Using content recommendations to drive subscriptions

On-site content recommendations are often treated as an afterthought by publishers, or viewed as an unnecessary or suboptimal use of on-site or in-app real estate. But for publishers placing subscription and membership products at the center of their businesses, content recommendations present a powerful and often underutilized tool for driving audience engagement, pushing readers down the path to conversion, and boosting subscriber loyalty and retention.

Specific tactics related to what content to surface, where, and to which audiences will vary from one publisher to the next depending on the nature of their products and broader subscription strategies. But based on Toolkits’ experience working with publishers, many could be employing more effective approaches than they are. In some cases improvements and optimizations may yield subtle results, but in other instances relatively simple changes in approach can generate significant upticks in audience engagement and incremental subscription revenue.