How TechCrunch uses product perks to drive subscriptions

Max Willens of Digiday writes about how tech news site TechCrunch boosts its subscribers.

Willens writes, “On Thursday, TechCrunch announced that annual Extra Crunch members, who pay $150 per year, could get two free months of Aircall, a cloud-based phone system that TechCrunch uses for customer service. The Aircall partnership is the fourth member perk TechCrunch has announced in the past three months, joining $1,000 worth of Amazon Web Services credits, 100,000 Brex credit card reward points and six free months of customer support software Zendesk.

“According to Travis Bernard, TechCrunch’s senior director of subscriptions and audience growth, the goal is to reach a dozen member benefits. The company has not disclosed how many subscribers Extra Crunch has.

“‘The reason people subscribe to Extra Crunch, overwhelmingly, is encountering articles in our feeds we want to read,’ said Ned Desmond, TechCrunch’s chief operating officer. ‘The premium offerings are something that helps close the deal.'”

Read more here.

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.