By: Elizabeth Coffey, Marketing G2 Digital Marketing Specialist

Data is everything in the digital marketplace. It’s today’s most valuable commodity ahead of gold and oil. Advertisers pay through the nose to get accurate consumer information to help them target their ads effectively and what publishers fail to realize is that they’re sitting on a wealth of data, a figurative gold mine of consumer information if only they could get more known users on their sites.

The Microsoft Corporation bought LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion. Why did they pay so much for a networking and job recruitment site? At the time, LinkedIn had 433 million registered users and about 100 million active users per month. Rudimentary math tells us that Microsoft paid about $260 per active monthly user. Known, registered users and the data they bring along with them are valuable.

Publishers are missing out on an opportunity to fill their subscription sales funnel at the top because they’re too focused on the bottom of the funnel. The more people you engage, the more you can convert. Stop trying to get someone to marry you (subscribe) on the first date (interaction).

Someone from Denver may be interested in the Philadelphia Eagles and may want to read about them because they used to live there, love the team, or just want to know more about the Eagles, but that user is never going to subscribe to Philly.com. Why not invite that user in to read about the Eagles, all the while collecting valuable consumer data about that user and a small fee that’ll help support your journalism? Then afterwards, you can get them to sign up for an Eagles newsletter, then perhaps an Eagles year-in-review video, and so on. This is better than that user bouncing and you receiving nothing, not data, not anything, but a higher percentage number on a negative metric.

Roughly 60% of users from organic traffic to news sites bounce immediately when they hit a paywall that asks them to subscribe. They want to read your content but are subscription-phobic because they are outside of your target market, can’t afford a monthly subscription, or are just one of those people who will never subscribe no matter what you do. Change the offer, don’t change their interest in your content.

Flittz, by Marketing G2, is an all-in-one tool that allows you to capture these flyby readers, collecting data that’ll let you improve how you market yourselves to these readers as well as advertisers from big-name brands. Flittz also helps feed your subscription sales funnel with a try-before-you-buy offer before the big ask of signing up for a subscription.

For more insight and information, just listen to our President and Founder, Patrick Glennon, speak on the topic at this year’s INMAe3 Subscription Sales Model Summit: