Categories: OLD Media Moves

Flexible paywall helped Dow Jones hit 3 million subscribers

Dow Jones & Co. hit 3 million paying subscribers across its portfolio of brands this year, thanks to its data-driven, customer-focused paywall strategy, reports Sara Guaglione of MediaPost.com.

Guaglione writes, “Dow Jones, which oversees The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and Barron’s, among other brands, worked to rebuild the paywall, which was a ‘one-size-fits-all approach dictated by content’ for over 20 years, Halen said.

“‘If we have something that is just a hard paywall, it is hard to sample that content to users,’ he said. The ‘guest pass’ feature, for example, allows visitors to sample content for a limited period of time.

“Dow Jones used subscriber data to understand ‘when a subscriber subscribes. It looks at 65-plus variables and determines who’s ready, who needs warming up,’ Halen said. ‘We haven’t had pushback because it hits customers when they’re ready to buy. It treats each customer individually.'”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.