New Zealand Herald – How we get our print subscribers to activate digital Background

New Zealand Media and Entertainment is a publicly listed media company with a portfolio of market-leading newspapers, radio stations and digital platforms that 3.2 million Kiwis engage with

Population of 5 million

Our flagship masthead, The New Zealand Herald has been a daily newspaper for over 150 years – readership 546,000 nz.herald.co.nz our news website an advertiser funded model

Launched NZ Herald Premium, our digital subscription on 30 April 2019, as a freemium model Launched in-app subscriptions June 2020 We are here! NZ Herald Audience

NZHERALD.CO.NZ

DEMORGRAPHIC

52% 48% 256,000 2:03 1,838,000

AVERAGE WEEKLY UB AVERAGE PAGE MONTHLY UNIQUE - NZH IOS APP^ DURATION AUDIENCE 26% 46% 18-39 25-54 86,300 8.2 122,838,000

AVERAGE WEEKLY UB MINUTES PER MONTHLY PAGE 50% 49% - NZH ANDROID APP^ SESSION VIEWS 40-64 55+ Subscriber Stats • NZ Herald print circulation is 100,073 – majority subscribers

• NZ Herald Premium has more than 82,000 digital subscribers including over 43,000 digital only subscribers. Up 25% since 1 June 2020 (as at 25 Aug)

• 23% have purchased annual subscriptions

• Premium subscribers average session durations are approximately 3 x longer than non-subscriber

• 45% male, 55% female

• Primary device desktop Launch Objectives

The two objectives for launch : 10,000 digital subscribers by the end of 2019 and to improve print subscriber retention.

We considered two audiences while deciding how we would acquire our subscribers

Potential Premium Content 1. subscribers

2. Current print subscribers

Print subscriber (5+ days) digital access as part of their subscription regardless of price Two of our Launch Strategies:

1. Convert current nzherald.co.nz highly engaged readers 2. Encourage our print subscribers to activate their Premium subscription Launch Execution:

• Made it easy

• Constant brand look

• Pre-communication (education) Letter to all subscribers, Emails

• Multi-platform launch communication Launch Execution:

Newspaper wrap announcing Onboarding spread educating Specific launch of digital product about product, benefit and team content talking to paper subscribers Launch Execution: Emails More print ads! Ongoing Activation

Lockdown drove unlocking with more people home

Content best driver to unlock rather than actual benefits (only a small % makes it in print)

Repetition Repetition Repetition

Monthly activity plans

Newspaper sales and Contact Centre ‘on the bus’ Digital Engagement

Print activated subscribers have greater engagement than registered users

Based on web views only, over 36% of print activated subs are in the highest digital engagement segment

Primarily visiting to read New Zealand content, followed by Business and Sport

Access website via desktop weekdays in the afternoon Benefits to Print churn & acquisition

50% eligible print subscribers have activated their entitlement

Aiming for 75%

Benchmark - median 40% activated Benefits to Print churn & acquisition

• Print subscription cancellations have decreased since we launched Premium – and Print subscribers started activating their entitlement.

• In 2019 we saw a reduction in cancellation of 16% YOY (similar volume)

• In 2020 the cancellations have further reduced – Covid has been good for Print subscriptions as well as Digital

• Activated print subscribers are 10% less likely to cancel than those that don’t activate their subscription

• Recent addition of digital in print trials has increased conversion to sale

• Potential to use digital engagement to help determine optimum print yield per subscriber Key lessons

Don’t forget about the print subscribers

Think about them as one subscriber, multiple platforms. Set up as part of subscriptions team

Over communicate to this audience

Give Contact Centre all the information they need

They won't cancel print to move to digital – it will benefit print! Setting the news agenda

“Thank you for supporting our efforts to tell the stories that matter”

Miriyana Alexander Murray Kirkness Shayne Currie Miriyana Alexander Premium Content Editor Head of Content Managing Editor Premium Content Editor