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[intro jingle] The internal education that has been happening is really trying to get people more accustomed to a churn that is much more like the rest of the world.
So if you're in a recurring revenue model, if you're a subscription business like Netflix, like any of the streaming services, they are really accustomed to that churn, and that is- Yeah... you know.
Harvard is very unaccustomed- Yeah... to churn. They- Churn is reality.
If you're gonna have subscriptions- [laughs] I remember when I was, like, doing the subscription, our CEO would be like, "This person ca-" I'm like, "Yes."
If you're gonna have subscriptions, unfortunately, people are going to cancel. That's the reality- They are... and you just manage the churn. Right. And that is just the reality.
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting Show. I'm Brian Morrissey.
This week, I spoke to Nini Diana, Director of Consumer Marketing at Harvard Business Review.
I wanted to have on Nini because HBR is a fascinating publishing business that I think doesn't get as much attention as it probably should, probably because it's part of the Harvard Business School.
But HBR is something of a media juggernaut with a thriving subscriptions business that has three hundred and twenty thousand paying subscribers.
Nini and I discuss how HBR chose its metered model, the challenge of figuring out pricing that's premium but still fits with a mission like HBR's, and also how to deal with publishers' least favorite reality of subscriptions, and that's churn.
I hope you enjoy the episode, and please do let me know what you think by sending me a note at bmorrissey@gmail.com. I always like to hear from listeners. Also, if you use Apple, please rate and review the episode.
Now on to my conversation with Nini. All right, so we'll just go right into it, and then we'll just- Okay... see where it goes. Nini, thank you for joining me on the podcast. You're most welcome. Happy to be here.
[laughs] Okay, so first, because I think everyone feels like they know what, at least I do, w- H-Harvard Business Review, but explain it, where it sits within, like, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, et cetera.
Sure. So from a business perspective, it's a wholly owned subsidiary of the business school.
We have a dean, uh, at the business school who we report in to him as part of the agreement, and there are financial agreements with the business school that we have in terms of supporting any funding for research that happens at the business school, which there is a lot of.
I don't think people always think of business as a research institution, but- Yeah... that's, in a nutshell, what it is. And we are very careful to be clear that HBR is not an educational institution.
That is the business school's job. But there obviously is a relationship. We don't really have a relationship with the rest of the Harvard entities, you know- Got it...
the medical school, the college, or anything like that. Got it. That's nice. But the goal is to make money.
I wouldn't say that that is the ultimate goal, but- No, I mean, but, like, uh, it's a for-profit entity, 'cause I think that publishing and media, I think it gets a lot of attention these days as doing a lot of different jobs for different types of entities- Mm-hmm...
right? And I just wanna get at is the goal to make a profit with, with the publishing, not as a way to burnish the business school brand solely. No.
It's not solely to, to burnish the business school brand, and, you know, I, I wanna make clear that I am not a financial officer, so my- Yeah [laughs]...
my understanding of the finances is probably not at an expert level. But I will say that HBR itself, it's a.org.
It is actually a not for profit, and that is because there's a percentage of our revenue that has to be fed back to the business school, and that's the agreement, and that's how we maintain that not for profit status.
But you're right, there is a portion of revenue that- Yeah... pays the bills, but we don't pay writers, so I think that there is an integrity that is- Yeah... that the edit team attempts to maintain- Got it...
in that regard. So, so give us an idea of the scale of HBR. What kind of scale are you looking, looking for? Number of people, revenue, like, everything.
[laughs] Well, since we're not a public company, I can't- [laughs]... talk about the revenue, but it's actually a relatively small organization.
But you also know that Harvard Business Publishing is three different market groups. There's- Yes... HBRG, which is the publishing group, and then we have a higher education group, and we have a corporate learning group.
And we each have pretty discrete goals, although it does all bubble up to the business school. But it's all a-Out the practice of management and leadership. And so i-in terms of that, there is that sort of singular goal.
I-I'm not sure what percentage HBRG is in terms of the revenue share among the entire groups. The subscription business, the content portion is probably
50% of our market group's share or contribution to the overall revenue, so it's generally the largest part of the business, but the press is also a really big, huge part of the business too, and the press is broken out into retail sales, as you might imagine, and e-commerce sales, which is more of the, like, the press books, not the authored books.
The authored books are much more of the retail presence. And our circulation, which is actually public, is somewhere north of three hundred and fifteen thousand. So it's not huge.
It's a good size for the size of the magazine that we are and for being a hundred years old. I find it pretty astonishing that it's still so well circulated with- Yeah...
and every-- it's not every other page is an advertisement. Yeah. So s-subscription, subscriptions are obviously a, a big part of the business, as you said. Mm-hmm.
Explain where they sit within the organization as far as the overall strategy. I mean, it's the biggest part of the strategy, but there are other ways- Mm-hmm... that you make money. There are other ways.
We have analytic services. We do have an advertising business, for sure. But yes, the subscriptions are probably the largest revenue driver, or it's what we rely on the most. It's the-- we call it the core.
It is our core. And so it's still fairly well-balanced between digital access and people who still receive a copy of the magazine.
I think that across the board in the industry it's becoming a question. Certainly among the peers that I speak to, we think a lot about what print means to our overall mix of our circulation.
I think, and the, you know, the peers that I speak with the most have very high quality print books the way we do. So it's definitely a balancing act and trying to maintain
the le- the same level of circulation in print as we do have in digital. However,
we, of course, are challenged all the time by what customers really want and what they're used to doing and how they are used to consuming their media.
And, you know, I use media just 'cause it's a catch-all term these days, but we're definitely challenged by
the idea that if people are cons- continuing to consume more and more on their phones or tablets or laptops or through their earbuds or visually or whatever, how do we create the right mix?
And that's not really what my job is.
Certainly, I work with our content and editorial teams to make sure that we're having the right mix, because at the end of the day, we can get people to keep coming back to the website.
We can keep getting them to buy the magazine and, and the rest of our content, but they're gonna stop if that content isn't rich or varied or whatever it is that they want. So... Yeah.
Explain your role within the organization. You head up the consumer subscriptions group, right? I do. We are focused as a team basically on selling. We have the whole continuum, though.
We have the brand initiation at the beginning of everything and making sure that when people are just registered or they're just a guest visitor, that their experience with our brand is obviously a positive one and that we--
our goal, makes it sound so crass and somewhat clinical, is to get them to convert in thirty, you know, within thirty days to some sort of form of payment, some sort of engagement with us.
But we don't just forget about people who haven't converted. There has to be that continued engagement.
So we have lots of attention paid to engagement of people who are just reading and who maybe are just reading to the limit that they can read in a month's time,
but give it, still trying to give them a, an enriched experience. So
then along the continuum, if they are a converted subscriber or a product buyer, that we're continuing that conversation in a number of different ways to maintain their engagement, but also gain their loyalty and their familiarity with the brand, and so that we're always trying to reinforce the value that they have, that, you know, how they see us.
And so that is with e-commerce, that is with the subscription and the digital business. It's becoming more of a thing for some younger readers.
We have a, a new product vertical called Ascend, which is geared much more towards younger professionals, people in career transition, people who are much more interested in the soft skills and the sort of soci- the socio...
What am I trying to say? The sort of social anthropology aspect [chuckles] of being at work.
Um, so we're trying to build a lot of pathways for people, and my team-- So the-- we're not just really concerned about the revenue. We are- Yeah...
really concerned about the continued engagement with the subscriber and the ongoing conversation that we are having with them and the value that they-Find in all of our products.
So one of the things that I think that's been interesting about direct revenue is the topic used to be all or nothing, right? It was like you're either all subs or you're all ads.
And obviously there's been permutations that have developed. Mm-hmm. I think even more permutations are developing. E-explain the model that HBR has. At least I- Yeah...
think of it as a meter mostly, and why it's important to do that, because I think every business has their own complexities to it. Right. I mean, and every business thinks about their meter a little bit differently.
Some people don't allow you to read anything at all without some sort of value exchange, and a lot of the time it's just an email address. The media company I used to work for, that was the case.
There was nothing you could get at if you didn't at least sign up for a trial subscription.
And that was, that particular model was, they're like, "Well, we have, you know, 90-plus percent pay-up rate," and, but that was because they asked people to put their credit card in.
So we've toyed with a couple of different paywall heights. We changed it at the onset of COVID when people were at home, and that was definitely a good plan. So you can read, I think it's, I think we're at two and four.
Maybe it's at one and three, but I think it's two and four. [laughs] You'd think I would know this off the top of my head.
Two free articles to read in their entirety, and then you have to register if you want to read more, and then you max out on a 30-day limit. So s- a lot...
The things that we think about are, well, if it's really a time-based paywall, not a rolling paywall.
So it's 30 days, no matter where in a month you sign up, it's at the beginning of that month, you have this amount of time to read four articles, and then the paywall shuts down.
So we, what we definitely see patterns in our conversion, where we have lower conversions at the beginning of the month because people have... their paywall- Yeah... meter has been refilled, et cetera.
So we're think a lot about that, and really what we're trying to move towards is a more dynamic paywall which is much smarter about the amount that people are reading, which is really the ultimate goal.
You wanna give the people who are reading the most the highest, you know, possible hurdle because you don't want them to be taking advantage of things. And then people are finding loopholes.
They're reading articles via the app, and they're getting two to four there, and then they're getting two to four on the website, and that's our fault, right? That's because we're not...
our systems aren't well connected or our registration system isn't working the way it's supposed to work.
So, but we also want to make sure that in times of crisis or high news feeds, 'cause we're not really a newsroom, but we do have a lot to say about the news because it always impacts business and the way people work.
So we definitely have times where we are speaking to our readers as much as we can about the things that they can read for free, that there isn't a paywall requirement because it's much more important to have people be able to read and stay engaged and get what they need than it is to get their money.
Yeah. So let me ask you this. Let me just jump in and ask you this. Like, why does this make sense for HBR versus, like you said before, like a really high paywall, like a strict paywall?
Like, 'cause the people reading HBR, generally I think they make a lot of money. They, they do okay. Right? They do.
[laughs] And I think that for sure we have a higher percentage of C-suite readers than we do people who maybe are lower or mid-career, but we do wanna change that. And I think it's really challenging because
Harvard is an internationally recognized brand- Yeah... up and down the career ladder. And it's really nice to be able to rely on that.
But on the other hand, you don't want all the strings necessarily that are attached to that because you don't want people to... It can have a negative connotation in some regard. So- Mm-hmm...
you wanna take advantage of the positive and you wanna downplay any negative. Yeah. And, and there is a, there's a mission i- and too overlaid too, right?
There is definitely a mission, and I would say that that is w- one in, in any publishing industry, and I've been in publishing for a really long time, both in magazines and in educational publishing, and there is always a dichotomy between the editorial team and the marketing team because the marketing has very, very clear monetary revenue goals that have to be met, and the edit teams have a different set of goals.
And a lot of them are page views and return visits and readership and things like... and int- editorial integrity, and that's a huge goal. Yeah. So you have to, as a marketing team,
you know, on your darkest days, you're thinking, "Ugh, if we didn't sell magazines, you- [laughs]... you know, edit team wouldn't even be getting paid." Um, but that's not really what- [laughs]...
not really what you say. Be nice to the editorial team. [laughs] You have to be nice to the edit team. Um, so we're- They have deadlines every day. It's rough. [laughs] They do.
And the amount of stuff that they churn out is honestly is unbelievable. I know. I mean, the super high quality, relevant content that they put up five new- Yeah... pieces a week.
That actually, for the depth of content, is pretty phenomenal.So- I will say this, I probably shouldn't, but my wife is finishing up a article for HBR, and she said- Oh...
it's the most intense editing experience she's ever been through, and so- I bet... you're doing a good job. [laughs] I, I bet it is. Yeah. Oh, man, our, our editors are... honestly, they're not to be matched. So,
but still, [laughs] you still have to sell it- Yeah... at the end of the day. So you have to match it so the, so the meter makes the most sense. So explain to me then- It does... the pricing, right?
Because, like, I was surprised. I was like, "Oh, this is a lot lower than I would have thought." Again, I think Harvard Business Review, I'm like, this would have to be...
I see s- the Substacks out there are, like, $300, $400. Now- And yet I go and for a mere $10 a month, billed annually- [laughs]... I can subscribe and get digital access.
Or if I want digital and print, somehow I can pay the exact same amount. [laughs] Right. That's been a test that's been ongoing because a lot of it is trying to understand what people exactly are valuing.
And with the research that we've done, and we've done conjoint studies, and we've done focus groups, and we've researched market panels, and we've researched former subscribers, and we've a- I mean, we've asked everybody we could possibly ask.
Because we are working so hard to be global, we have to account for how much price sensitivity there is in some of these emerging professional classes that we're trying to reach. And- Yeah...
so we have to try and find a balance with how we price in US dollars, which we have to price slightly differently in countries that don't pay in a more global, um- Yeah... currency like the euro or what have you.
So some of those countries, we are priced in US dollars, but we're priced at sort of an exchange rate that would make sense. And then, you know, we also price in local currencies everywhere. So- Right...
that's part of it. The other part of it is that the magazine itself on the newsstand is $19.95, which actually at a newsstand price, people... a lot of people have sticker shock. And- Yeah...
if we want to- But they're in airports, and they're like, "I'm getting on a flight," and... [laughs] Yeah, exactly.
And, uh, you know, the business is paying for it, which, you know, obviously we took a huge hit at the newsstand, um- Yeah... in the past couple of years.
The other piece of it is that it's really difficult to figure out how to price digital content because- Yeah... people think that if it's on the internet, it should be free.
Um, and obviously it's not free [laughs] at all. Yeah. It's not, it's not free to make it. So, and there's...
by offering that monthly subscription, that digital subscription with those, with the monthly, um, with having it be stated as a monthly value, we've actually gained a lot more subscribers we, than we, we...
uh, subscribers that we couldn't have reached at some of, um, our prices that we had three, or really only one price three years ago. Yeah.
So trying to balance the cost of the subscription with the transient reader, but the person that you actually want to get in the door that you would not have gotten in the door, and- Yeah...
then trying to understand what their tolerance is for increasing the prices. Harvard's, you know, Harvard will always be the s- a slow roll because that's,
you know, we're fairly risk averse, but we also, you know, we still wanna make money, and we did- Yeah...
increase our prices a couple of years ago, but before that, we probably hadn't increased the price- [laughs] Yeah... in like 10 years. Yeah. So
we're trying to be a little more nimble and a little more aligned with, um, some of the peers in our space.
But by the same token, we don't have the circulation cushion to fall back on if people start heading for the hills when we raise our prices. So it is- Mm-hmm... definitely a very delicate balancing act. Yeah.
So explain to me, um, that's the pricing. It seems like you have a model that's less based around intro offers, right?
Because they're not necessarily peers, but are in, in, uh, the broader sort of thing like a Bloomberg or something that like- Mm-hmm... you get it for a dollar a month, and then it shoots- Yeah...
up to like 40 bucks a month. I think that's a little dangerous, but, uh, because I think nobody likes the shock of, you know, because yes, it's disclosed at the same time, at the same time- Mm-hmm...
we all know that people will put in their credit card for a dollar and then forget. Right. That is right. And it's not that we don't [laughs] want people to forget that they're paying us.
I mean, that is the whole- Well, here's my thing on that... the whole thing of auto-renewal. I'm like, if, if you send me an email saying your...
uh, 'cause Netflix does, like, "Your credit card is about to be charged the full amount- Mm-hmm... like, on this date," then I agree that like that. But if I do not get that email, I assume that that is not an oversight.
No, it is not an oversight. [laughs] But I mean, certainly we adhere to the law. So- Yeah, of course...
in an annual auto-renewal situation, you are obligated to tell people that y- they are going to be charged at the prices then in effect.
You actually don't even have to tell them necessarily if you're raising their prices, but of course it's the right thing to do. You wanna be ethical.
So, uh, the, but going back to the, your question about introductory offers, you're right, we don't do that, and that has a lot to do with risk aversion. That has a lot- Yeah...
to do with, uh, we are, we have not, as long as I've worked at HBR, been a top of the funnel filler kind of organization. We don't do ton... We don't spend a lot of money on prospecting.
We focus much more on mid-funnel and the end of, and- Yeah... towards the end of the funnel. There's already a lot of brand awareness, so we don't do that a lot. Although,
because we've changed our model over the past three years, and it's not just that one-Subscription type. It's actually six different types of subscription, and because we've attracted different types of customers,
what we- what the internal education that has been happening is really trying to get people more accustomed to a churn that is much more like the rest of the world.
So if you're in a recurring revenue model, if you're a subscription business like Netflix, like any of the streaming services, they are really accustomed to that churn, and that is- Yeah... you know,
Harvard is very unaccustomed- Yeah... to churn. They- Churn is reality.
If you're gonna have subscriptions- [laughs] I remember when I was like doing the subscription, our CEO would be like, "This person ca-" I'm like, "Yes.
If you're gonna have subscriptions, unfortunately people are going to cancel. That's the reality- They are... and you just manage the churn, and that is- Right... just the reality."
So that has been an education for all of us really is- Yeah... managing the churn. It's... We had to do a very, very deep dive for our CFO about a year ago because our, our churn had really changed.
Our retention had really changed, and he was like, "What is going on?" Yeah. And our business insights director and I did a ton of research, and we were, at the end of the day we were like, "Sorry, no smoking gun." Yeah.
Sometimes you can, uh, mistake it being a weakness in the product when it's like, no, this is working as it should work. Yeah.
And particularly when you do offers and stuff like this, sometimes you need to put them in a different bucket. It's like I didn't- Yeah... really look at it as churn. If someone took an introductory offer, that's a lead.
We're not really making- Right... much revenue off them, so like why don't we just look at them- Right... as a, as a lead and rather than it being 70% churn, it's 30% conversion as far as I would see. Right.
[laughs] That's a real- [laughs] Well, we, it, what- [laughs] That's why I have optimistic view, Dee Dee. No, it took a while.
[laughs] But the fact that I have managed to actually turn the ship and say, "Listen, can we not keep focusing on this aggregated number of retention?
Can we instead look at each monthly cohort," because of the cadence of our magazine, each cohort every month has a little bit different size and shape.
But if we can manage to successfully ch- basically charge a credit card, if we can manage to successfully do that every month at, you know, 93%, that's amazing. I was like, yes. Yeah.
There'll be a, there will always be an aggregate number, and particularly when you look at an aggregate retention of a monthly subscriber, that doesn't really tell you anything.
So we are inching closer to doing things like I'm not sure we would ever do an introductory rate, although because so many of our peers are doing that and feeling comfortable with it, and because I do have members of my team who are like, "Can we please-" Yeah.
"... like, can we just do this?" There, there's almost a market expectation that's been set for the $1 offer, and it's hard to fight against- Yeah... 'cause I think there's a lot of downsides to it. There is.
There was a really good study. Mather did a really... They had a really good article that I read last week. I'm not sure how old the article is. It's, I mean, it's re- it's fairly recent, but on- Yeah...
how the Times and The Globe successfully did it, and their outlook on it was actually very, very compelling. So if we can find the right model for doing something like that, then I think it makes sense.
I don't think we- Yeah... would ever do anything as go to, like go to $1 because that actually could damage the brand. Yeah. So, you know, that's why we- So ex- ex-... are slow.
So explain a little bit the different sort of, um, subscription options because I think it's, there's a lot of compelling...
Like a lot of times, um, you'll want to have specific subscription options that, that match to specific cohorts in the audience, right? Mm. But then it becomes more complex. The data becomes more complex.
Like you're saying, the churn numbers become more complex because you have six different subscription products rather than, say, one or two. Right, and I, that's, ever since we did that, it's been really challenging.
So at the end of the day, really all we want is people to buy an annual subscription and- Yeah. But the reason we have the monthly offers is because we are cognizant of price sensitivity, and we are also
recognizing that there is this whole huge audience out there that is becoming a larger and larger portion of the world because younger people are getting older, and those younger people are native streaming service people.
They're used to the subscription economy and just paying for everything on a monthly basis.
But it, for us, it's a very, very difficult marketing and communication challenge because our, our magazine is not monthly, and- Right... that is a, like a dumb semantic problem that we still continue to have.
However, you know, we are trying to, to take a leaf from other subscription service books in that they state their offer in monthly terms, but it is billed annually, and you said it yourself. I heard you say it.
I was like, "Oh, he's getting the message." [laughs] Um- There you go. [laughs] So under- understanding that there is a huge discount to be gained by actually paying for it annually regardless- Yeah... of how, you know.
It, it's just so psychological. It's interesting. I don't know if you, you've found this, like at, at some point at, at Digiday we had found that like our like quarterly... We didn't do monthly.
We, 'cause we felt we, we needed, people needed a quarter to really understand the product. At least that's what we told ourselves. Mm-hmm. And dealing with like the churn was, would be too crazy at a month- Right...
basis. But quarterly what we found was that it ended up being more in first-year revenue than in annual.Do you know what I mean? Yep.
Because most people would let it go two times, so we would, we'd charge them quarterly twice, and then they would end up converting to a full year. Mm-hmm. And so, like, the revenue was, like, $700 in the first year. Mm.
And so, I don't know, we always played around with, like...
'Cause I think the, some of the things people who, who aren't, like, that close to subscriptions don't realize is, like, how much, you know, like, the framing makes s- all the difference in the world.
There's a reason that all the subscription pages look alike, because you frame it, and you use decoy offers and stuff like the- Yeah... to make the offer you want people to [laughs] to choose- Exactly... look the best.
That's exactly what we do. How... I mean, yes, it is what we do, but we have been studying the offer for the last eight months just because we recognize that
i- i- we, you know, we're trying to listen to people who are taking, say, our, our premium offer in particular. And i- if people are...
We're seeing people gravitating towards that digital offer, that digital annual offer. And the next best thing is with the print, and as you noted, right now they cost the same, and that was purposeful because
we're trying to f- understand whether is it the value of the magazine that they want? Is it just they, it says they think it's better, so they get it? Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, and with premium,
they're, they actually are getting a few other digital pieces of content. So what is it that people are really paying for? And maybe they're asking- Yeah... themselves the same question. So let's talk about that.
What have you learned? Because there's always a temptation that sometimes people subscribe because they want a piece of content, right? Mm-hmm.
Like, there could be something, like, when HBR publishes my wife's piece, you know- [laughs]... my household will definitely subscribe. Sure.
We want access to that piece of content, so that's definitely one on the board. But ultimately, I always thought that we wanted people to subscribe to the bundle of content.
Like, that, like, I was sure, and could never prove it out with our limited data capabilities, but, like, that people who were incentivized because they needed that piece of content, the pitch decker for s- for some company or something like this, they needed- Mm-hmm...
to do their job. But that, w- that it wasn't like they hit, like, the wall, like, five times and were like, "Hey, I want this. And I wanna... I read this stuff all the time," rather than, "I want that piece of content."
That they would ha- that the people who just wanted a piece of content were gonna have fi- far higher churn rates and less connection to the product.
[sighs] So we're trying to create those connections, um, particularly with the monthly subscribers.
And but what we've learned is that there is always going to be a piece, a segment of the population that is going to buy the premium tier because they see the word premium, and they think, "That is what I've learned in my...
I have earned the right to order premium, and I'm-" Right. "... gonna be premium." You should add a platinum tier, just charge like- [laughs] Well, we might.
A- and then there are always going to be the people who are just gonna pay for a month or two, and then they're gonna dump it, and they're gonna dump it usually in a passive way.
Some of them do actively call to t- Yeah... you know, to turn off the auto-renewal process, and that's a whole other thing that we deal with.
So we have learned that when people actually look under the hood for the premium, and they are not finding that it is the premium that they envisioned, they're going to tell us about it.
So we, as you might imagine, we have a pretty active subscriber base who are very loud, uh, when they... I mean, the more, it's...
We were looking at some of our customer service statistics, [chuckles] and it sounds like our customer service reps spend more time on a ty- on a call than is, like, typical across the industry.
[chuckles] Like, why, why is that? Why are Harvard subscribers more- Well, there's the sheer volume of it.
I, I feel like is sort of underrated by people who go into subscriptions, the, the number, the amount of customer service resources you need, no matter what the s- subscription product is. Because- Yeah...
I don't care how educated the clientele are, there's gonna be a certain number of people who cannot spell their company's names, their own names sometimes.
It's almost the more educated they are, the more they call customer service because the more they believe they deserve the attention- Yeah... that goes along with the amount of money they're paying for the subscription.
So which means you basically have to have a customer service organization that is equipped- Yeah... to handle those calls. But I feel like we're totally getting off topic.
Other things we've learned, you know, we study things like the amount of engagement, um, a monthly subscriber has in the first 30 days versus an annual subscriber.
We study things like if they are, are they reading the archive, or are they reading the sh- the shorter form articles that are posted every week?
You know, we still, there is still tons and tons of value in that archive, and it is, that, our archive is, like, our, you know, our proverbial goldmine. Mm-hmm.
So, you know, we're studying, we have an audience director on the editorial side, but we also have a, you know, an audience person on the marketing side of things because we're trying to build those bridges, understanding why people are coming to the site and what the audience wants.
And for a long time, marketing has been sort of fl- flying the banner of, "Pay attention to what the audience is telling us.
They are responding to these pieces of content on our site, so these are the, this is the content that you should be paying the most attention to in terms of-" Yeah...
you know, building it up.We're not quite there, but we're getting closer, which is, are really good. So final thing is what is the funnel...
And I know it like is varied based on different cohorts, but just give like a broad view of how you view the funnel to get people down to subscribers. So
most people, and this is where our job is pretty easy, most people have some familiarity with the brand we're finding. So we are--
we're using our paid media dollars to really... W-we do a lot of retargeting, and the closer we get to losing all the cookie, once-- the closer we get to the cookieless future, the more this is really serving us.
And we've really always had a practice of using our registrant base as our main lead pool- Mm-hmm... and not doing tons and tons of prospecting.
It's very expensive to do, and it's, you know, the ROI on that for us is not super great. So we use that registrant base for retargeting, for some on-site messaging, and that's how we pull people in.
We do as, you know, we, we portion our dollars out pretty specifically towards our content and engagement marketing and then the ser- the retargeting using that search network- Yeah... to build up repeated visits.
So when we look at the touch points that lead up to the conversion, we're seeing,
you know, most of it we're seeing is pretty natural organic search, but that is often has to have been fed somehow by our paid search dollars. There's just no way.
But it, if in the last ninety days or thirty days of attribution, it's, then it's the organic search that is- Mm-hmm... getting the credit, that's fine with me. But we do see that there's usually
between three and ten touch points in that thirty-day conversion window, so we s- we ex- we've been examining that as well to find, you know, where we're getting the most bang for our buck, and that is another reason why the edit audience and- Yeah...
the marketing audience teams are working together because our SEM strategy and our SEO strategy have to kinda come together and have the rising tide lift all boats.
So we've been really working to try and get that engine working- Yeah... a little bit better. But, but usually, I mean, I don't know if you know the percentage, but like when people subscribe, they've...
I assume that they more often than not have already been, uh, registered at HBR, that they've gotten an email. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 'Cause I, I... That's why I think email's a classic middle-of-the-funnel tool. Mm-hmm.
And people... Like it's, I... It would seem unlikely that someone had ne- you've not seen them at HBR in six months or ever, and all of a sudden they subscribe. Maybe. Right. [laughs] Right.
We are finding that we've done some testing to see whether after a person registers, if they just sort of buzz around on their own,
are they more likely to subscribe in the first thirty days than a person who's registered and we are sorta slow dripping them pieces of content, and there really isn't that much of a difference. Oh, really? Yeah.
It's k- it was kind of surprising. Although when I talked to the manager who is in charge of all of this testing, he's like, "You know, I don't think I ran that test very well."
So he's [laughs] actually gonna test, he's actually gonna test it again. But we do find that the people,
it, like our newsletter subscribers, and I mean everybody would say this, are generally the ones who are subscribing or are converting better than our...
But our registrants are our largest pool, so in the percentage-wise, it seems like we have more registrants who are converting, and there are s- it's...
So it is always the people who, like I s- uh, going back to the beginning of our conversation, we have a pretty prescribed process for people who come and register for creating the awareness and the value so that we can get them to convert in those first thirty days.
And that, that actually feels very organic, and we do use email as the vehicle for that. There obviously is some paid media that goes out there, but we don't kill them when it...
They get a series of emails within the first month, and that's about it, and then after that, if they haven't converted, they only get an email once a week. Yeah. Some people it's like... What's, what's it?
The Hotel California? You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Yeah. Well, I mean, we... there are always gonna be those people. There are always- [laughs]...
going to be the meter riders who just use it because that's what they do, and you're never gonna convert them.
And so we actually are drumming up plans with what to do with each of these different segments. We are trying to improve our data process. So many jobs to be done. I know.
So I'm gonna let you go and do those jobs, but final question- [laughs]... 'cause otherwise I'll get emails like asking me why I didn't ask. How many subscriptions do you have? You mean like how many actual subscribers?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, subscribers, like people paying you money. As of today, I think we had three hundred and twenty thousand. That's not including newsstand, so obviously those aren't consistent subscribers. Right.
So it's a pretty good number. That's a really big subscriber base, isn't it? I think it is. Yeah. It is.
[laughs] I mean, you know, it's not the size of The Atlantic or the size of The New Yorker or whatever, but we're a really different magazine, so- Exactly... I think it's a good number.
And I can say that because this is public information. Got it. All right, Nini. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time. You're welcome. I really enjoyed it. Thanks. Thank you all for listening.
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