and directly in the Nyhedskiosken app, where we expose it as interstitials in the non-gated weekly newspapers. This has been a very interesting case for us and we sent out the first 4000 vouchers in no time.” says Dennis Vesti Brorsen, Head of Data & Audience.

Example of one of their Facebook ads:

He tells that the voucher campaign has generated just short of 5000 leads by now with approximately 4500 coming from their Facebook campaigns. And the result speaks for itself. So far, they've been able to convert seven percent of the leads to a paid subscription.

Voucher codes on text messages
The campaign has undoubtedly been a success, but there is still room for improvement and Dennis Vesti Brorsen points at the invalid leads - that being leads who've provided an invalid phone number - as a group that can be reduced with a simple fix. 

"The challenge has been to ensure a good lead quality. We know that the email address is genuine, because this is where we will send the voucher code. But the leads do have the option of providing a fake phone number making it impossible for our telemarketing team to reach them. So, we want to try sending out the voucher codes on text messages instead. That way, we ensure they provide a genuine phone number," he explains.

36 percent of the leads have been unreachable so far while 37 percent are simply not interested in buying a subscription. The remaining five percent are unqualified e.g. because they already holds a print subscription of one of Jysk Fynske Medier's newspapers. Dennis Vesti Brorsen says that the latter is a group that they instead try to encourage to use the digital editions even more, because »digital users have proven to be more loyal.«

Want to track the usage of voucher codes
Vouchers can be generated by Visiolink for a symbolic fee and can be made with a single generic password or multiple unique passwords. Jysk Fynske Medier chose the latter because they want to track how often the voucher codes are used by the individual user once this is possible.

“We are currently awaiting an update of our app which will enable us to closely monitor the usage of each voucher code through Google Analytics. By doing so, we will know when a specific lead has logged in 15 times for instance and this is highly valuable information for our telemarketing team who will try to convert the trial to a paid subscription,” he says.

Jysk Fynske Medier previously enjoyed great success with a trial-campaign that offered a combi-subscription at a reduced intro price of 49 DKK (6,50 €) the first month. The campaign led to an increase of 50 percent in combi-subscription and an impressive conversion rate of 23 percent. Dennis Vesti Brorsen shared this story at the Inspirational Tour in Oslo early this year. Watch his presentation above.

Make your own voucher campaign
If you're interested in trying out a voucher campaign yourself then don't hesitate reaching out to your Visiolink contact. They'll be more than happy to help you get started.

More newspapers choose to have their entire backlist of previous editions digitalized and distributed through their ePaper solution. A digital archive is indeed a large investment, but according to Danish news group Folketidende Gruppen it’s worth every penny.

As a step in a major overhaul back in late 2016, Folketidende Gruppen launched a digital archive with all previous editions of their primary newspaper “Folketidende” - dating back to the newspaper’s foundation in 1873. At the same time, they dropped the print-only subscription and converted this into an “all inclusive”-subscription with access to the ePaper and thereby the archive.

"The digital archive was and is an important tool in our digital strategy. The implementation was the first step of our digital transformation as it was a good opportunity to emphasize the value of our ePaper,” says Michael M. Benzon, Online and Digital Manager at Folketidende Gruppen.

A great investment
Folketidende is a rather small newspaper on a European scale with 11.000 subscribers and an estimated 33.000 readers according to the latest Kantar Gallup figures. So, one would think that digitalizing nearly 150 years of work would be too big an investment. But Michael M. Benzon assures that it's far from the case. 

“We saw it as an investment in our readers and we were hoping that it would result in increased revenues in the long run. Our readers are in the high end of the age scale, so a searchable archive dating back to 1873 was very appealing to them,” he explains. 

“Half a year after the launch, we increased the subscription prices with the biggest amount to date - at a time where we wouldn’t normally be making price adjustments. Despite of this, we experienced the fewest number of terminations ever. So, the big effort and investment around the launch really paid off."

Folketidende experienced a tremendous impact following the launch of their digital archive. But they've also put many resources into it to create awareness about the product.

“We promoted the archive, informed the print subscribers about the ePaper and used all of our own channels to tell about the archive. We made features with local celebrities, e.g. with an athlete who made a big result in the ‘70s and linked it to the paper from that specific day. We invited our subscribers to workshops at our three editorial offices where we would tell about the archive and how to use it while they enjoyed a cup of coffee, a beer or a soda. So, we invested quite a lot in our readers, and I believe that our consistent focus on the ePaper was the primary cause to why the readers chose not to quit," tells Michael M. Benzon.

“We experienced a doubling of pretty much everything. More people downloaded our app, we onboarded more readers and our page views went up. We received an overwhelmingly positive feedback on our workshops, and we can see that the archive is being used extensively." 

Just go for it!
Michael M. Benzon is not hesitant to recommend a digital archive to other media groups who're looking for a way to revitalize their old content. 

"My best advice to everyone who’re considering getting a digital archive is just go for it!” he says.

“The archive launch has really emphasized the value of our ePaper. We’ve obtained more subscribers, and our phoners now have more good arguments when trying to sell our product. But the archive also has great value internally because our writers use it to find old articles etc. So, there’s an economical saving as well because we no longer need to have archives two places - it's all gathered in our ePaper." 

Want a digital archive?
If you want to learn more about digital archives, how your old print papers are digitalized and how it's implemented in your ePaper, then get in touch with your Visiolink contact. They'll be happy to answer your questions. Also, make sure you get a copy of our Archive Report. It can we downloaded by clicking below.