Zephr News

Lauren Mancke

iPhone SE 2 may be unveiled on March 31 as Apple is rumoured to host a spring event

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Apple may be hosting a spring event again this year, and it may see the company unveil a series of new devices.

A new report from German tech site iphone-ticker.de has information that says an event is being scheduled for March 31. Apple has yet to confirm the date of a launch event, but this report comes from a source close to “the Apple environment.”

This report and others have seen rumours of an affordable iPhone SE 2, a new iPad Pro and there may also be updates to the MacBook lineup.

The highlight of the show could be the long-rumoured iPhone SE successor, called either the SE2 or the iPhone 9.

It’s rumored to be the most affordable smartphone in Apple’s current lineup with a suggested starting price of $399 (about £300, AU$600). If its predecessor was any indication, it will follow the design of the iPhone 8 with a Touch ID fingerprint scanner and borrow the internals as well as the camera from the latest model.

Along with it, a new 12-inch iPad Pro is also expected. There are likely to be internal upgrades, plus it is also likely to sport a triple camera setup consisting that will include an ultrawide shooter and a 3D ToF module.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro is also due for a refresh, so this may be the perfect opportunity for Apple to introduce it.

All of this is speculation for now, so take it with a big helping of salt until we hear back from Apple on if the event is going ahead. If Apple is hosting an event in March, we’d expect to hear about it soon.

Google’s massive algo update in 2 months

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A major Google search algorithm update—with “wide-reaching impact”—takes effect in 2 months. This update will introduce new page experience signals, combining Core Web Vitals—designed to measure how users experience the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a page—with the existing search signals.

According to Google, these changes are expected to “have wide-reaching impact,” which is why the company has been repeatedly announcing the upcoming change for months.

This is important because Google is making Core Web Vitals a ranking factor. Starting May 2021, publishers whose sites are not optimised for these new metrics may see significant drops in their rankings on the search engine that powers well over 90% of searches worldwide.

The search giant has also introduced a range of tools to measure Core Web Vitals, so publishers can effectively prepare for the change, and address the issues that need to be fixed in order to present a better user experience, as measured by the new metrics.

Gridlock in Washington

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How dynamic paywalls reinvented content marketing

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In 1997 when journalism was under siege, the Wall Street Journal was one of the first publications to retreat behind a paywall. Uncomfortable with surrendering ground the paper delivered an ultimatum – read it here, or read it nowhere. They were joined by The Times, The Financial Times and a few other publications. Alas, fortune did not favour the brave…

Readers were unfamiliar with the idea and, faced with such brinksmanship, simply opted to read elsewhere. The Times lost 90% of its readership within a year. The destination game was being comprehensively won by Facebook, Twitter and Google. Resistance seemed futile.

Readers who had once been taken for granted now needed to be convinced, and this was true for both broadsheets and magazines, in fact it was soon true for all content marketing including video and audio as well. With this mission in mind, WSJ began testing out different temptation tactics to improve the customer journey. The paper made it possible for members, subscribers and journal staffers to share articles un-hindered by a pay wall; so anything shared from your favourite journalist’s twitter feed was free to access. Twenty four hour guest passes for non subscribers would pop up on particular articles. Full access for a day or two was granted so long as you you gave up your e mail address. What did the WSJ gain? First party data. What you like, how long you read for, and where to contact you…

Meanwhile ad-revenue was beginning to stagnate. Advertisers naturally saw less incentive to advertise on pages of Cosmopolitan, either digitally or in print, when most people were reading the magazine’s articles via Facebook and Twitter. This meant that brands with a least some kind of pay wall protected, loyal clientele at least had a baseline of revenue. The idea of a mixed monetisation strategy began to emerge – a little from subscription, a little from print, a lot from advertising.

Then came 2016 and the year of misinformation. Suddenly Facebook seemed suspicious. There was no editor, there was no organisation, it was a wild west of lies and sensation. Google and Facebook were ethic-free data monsters who were now frequently being called before congress. Readers scampered back toward reputable destinations. The New York Times resurged, the Guardian returned to profit. Trust was restored. Meanwhile, as the game began to shift, the WSJ’s pay wall was learning more and more.

Jump forward to 2020 and the Wall Street Journal is sitting pretty. Patience has paid off. These intelligent pay walls give readers what they want, while reinforcing the reputation of the brand. As you engage with WSJ’s pay wall you’re given a propensity score, effectively a quantified valuation of your likelihood to subscribe. If you’re at the top end you hit a hard pay wall, if they think you’re still a long way off committing, you’re allowed a little for free. The pay wall quantifies the CLV and makes an offer dependent on that. In this way, as the pay wall learns, it also guarantees that no eager reader goes unsubscribed. There’s a considerable amount of churn reduction, and a much more reliable income stream is established that doesn’t rely on changeable digital advertising. In 2015 the FT moved to a dynamic pay wall and as early as 2016 was taking more money from subscriptions than advertising and three quarters of readers were digital.

The pay wall feeds an addiction for the things you can’t live without (e.g.sports commentary, or financial news) and uses this as a gateway drug for the annual subscription. This analogy of addiction isn’t ours by the way – in the words of Financial Times CEO John Ridding the question has always been ‘how do you build a habit?’.

Why brands must master first-party data to win

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Theater Chairs Red Audience Cinema

The brands that look at Google getting rid of cookies as an opportunity to start to improve their understanding of first party data will be best placed to win in the 2020s. This was one of the unifying messages at The Drum’s Predictions 2020 event in New York last week, as marketers weighed up how Google’s announcement will force marketers to evolve.

“What’s happening with cookies is a huge opportunity for brands and marketers,” urged Tom Stein, chairman and chief client officer at Stein IAS. “And I think that opportunity comes from mastering first party data and really turning it into a competitive advantage.

Francesco Petruzzelli, chief technology officer at Bidstack, agreed with Stein’s assessment, and said one of the biggest issues is brands still taking a lot of first party data, but not turning it into experiences that really enrich their consumers’ lives. “When AI and too many bots get involved with first party data streams everything becomes skewed, so ensuring as a marketer that your first party data is clean is important; it means you can ensure you’re really taking time to understand your consumers and not just reaching them with pointless information that doesn’t have that human touch.”

According to Kris Tait, US managing director at Croud, avoiding the kind of “pointless information” Petruzzelli had referred to was all about offering contextual upgrades to consumers so they know their data is resulting in a tangible reward. “Consumers want to give their data in exchange for something tangible,” he said. “So you might be at a concert and get an upgraded seat, or you might get a free beauty product at an event; there needs to be that value exchange! Doing more contextual marketing is so important if you want to stay ahead of your rivals.”

Time for an industry reform?

However, Lauren Cooke, director of commercial partnerships at White Ops, believes that the marketing industry first needs to get it act together, if all these kind of hopes will actually be realized. “Will this finally be the year that we clean up our act?,” she cautioned. “I would say around 25 years ago people were having these exact same discussions about data and privacy, and what constitutes as inappropriate value exchanges with consumers. Well, it was bad then and it’s got a lot worse now! I don’t think we’re anywhere close to the solving this stuff.”

She added: “I think the intent is there, but giving up data is still very hard for marketers to do as it’s so valuable. They still can’t work out whether effectiveness or making money should be prioritised. These questions need to be answered before marketers can really push on and start using first party data intelligently.”

Finding new ways to look at your data

Speaking on a panel later in the day, Danit Aronson, chief partnership officer at CSM, talked about her experiences putting on events for big brands and how this taught her a different way of looking at data. She explained: “I’ve been in the industry for a long time and we’re just seeing how important it is to leverage events to achieve a human connection, and to capture data for a brand and to really own it.

“At an event we’re able to measure how long people are interacting in every different area and then taking that to learn what is appealing to our consumer and where they’re engaged. Then, in the future, we can optimize those events to really lean more into what we’re seeing is working well. It’s a good example of how to use the data you pick up on consumers honourably. If consumers can see you’re using it to help them then they’re much more likely to give you their consent.”

Yet looking ahead, Jed Meyer, managing director at Ebiquity, advised marketers to stop thinking with a ‘one size fits all’ mindset. He believes adaptability will be the key to success in the decade ahead. He concluded: “So many brands want third party measure that cut across the whole landscape, but in today’s world, testing isn’t usually a one and done type of system.

“A company has to keep improving, and not all companies are set up for that. So, in the 2020s, I think more and more companies will embrace an environment of testing and this idea that they need to keep evolving their data strategies.”

Watch the video to see the top trends in 2020 and beyond.

The speakers include Francesco Petruzzelli, Bidstack chief technology officer; Jed Meyer, managing director at Ebiquity North America; Lauren Cooke, director of commercial partnerships at White Ops; Danit Aronson, chief partnership officer at CSM; Kris Tait, Croud’s managing director US; Tom Stein, chairman and chief client officer at Stein IAS; Chris Apostle, iCrossing’s chief media officer and Melissa DiGeronimo, associate director, solutions engineer, data strategy at Hearst Magazines.

The subscription economy just got personal

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Over the past seven and a half years, the Subscription Economy has continued to thrive, growing more than 350 percent, as consumers increasingly demand access to convenient, digital services over the ownership of physical products.

The latest edition of the biannual Subscription Economy Index from Zuora – the leading cloud-based subscription management provider – has found modest subscriber growth across the media industry with high churn rates.

High churn rates are not surprising in an aggressively contested sector that has seen several major new direct to-consumer entrants.

The publishing industry generated the least amount of revenue from usage-based pricing compared to other industries at 17%. While the sector continues to expand, publishers frequently don’t have as much opportunity to deploy usage-based models than other sectors (newspaper paywalls, for example, are generally priced at a fixed monthly rate).

For the first time since its inception in January 2012, the SEI analysed the impact of subscription businesses by sector, comparing subscription businesses in Software as a Service (SaaS), Internet of Things (IoT), Manufacturing, Publishing, Media, Telecommunications and Business Services to their respective S&P 500 Industry benchmarks.

IDC predicts that by 2020, 50 percent of the world’s largest enterprises will see the majority of their business depends on their ability to create digitally enhanced products, services, and experiences.

The latest SEI report showcases a number of industries contributing to this incredible growth. On average, Zuora found that the sectors outlined in the SEI report are growing 2 to 5 times faster than their industry benchmarks.

“The Subscription Economy is not limited to one or two industries. We’re now seeing sectors far and wide placing subscriptions, over pure-play products, at the centre of their businesses to achieve rapid and sustained long-term growth,” said Dr. Carl Gold, Chief Data Scientist at Zuora. “The SEI report showcases the transition to subscriptions beyond the boundaries of traditional SaaS organisations into the Manufacturing and Business Services sectors, exposing the phenomenal value of the subscription business model in today’s digital age.”

Overall, the SEI data reveals that subscription businesses grew revenues about 5 times faster than S&P 500 company revenues (18.2% versus 3.6%) and U.S. retail sales (18.2% versus 3.7%) from January 1, 2012 to June 30, 2019.

Key industry findings from the SEI report which support the Subscription Economy’s long-term magnitude and viability in various industries include:

• Business services and manufacturing industries experienced the lowest churn rates across all sectors, with 16.2% and 20.4% churn rates, respectively. However, Media (37.1%) and Publishing (28.2%) industries saw the highest amount of churn.

• IoT and manufacturing subscription companies exceeded their industry S&P 500 benchmarks by more than 5X. IoT subscription businesses also achieved the highest annual growth rate of Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) at 14.3%, more than 2x the SEI average of 6.5%.

• The publishing industry generated the least amount of revenue from usage-based pricing compared to other industries at 17%, while the sector with the highest percentage of usage-based revenue was Business Services (57%).

Overarching Subscription Economy insights derived from these industry findings include:

• Offering subscriptions that serve business-critical functions experience lower customer churn. According to Dr. Gold, “Lower churn could be attributed to the ‘sticky’ nature of B2B subscriptions, which serve mission-critical functions and tend to be deeply embedded within a business’ operations. It could also indicate that new entrants shifting to subscriptions are learning from first-movers to the business model.”

• Launching and monetising new services drive greater individual account growth. According to Dr. Gold, “Add-on and up-sell opportunities inherent in digital services and connected hardware support high ARPA growth rates.”

• Incorporating usage-based pricing facilitates lower churn and higher overall subscription growth. According to Dr. Gold, “Companies in industries like publishing that do not adopt usage billing generally have higher churn than companies like those in SaaS or Business Services that do. This suggests that the balance and flexibility of usage-based pricing plays a useful role in customer engagement and retention.”

Why publishers are focusing on the customer journey

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Our presence on the internet is measured in footprints. These footprints take the ephemeral impact of our net-worthy selves and make them solid. Cast your mind back to the early carbon footprint questionnaires that converted your polluting output into massy kilos of guilt – the invisible was made tangible, blissful ignorance was forever changed into depressing culpability.

Since then ghostly impressions of where we’ve been and what we’ve done have become more and more popular. As first party data monitoring has improved, individual specialisation has increased, and the customer journey is tracked beginning to end. The impression has become more of a fingerprint than a footprint these days, as our tastes have become more specific.

In fact we now get prudishly insulted when the algorithm gets it wrong – Why, dear god, am I being shown adverts for that! What could possibly have made you think I’d vote for them? What have I done? What have I bought? How did they know?

A world of offence and etiquette has emerged from the primeval grunts of our first marketing footprints. We are insulted when judged to be ’that’ kind of consumer, or hit with blunt demands for payment, or when our conscience is squeezed. We are gratified with ads that seem to know us, delighted by cool companies who feel we’re ‘one of them’, and deeply disturbed by ads that seem to know us all too well. Deep down we want to be stroked, managed and cared for. Sensitivity is the name of the game.

Until now, the accepted wisdom on subscriptions has not responded to any of this subtlety. Instead, pay walls have come across as crude, transactional dates. The hard paywall wants to go all in on the first drink or there’s really no point carrying on. The soft paywall will give you a little for free, but by the third date you need to get serious, and then there’s the ‘freemium’ paywall that just keeps putting out in the hope you have a conscience.

This kind of thinking is redundant in the future life of subscription services. A reader relationship strategy is about good faith engagement, individual satisfaction and Customer Lifetime Value. The customer journey is key, and any company that disregards how personally we feel about our internet selves, risks offending and alienating audiences. A one-size-fits-all policy is several years out of date.

The redundancy of old pay wall thinking is apparent when you consider how people engage emotionally with journalism. An accurate report from Anfield is half way between fandom and a civil right. We feel represented by columnists and comedians as much as by politicians. So while pressure and urgency might work for Black Friday sales at PC World, they are totally inadequate tactics for encouraging subscriptions to The Economist.

Dynamic pay walls are re-organising the customer journey, and responding intelligently to different readers. The Wall Street Journal’s intelligent paywall caters for 60 different variables including frequency, depth of read, favoured devices, preferred content types and a whole lot else. These metrics allow you to calculate the CLV accurately and offer subscriptions at the right time. You can start the conversation on sport, move on to world affairs, and jump into bed much further down the line.

Research conducted by NZZ, a Swiss publication with a similarly smart pay wall, shows that personalised greetings on subscription offers increases conversion by a whopping 25%. They’ve also discovered pushing subscriptions during the commute is pointless, and annual offers are much more attractive than monthly ones. This kind of detail in first party data gives you multiple customer journeys and therefore provides churn reduction on a massive scale.

The proof? Earlier this year the New Yorker moved behind a dynamic pay wall and took 167,000 digital-only subscribers with it. The New York Times added 223,000 in the first quarter of 2019 and the German newspaper Zeit recorded a 123% growth last year. According to Reuters more than half of publishers identified subscriptions as their primary revenue focus for next year. If this turns out to be true the customer journey will be all that matters.

Our footprints are everywhere, and publishers have to thread the needle between a subtle marketing relationship that respects our privacy while tickling our taste buds. In years gone by this might have seemed like molly-coddling, but in this new ‘internet of manners’, etiquette is a mark of respect.

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