Mediahuis: from zero to 100k subs in five years
Some quick points of interest from Mediahuis Ireland's five year subs journey
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These are live-blogged notes from a session at Future of Media Technology conference. These are more bullet points than my usual live-blogged notes – this talk was interesting, but outside my normal wheelhouse.
Mediahuis Ireland launched its paywall in 2020, which Sheena Peirse, chief customer officer (and now CEO), admits was probably behind the times. The Irish publisher is best known for the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent, Sunday World and Ireland’s Own. Plus the Belfast Telegraph.
Bullet points from the talk she and Paul McCarthy-Brain, CEO and founder of Flip-Pay gave:
- Don’t underestimate the value of our brands and journalism
- No point in dipping your toe in the water; move quickly
- Create a culture of data-informed experimentation and agility
- The B2C/B2B revenue trade off is real in the short term but don’t avoid it
- Collaboration across the new room, product, and marketing teams is critical
- Paid social is a worthwhile acquisition vector.
- Analytics? “All attention-led, but we probably gather too much data.”
- Useful to look at historic data to explore the right offers to people willing to pay
- Overall customer base is older than Irish average. But acquisition has younger cohorts in proportion to their population density, so that changing over time.
