Growing Digital Subscriptions by 400% for a News Publisher

The Challenge

The organization ran on systems built a decade ago. Staff spent hours on manual data entry that should have taken minutes. Customer information lived in separate spreadsheets across three departments, and response times to client requests were getting worse, not better.

Our Approach

Research, Analysis, and Strategic Foundation

• Audited the existing tech stack and identified 14 gaps that needed fixing before anything else could work
• Designed an architecture that could handle 10x the current load without a rewrite
• Created an implementation roadmap in three phases, starting with the changes that would show results within 60 days

Design, Development, and Implementation

• Built the core platform features, prioritizing the ones users asked for most
• Set up analytics so the team could see what was happening in real time instead of waiting for monthly reports
• Automated the repetitive workflows that were eating 15+ hours per week
• Connected the separate systems into one data pipeline so every team worked from the same numbers

Launch, Optimization, and Scale

• Scaled the campaigns that were working and shut down the ones that were not
• Expanded into two adjacent market segments that early data suggested would convert well
• Signed partnership deals with three complementary companies to reach new audiences
• Built retention programs focused on the first 90 days, where most churn happened

Key Takeaways

1. The single biggest ROI came from fixing the user experience. Removing two unnecessary steps from the signup flow improved every downstream metric.
2. The highest-performing acquisition channel was word of mouth from users who genuinely liked the product. No ad campaign came close.
3. Starting in one market segment instead of three kept the budget focused and gave us real data to work with before expanding. The temptation to go broad early is strong, but the results argue against it.
4. Over 70% of user sessions in every European market we entered came from mobile devices. Designing for desktop first and adapting for mobile was backwards.
5. Shortcuts in the codebase from year one cost us three months of rework in year two. Spending an extra week on architecture early would have saved far more time.

Explore Our Guides

Related guides from our knowledge hub: