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Medienhaus Aachen steps up digitally

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Medienhaus Aachen has made a huge digital move forward during 2020. It is operating in the German town of Aachen and particularly with the daily newspapers, Aachener Zeitung and Aachener Nachrichten.

Nele Toye, Manager of Reader Revenue Market, comments:
“We have succeeded in doubling our full paying digital subscription stock during 2020 and have the ambition to double it again in 2021”.

The MWM Media 365 cloud based data system has been implemented in 2020 and is up and running since the summer. By integrating all information from the existing systems, for example the ERP “ViVa”, which is a software subscription system, the CMS InterRed, as well as Google Analytics, Medienhaus Aachen now has a framework, an overall grip on the systems and as a result ­­– customer data.

“Editorial data and subscription data were earlier two different worlds,” recalls Nele Toye. “Now all our operations are datadriven. The strategy of the whole company is digital as this is the only growing media market. It is increasing and has great potential. How to sell digital content and build up a stock of customers is a huge issue.”

Print is still good business in Germany, but despite this, Medienhaus Aachen early realized the importance of the digital market. The first step of the digital journey was taken already in 2013 by setting up a paywall. After a couple of years the company also experimented with offering a summary of the regional and local multimedia-news of the day through an App for those who had no time for news briefings in the mornings. The testing period lasted for one year.

What was the outcome of your digital efforts?
“We did not have a USP for this new App and at that time also no coherent strategy of how to sell our digital content within the paywall. This changed in 2017, when we started to take our content seriously by being more strategic and by first publishing content digitally behind the paywall.”

In 2018 representatives from the Medienhaus Aachen met with MWM and in 2019 a pre-study was undertaken; surveying existing systems and pointing to future directions. A benchmark of the digital deal was also provided and recommendations of product-improvements and processes were presented by MWM. The experience was based on experience from Scandinavia. Medienhaus Aachen got track on what needed to be done.

Why did you choose to collaborate with MWM?
“We are happy with the collaboration as MWM has expertise and experience from the Scandinavian market, that is in the forefront”, says Nele Toye. “The prestudy gave expertise especially on subscription.”

Today data and simplicity are the buzz words at the Medienhaus Aachen. By getting reports, based on 80-100 datafields, the working routines are changing for the editorial and marketing teams. Experiments with various subscription offers is an ongoing process.

“Today we are looking at the behaviour of the customers and we have different offers on trial. We can now study why customers convert and churn. How did they behave while subscribing and how can we get them back if they churn.“

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