This week’s Five on Friday won’t be as watercooler-worthy as the 60^th Grammy Awards, President Trump’s State of the Union or Groundhog Day, but we’ve got some interesting subscription tidbits for you to mull over this weekend. In this week’s edition, DMN News questions whether gated content is a suitable workaround for GDPR, PYMTS shares three tips for converting users into subscribers, DiMA teases us with digital music revenue statistics ahead of their forthcoming report, Facebook promises to prioritize local news content as they make changes to their news feeds, and Adweek’s Justin Kline tells us what influencer marketing trends to watch for in 2018. Enjoy!

Is Gated Content a Suitable Workaround for GDPR? 

DMN News says not necessarily. The deadline for General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR – is fast approaching, and brands are trying to figure out how to best deal with protecting consumers’ data to comply with GDPR. One possible solution is gated content, but DMN News recently considered that possibility in a recent article, and they aren’t convinced that gated content is the best solution.

To recap past articles, GDPR applies to all companies doing business with or hoping to do business with European customers, regardless of the originator’s location. For example, a U.S. company selling subscription services to a customer in France is subject to GDPR. This means the U.S. company must get a customer’s explicit consent, which must be freely given, to gather and use the subscriber’s personal data and only when that data is necessary to complete an action.

Gathering the data can be done in a number of ways including customer preference centers where customers opt in to the types of marketing they are willing to accept, calls-to-action, landing pages, lead generation forms, etc. The key is whether the consent is given freely and under the terms of GDPR, which is much stricter than previous privacy regulations. It is also key that the data gatherer or controller be able to prove that the data was necessary.

Let’s say your subscription company offers a white paper about 5 ways to use SaaS to win customers. You ask for a customer’s name and email address before allowing them to download the white paper. This would be considered ‘gated content’ because the customer can’t get the content without providing something in exchange. The question is whether your subscription company actually needed the name and email address to complete the transaction. If you were emailing the document, you could more easily argue that the name and email address were necessary.

Read more on this issue in ‘GDPR: Is Gated Content the Solution?‘ by Kim Davis, editor-in-chief of DMN News.

3 Tips for Converting Online Users into Subscribers 

In ‘Subscriptions Are on the Rise, But Features Lag Behind,’ PYMNTS.com offered five suggestions for converting online users into subscribers. We’ll share three of their tips here:

• Seventy-nine percent of B2C subscription companies like prospective customers to create a password during the checkout process, but this can cause a customer to abandon their shopping cart. As a workaround, Chargebee only asks users to create a password the second time they log in, using their email address, PYMNTS said.
• Thirty-three percent of B2C companies offer a free trial to allow prospects to try before they buy. This strategy is most practical for companies with a low cost for the free trial (e.g., a media streaming service versus a subscription box).
• Sixty-five percent of B2C subscription companies offer payment options – annually, monthly, etc. – to suit customers with different preferences or budgets.

Read PYMNTS’ other tips online at PYMNTS.com.

Digital Music Revenue Grew 15 Percent in 2017 to $6.5 Billion

With Grammy wins from Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lamar fresh in our minds, Billboard shared statistics about the growth of streaming revenue in the U.S. According to a not-yet-released report by the Digital Media Association, in 2017, U.S. digital revenue grew 15 percent to $6.5 billion. It was $5.65 billion the previous year. DiMA attributes the growth to a 53 percent increase in streaming revenue. In 2017, streaming revenue was $3.4 billion, compared to $2.2 billion in 2016.

‘Digital streaming has saved the record industry, with ad-supported and subscription music services driving a third consecutive year of increasing revenue,’ DiMA said. ‘As the music industry comes together for Grammy Week, the continued increase in digital music revenue is a clear sign that smart policies encouraging innovation and investment benefit everyone.’

Facebook Plans to Prioritize Local News in News Feeds

For the last few weeks, we’ve been writing about Facebook and the big changes it is making to its news feed. On Monday, Facebook released more information about how this will work. This time they disclosed that they will prioritize local news, based on the local publishers’ content readers in a tight geographic area click on. Facebook said if you follow a publisher’s page or a friend shares a story from that news outlet, it may be prioritized and appear higher in your news feed.

In a January 29 post, Alex Hardiman, head of news product, and Campbell Brown, head of news partnerships, they explained how this will work:

‘As we announced earlier this month, we expect the amount of news in News Feed to go down as we focus on meaningful social interactions with family and friends over passive consumption. We are prioritizing local news as a part of our emphasis on high-quality news, and with today’s update, stories from local news publishers may appear higher in News Feed for followers in publishers’ geographic areas. This change is one of the many signals that go into News Feed ranking,’ Hardiman and Brown said.

‘There are no constraints on which publishers are eligible, which means large local publishers will benefit, as well as publishers that focus on niche topics like local sports, arts and human-interest stories. That said, small news outlets may benefit from this change more than other outlets, because they tend to have a concentrated readership in one location,’ they added.

In addition, Facebook is testing a dedicated section on Facebook that connects people to news and information in their community. The new section is called Today In, and Facebook is testing it in six U.S. cities.

In a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg explained why they are making this change. Here’s an excerpt:

‘People consistently tell us they want to see more local news on Facebook. Local news helps us understand the issues that matter in our communities and affect our lives. Research suggests that reading local news is directly correlated with civic engagement. People who know what’s happening around them are more likely to get involved and help make a difference,’ Zuckerberg said.

Read more about the local news prioritization in news feeds here. Read our coverage on the news feed changes in these articles:

• Facebook Makes Major Changes to News Feed to Focus on Personal Posts, Jan. 15, 2018
• Facebook Is Kicking Publishers to the Curb…Thank Goodness, Jan. 17, 2018
• Five on Friday: Facebook Ads Coach Monica Louie: Newsfeed Dos and Don’ts, Jan. 26, 2018

Influencer Marketing Trends to Watch for in 2018

Influencer marketing proved its worth last year, and Adweek expects the trend to gain momentum and mature in 2018. In ‘What’s Ahead for Marketers and Influencers in 2018?,’ Justin Kline said we should watch for these trends this year:

• A new model – Influencer Network as a Service – is a thing, apparently. With this new tool, marketers have an easy-to-use platform to manage their influencer campaigns and relationships, said Kline. They can also create their own networks.
• With the popularity of social media, marketers are leveraging new tools on platforms like Facebook to up their influencer game. According to Kline, Facebook has a feature that lets brands share influencer posts directly with their target audiences.
• Consumers are more likely to trust an influencer than the brand itself, because influencers tend to align themselves with brands they believe in and/or use themselves. As a result, some brands are asking for influencer input during the product development cycle.

For more on influencer marketing trends to watch for in 2018, read Kline’s article on Adweek.com. Check out Subscription Insider’s STATPACK on Influence Marketing Trends as well.