Case Study Tag: Zetland

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A Danish member-driven newsroom that seeks to add complexity and curiosity to the news
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark
Founded
2016
Membership program launched
2016
Number of members
17,000+
Percentage of revenue from membership
83 percent

Within a month of Denmark’s coronavirus lockdown beginning,  Zetland could see that this was going to be a tough moment for many of their members – Zetland was hearing from members about losing jobs, having their hours cut, or being unable to work. Zetland wanted to find a way to keep these members through the tough times. At the same time, they knew other members were in more fortunate positions and might want to help during this time of crisis. 

So Zetland rolled out a series of pricing adjustments and doubled down on their retention efforts. They offered price flexibility to those who asked to cancel their membership, asked those who could afford to pay more to do so, and experimented with a new feature to make membership more valuable. 

Why this is important

It is important to invest in retaining your members, especially during a recession. Recruiting and signing up a new member is a costly endeavor, likely more costly than giving your existing members some flexibility on payment for a little while. Focus on retaining the people who already know and like what you do. 

But offering discounts or price breaks for membership is a delicate balance. If you discount it too much or message the discount poorly, you risk devaluing membership. Zetland has been careful to send the message that it’s not becoming a “pay what you want” company – instead, they want to be known as a company with a set value that is empathetic and willing to be flexible with their members. 

While the coronavirus pandemic is (hopefully) an extreme example of sudden economic hardship, Zetland’s approach to keeping its members is instructive for any newsroom in a community facing economic hardship, whether caused by a virus, a natural disaster, or a market crisis.

What they did

Zetland knew that most members were facing one of two scenarios during the coronavirus pandemic: either Zetland was suddenly a luxury good for those hit hard by the recession, or they were financially stable and wanted to do their part to ensure Zetland survived. 

So, starting April 15, Zetland added a new feature to their unsubscribe page: a note next to the unsubscribe button that says, essentially, “If you’ve been negatively impacted by all of this, don’t leave us for good. Tell us what your situation is, and we’ll reduce the price of membership for you.”

The page invited those who were about to unsubscribe to pay what they could instead. They informed members of the change via email. In the same email, they wrote, “If you find yourself in the lucky situation of not being hit by this pandemic, please consider paying more.”  

As the coronavirus pandemic dragged on, they doubled down on their efforts to retain the members they had.

During Zetland’s 2019 ambassador campaign and during their February roadshow (a series of stops the newsroom made to five cities in Denmark to meet their members there), they heard that members wanted a better way to express the value of Zetland and what the newsroom meant to them personally. Above all, they heard that members wanted to communicate this value with Zetland’s articles. 

Previously, Zetland (which has a paywall) had given ambassadors – or anyone who has recruited a new Zetland member – the opportunity to send their contacts a set of Zetland articles as a way to entice them to join. Zetland decided to try making this package of articles a perk for any new member, and moved it from being a sales pitch to a key part of the new-member onboarding welcome package. They launched this new feature on Aug. 24, 2020. 

Courtesy of Zetland, August 2020

Here’s how it works: Current members and ambassadors create a “package” containing their three favorite Zetland articles (see image to the left for what this web page looks like). Then, current members are encouraged to share their personal URL link with their friends and family. When their friend or family members joins Zetland, they are then immediately presented with a personalized onboarding package from their referring contact that includes the three “must read” articles. (Note: Zetland members are still able to share individual Zetland articles with friends apart from this “onboarding package,” but the team sees this process as an intentional way to greet new members.)

The Zetland team let members choose the package of stories, rather than making suggestions, because they knew the pull of a friend recommending an article would be stronger than the pull of anything recommended by an algorithm. 

The results

As of September, 283 members had taken Zetland up on the pay-what-you-want offer on their cancellation page. These members are now, on average, paying 45DKK, or about $7 a month. This is a little more than a third of the average general price of 113DKK, or about $18 per month. 

On the other hand, 233 members decided to donate an average of 65DKK extra a month, or about $10 a month. What this means is that those 233 members are largely offsetting the cost to Zetland of those 283 members who asked to pay less for their membership.

Zetland also began studying its analytics for broader retention insights around this time. They noticed that when a member stops reading Zetland at least once a week, that’s a strong indicator that they’re likely to cancel their membership. A key part of retention is building habits, so the flip side of that is also true: when someone’s habit begins to wane, you’re more likely to lose them.  

The new onboarding package had just been launched at the time of publication, so MPP does not have results on that yet. Zetland plans on comparing the difference in retention in the first few weeks after someone becomes a member since implementing this new feature, as well as long-term retention a year or two into membership. 

What they learned

Maintain empathy with your members beyond the initial crisis. Zetland only removed the new language next to their unsubscribe button on Aug. 18. They decided to keep it up beyond the spring to give this explicit option to folks who might be hit with financial hardship throughout the summer. Even though they’ve now removed this specific language, Zetland still allows members to pause their membership payments from 7 day and up to 90 day increments. This allows Zetland to stick with the price they’ve defined for their membership program, while letting people take breaks as they need it. 

Leverage your most loyal readers and members for ideas on how to improve your membership program. The roadshow the Zetland team went on in February to speak to readers and members across five cities in Denmark allowed the team to talk to what CEO Tav Klitgaard calls the “hot onion” – the small and mighty segment of Zetland members who are the newsroom’s most loyal fans

This segment of members is largely composed of Zetland’s ambassadors, who have their own email list and Facebook group, and have opted into additional communication from the Zetland team. Conversations with the ~200 or so folks in the “hot onion” group during the roadshow planted the idea for the story package feature. After the roadshow, Zetland sent a survey to all of their members (not just the super-fans) to double check that this feature was something other members wanted. They ended up receiving 1,600 survey responses that validated what they heard in-person. 

Key takeaways and cautionary notes 

Keep your value proposition clear when you make changes to your payment structures and discounts. Zetland makes it clear with their members that they are a newsroom that expects members to pay a set price per month (129DKK, or about $20 USD per month.) Zetland does not want to be or want to be known as a “pay what you want” company – instead, they want to be known as a company with a set value that is empathetic and willing to be flexible with their members. This distinction is key, and Zetland is careful to emphasize this point in their marketing with members and in the language on sign-up forms on their site.

Other resources 

National Digital native Conducting Audience Research Making the Business Case for Membership Adopting a Product Mindset Retaining our Members Zetland

Newsroom overview

Who They Are
A Danish member-driven newsroom that seeks to add complexity and curiosity to the news
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark
Founded
2016
Launched membership
2016
Number of members
17,000+
Percentage of revenue from membership
83 percent

In summer 2019, about three years after Zetland launched, the founders faced a hard truth. Despite many successes, they still weren’t profitable, and they were running out of time. Their monthly expenses totaled 1,650,000 krone (about $178,000), but monthly revenue only totaled 1,300,000 (about $140,000). CEO and co-founder Jakob Moll ran the numbers, and found that if they could grow their membership from 10,500 individuals to 14,000, they would break even.

With a clear goal in mind, they knew they needed to grow their membership, and quickly. Rather than turn to a typical marketing or acquisition campaign, they took a gamble: if they opened up about their financial situation and appealed to members’ passion for Zetland, could they enlist those members to help change their financial trajectory?

What followed was one of the most ambitious member-ambassador campaigns Membership Puzzle Project has seen. They surpassed their goal in less than a month, and at the end of 2019 they reached a major milestone: financial sustainability. 

Why this is important

Marketing is an important component of your membership growth strategy, but many newsrooms focus on that and completely forget about one of the most powerful tools they have: their most loyal members. The Membership Puzzle Project sees membership as, among many things, a way to identify your strongest supporters and incorporate them in your quest for sustainability. 

Few initiatives embody that more clearly than Zetland’s “members getting members” campaign.

The campaign wasn’t flashy. It didn’t include celebrities or any over-the-top swag. It succeeded because Zetland found the intersection point between their audience members’ passion for Zetland and their newsroom’s sustainability needs – and they were willing to offer complete transparency in exchange for members’ help. Understanding what motivates your audience members to participate and figuring out how that intersects with your needs is key.  

What they did

In June 2019, co-founder and then CEO of Zetland Jakob Moll published a piece headlined: “Here are the key figures about Zetland’s business that are usually kept secret in a business like ours.” The article laid bare Zetland’s financial books. 

Moll was blunt: “Right now, our expenses are greater than our income – in other words, the amount in our bank account is shrinking every month. If you spread out the snapshot over a whole year, we have an income of 1,300,000 a month and expenses of 1,650,000. If we had 14,000 paying members instead of 10,500, our expenses and income would balance.” 

Moll’s financial tell-all article also introduced members to a proposed solution: become an ambassador for Zetland and recruit new members. In the ambassador campaign, newly recruited members got to pay whatever they wanted for the first month of access, but after that, they would have to pay the standard monthly membership fee of ~$14 a month. Here’s what this process looked like in practice:

They recruited “ambassadors” from their current member base. Ambassador recruitment officially started with Moll’s financial-tell-all article, which included a sign-up form for ambassadors that first verified the respondent was already a Zetland member. The sign-up form was also the process for onboarding ambassadors and included questions about how the ambassador preferred to recruit their new members. Over the next two weeks, more than 1,000 people across Denmark signed up to become ambassadors.  

They equipped their new ambassadors for both digital and print recruitment campaigns. When a member became an ambassador, Zetland gave them a unique signup page URL that included their name. The URL brought potential new members to the pay-what-you-want sign-up form. Zetland also gave ambassadors the option of postcards or posters to spread the word offline. They shipped out more than 20,000 postcards and 2,000 posters with ambassadors’ personal codes for the ambassadors to share when the campaign launched. 

They officially launched their ambassador campaign on Aug. 6, 2019. The ambassadors started recruiting new members by sharing a recruitment form with a video of Moll introducing himself and Zetland’s mission. Then, the reader was shown the dominant call-to-action, which was the pay-what-you want box. 

Courtesy of Zetland

When a new member signed up, Zetland sent them a long, personal welcome email from Lea Korsgaard, the editor-in-chief. They frequently reminded their readers, members and ambassadors that “this is your campaign, it’s not ours.”

Membership Puzzle Project shared additional details about the execution in its 2019 case study of the campaign.

The results

Zetland’s ambassador campaign launched on Aug. 6 and formally ended on Sept. 6. Their goal was to add 1,400 members to their then-10,500 members. They reached that goal in a week. In September, they passed 2,500 new members (totaling 13,000 members). By the end of the campaign, they surpassed 14,000 members. 

That 14,000 number is significant because at 14,000 members, their newsroom broke even and started making a small profit. About six months after the campaign officially ended, Moll reported to Membership Puzzle that they are “moving toward 15,000 members.” So far 346 of those original ambassadors have signed up to be ambassadors year-round. 

The pay-what-you-want model for the first month was also a success. New Zetland members didn’t go for the lowest possible payment. (On average, new Zetland members decided to pay a little bit less than the equivalent of $9, when the sticker price for the first month of membership is equivalent to $6.50.)

In addition to volunteering to help recruit new members, more than 500 Zetland members also volunteered to help with member-driven editorial projects in the coming months. 

What they learned

Look to recruit people who are willing to pay some amount for membership. Zetland ran its first ambassador campaign in 2018. It brought in 700 new members, but many of those members didn’t stick. Only half of them even logged on to Zetland after the campaign ended. Moll believes that giving free access sent the wrong message to their audiences. In 2019, Zetland focused on recruiting members who understood the value of high-quality journalism — the folks who were willing to pay for it — and it worked. The members recruited during their 2019 campaign have a retention rate that mirrors that of Zetland’s overall membership.

Be honest about your financial situation and what you need from your members. Zetland found their ambassadors eager to jump in and help the newsroom reach financial sustainability. The radically honest articles published prior to the ambassador campaign’s launch (including how many more members, exactly, they needed to survive) helped mobilize their current members into action.

Set up your ambassadors for success, and say thank you often. The Zetland team worked hard to make their ambassadors feel special, empowering them to recruit new members either digitally with their personalized URLs or manually with postcards. Ambassadors also received small gifts like stickers and packets of plant seeds. The Zetland team was sure to say thank you often, and to keep their ambassadors updated on the newsroom’s progress and success along the way.

Key takeaways and cautionary notes

Find ways to harness members’ passion for your organization. Ambassadorship taps into members’ passion for your work – one of the six key motivations MPP heard when analyzing responses from hundreds of supporters of news organizations about why they gave their support.  Members motivated by the chance to show some love for your mission are proud of their affinity with your organization and want people to know about it. 

Although only a small percentage of your members will likely respond to your call for ambassadors (the 90/10/1 rule is that 90 percent of members will just consume the product, 10 percent will interact with you, and 1 percent of that 10 percent will become core contributors), that small percentage can have a transformative impact.

Other resources

National Digital native Making the Business Case for Membership Growing our Membership Retaining our Members Zetland