Minal Bopaiah

It looks like The New York Times has shifted from testing the market for digital subscribers to aggressive marketing.The Gray Lady made an appearance yesterday on Groupon, offering an 8-week trial subscription for $1.The newspaper/news site did some things right with this offer. Most notably, even though the sale was for an online subscription, they included a “tangible-ish” product by including their smartphone app. They also smartly excluded their premium crosswords and e-reader editions, making…

Let’s say you’ve decided on a discount offer to help convert more of your prospects into paid subscribers. How big a discount should you offer? Or, rather, how little can your discount be and still work?Offline subscription marketers ran extensive tests in the 1990s, and the results were surprising. For the vast majority of prospects, a fairly small discount (as little as $10 off a $300 subscription) moved the needle. In fact $50 off didn’t…

Subscription and membership sites are particularly susceptible to online fraud, basically because card-not-present (CNP) transactions make it easy for fraudsters to engage in carding practices. This can be problematic for subscription sites as it increases chargeback rates and may decrease a merchant’s standing with credit card companies.But a new authentication program may help subscription and membership sites provide reduce CNP fraud. SafePay will send customers an authentication PIN to their smartphone device via an app.…

While most online publications don’t think to employ postal direct mail marketing, it can be a savvy way to acquire new and expired online subscribers.Of course, the obvious problem is how to transition a prospect from his/her mailbox to your site. One of the better solutions is to use QR codes, which can be scanned with a smart phone, in direct mail pieces.However, QR codes need their own tech-savvy solutions. Firstly, you should only use QR…