Ask the experts: what are the most valuable engagement metrics to measure in a subscription model?
咨询专家：在订阅模式中，哪些参与指标最值得衡量？

Let's start by evaluating the variety of metrics considered ‘useful'
让我们从评估各种被认为“有用”的指标开始

Google's Reader Revenue playbook lists 5 core engagement metrics: 
Google 阅读器收入手册列出了 5 项核心参与度指标：

• Average visits per user
  人均访问量
• Average page-views per user
  人均网页浏览量
• Average page speed 平均页面速度
• Newsletter opt-in rate 时事通讯订阅率
• Percentage of known readers (note that known unique visitors include digital and print subscribers, registered users, and email capture visitors) 
  已知读者百分比（请注意，已知独立访客包括数字读者、纸质读者、注册用户和电子邮件订阅者）

Whilst the first 3 relate more to content engagement onsite, the final two measure the value of specific engagement strategies that are considered valuable for increasing propensity to subscribe: 
尽管前 3 项更侧重于内容在网站上的吸引力，但最后两项评估了特定互动策略的价值，这些策略被认为可以提高订阅倾向：

Newsletter sign up: 时事通讯报名：

• If sent at a set time, newsletters form a habit, something that has been widely proven to increase engagement as your content takes a place in your reader's daily or weekly routine
  如果在固定时间发送，新闻简报会形成一种习惯，这已经被广泛证明可以提高参与度，因为您的内容会占据读者每日或每周的例行公事
• Readers can choose which newsletter to sign up to, meaning it's adapted to their interests
  读者可以选择要订阅的时事通讯，这意味着它可以根据他们的兴趣进行调整
• Bring content to the reader rather than expecting them to come to you
  将内容带给读者，而不是期望他们来找你
• Build a more direct relationship with your readers
  与读者建立更直接的关系

Increasing the % of known readers: 
提高已知读者比例：

Publishers across the world are starting to see the value in registration for increasing propensity to subscribe and reducing churn:
全球各地的出版商开始看到注册在提升订阅意愿和降低流失率方面的价值：

• The New York Times' registration model has increased conversion rates to subscription by more than 40%
  纽约时报的注册模式使订阅转化率提高了 40% 以上
• Registered users on L'Équipe are 13 times more likely to subscribe than anonymous readers
  “L'Équipe 的注册用户订阅可能性是匿名阅读者的 13 倍。”
• At The Independent, de-anonymized users are 45 times more likely to subscribe
  在 The Independent，经去匿名化的用户订阅可能性是未经去匿名化用户的 45 倍

More than just page-views, diversity of pages viewed is also important
页面浏览量仅仅是一个方面，页面浏览的多样性同样重要

Mather Economics highlights the importance of moving away from only tracking page views, also considering (and trying to increase) the diversity of pages viewed: 
Mather Economics 强调了放弃仅跟踪页面浏览量的重要性，还应考虑（并尝试增加）所浏览页面的多样性

“Many content-recommendation algorithms boost page views by serving readers content on a topic they've demonstrated an interest in. Publishers should ensure their engagement and marketing tactics (e.g., a content recommendation engine) do not only focus on pushing visit frequency or visit depth (i.e., number of pages read). Recommendations should also expose readers to a diverse array of topics and authors in order to broaden engagement. In a subscriptions context, “breadth” of experience appears to deepen likely subscribers' perception of the value proposition.”
“许多内容推荐算法通过向读者提供他们感兴趣的主题内容来提高页面浏览量。出版商应确保其参与和营销策略（例如，内容推荐引擎）不仅关注于推动访问频率或访问深度（即，阅读的页面数量）。推荐还应向读者展示各种主题和作者，以扩大参与度。在订阅环境中，体验的“广度”似乎会加深潜在订阅者对价值主张的感知。”

Media time – how much time does a user give you? 
媒体时间——用户给你的时间有多少？

Publishers in DRIVE, the digital reader revenue initiative, measure the success of their stories with 3 key metrics: 
DRIVE 数字阅读收益计划中的出版商使用 3 项关键指标来衡量其作品的成功：

• Media time -> How big is the total reach?
  媒体时间 -> 总覆盖面有多大？
• Number of Champions -> How many users use the news websites and apps intensively?
  冠军数量 -> 有多少用户在集中使用新闻网站和应用？
• Subscription Rate Champions -> How many of these intensive users could be converted into a subscription?
  订阅率冠军 -> 这些深度用户中有多少可以转化为订阅用户？

“The most important metric is Media Time – how much time does a user give us on a website or app? Media Time is easy to understand for editors and analysts. And data analyses show that Media Time can predict conversion and churn very well. The conversion probability increases by 130 times if the media time increases by 10 minutes per week. The churn probability is halved if the media time increases by 10 minutes per week.”
“最重要的指标是媒体时间——用户在网站或应用程序上花费了多少时间？对于编辑和分析师来说，媒体时间很容易理解。数据分析表明，媒体时间可以很好地预测转化率和流失率。如果媒体时间每周增加 10 分钟，转化概率将增加 130 倍。如果媒体时间每周增加 10 分钟，流失率将减半。”

Katja Fleischmann, product manager at dpa infocom, and Dr. Ole Martin, data scientist at Schickler consultancy
卡佳·弗莱施曼，德新社信息通产品经理，以及奥莱·马丁博士，希克勒咨询公司数据科学家

Be informed by your audience
以您的受众为导向

It was my conversation with Steve Price, digital publishing consultant who has previously held senior roles at Dennis Publishing, Hearst, iSubscribe and the Telegraph, that really dove into the heart of the metrics to track in a reader revenue model.
与数字出版顾问 Steve Price 的谈话让我深入了解了读者收入模式中需要关注的指标。Steve Price 之前曾在 Dennis Publishing、Hearst、iSubscribe 和 Telegraph 担任高级职位。

The key: instead of starting with engagement, turn to look at your most loyal subscribers to discover what engagement actions are linked to highly valuable users. 
关键：不要从参与开始，而是转向关注最忠实的订阅者，以发现哪些参与操作与高价值用户相关联。

Think of subscription as a bucket with holes. Users flow through but engagement fills the holes, keeping people in the bucket. Engagement is therefore a tool to persuade someone to convert and stay, rather than the goal in itself.
将订阅视为一个有洞的容器。用户流过，但参与填补了洞，使人们留在容器中。因此，参与是一种工具，用来劝说某人进行转换并留下，而不是目标本身。

Ultimately, Steve told me, it's about linking engagement to the pounds, dollars and euros. 
最终，史蒂夫告诉我，这与将参与度与英镑、美元和欧元联系起来有关。

Engagement, for the sake of acquisition, may be ‘quick' to turn around, but it costs more than retention and is less valuable to your business in the long run. 
为了获取新客户，投入的精力或许可以“快速”见效，但其成本要高于留住现有客户，而且从长远来看，对您的业务价值也更低。

I.e. Which metrics will help you reach your revenue goals?

Concretely, how do you put this into practice? 
具体来说，您如何将此付诸实践？

“The answers are in front of you” 
“答案就在你眼前”

Analyze who your existing customers are, what do they do, how do they consume your content, when do they engage with you, how often?…
分析您的现有客户是谁，他们的工作内容是什么，他们如何获取您的内容，何时与您互动以及频率如何..

For Steve, this means putting Lifetime Value (LTV) as your north star metric: 
对于 Steve 而言，这意味着将客户生命周期价值 (LTV) 作为你的核心指标：

Lifetime value = subscriber value x average customer lifespan
终生价值 = 用户价值 x 平均客户寿命

The result will give you the revenue that you can reasonably expect an average subscriber to generate for your company throughout their relationship with you. 
结果将为您提供平均订阅者在与您建立合作关系期间可以为贵公司创造的合理收入预期。

However, the main value lies in analyzing these high-value subscribers, asking yourself what ‘type' of engagement correlates with high retention rates. If you can link engagement to retention, then you'll gain a deeper understanding of how you can increase engagement to secure high conversion and retention rates. 
然而，主要价值在于分析这些高价值订阅者，问问自己与高留存率相关的参与类型是什么。如果你能将参与链接到留存率，那么你将更深入地了解如何提高参与度以确保高转化率和留存率。

For example, The Lenfest Institute found that the likelihood of readers becoming paid subscribers increases the most when they read 5+ articles per month or provide their email address, amongst other engagement actions.
例如，Lenfest 研究所发现，当读者每月阅读 5 篇或更多文章或提供他们的电子邮件地址时，他们成为付费订户的可能性最大，以及其他互动行为。

This creates a typical, high-value ‘persona' which can then inform your engagement strategy and metrics. 
这将创建一个典型的、高价值的“角色”，它可以为您的参与策略和指标提供信息。

How are publishers already linking engagement to revenue? 
出版商如何将互动与收入联系起来？

For Katja Trost, Teamlead Customer Retention at Die Presse, the most important metric for subscriber growth is churn rate: 
**对于《新闻报》的客户挽留团队负责人 Katja Trost 来说，衡量订户增长的最重要的指标是流失率：**

“In my opinion, engagement measures the value a subscriber is receiving from my products. So revenue is connected to engagement by looking at KPIs such as churn rate or customer lifetime value. There is no doubt that acquiring a new subscriber is much more expensive than retaining an existing one.”
我的观点是，用户参与度衡量用户从我的产品中获得的价值。因此，我们可以通过关注客户流失率或客户生命价值等指标来了解收入与参与度之间的 Zusammenhang。毫无疑问，获取新用户远比留住现有用户要昂贵得多。

The key to growth is subscriber retention: spending time, money and energy on growth without fixing retention is like sailing a boat with holes in the bottom! During our off-boarding process we try to win back lost subscribers with an attractive offer and by triggering FOMO. In this context, the return rate is a significant metric.  Nonetheless, it is most important to prevent churn in the first place. One approach to achieve this is to identify customers who are likely to churn or show low engagement. In such cases, we attempt to revive the so-called “zombie” users, who have not interacted with us for a considerable period of time, by implementing appropriate strategies.”
订阅用户的留存是增长的关键：在修复留存之前，将时间、金钱和精力花在增长上就像驾驶一艘底部有洞的船! 在我们的离船过程中，我们尝试通过提供有吸引力的优惠并触发 FOMO 来赢回流失的用户。在这种情况下，回头率是一个重要的指标。尽管如此，最重要的是首先防止流失。实现这一目标的一种方法是识别可能流失或表现出低参与度的客户。在这种情况下，我们尝试通过实施适当的策略来复活那些长时间未与我们互动的“僵尸”用户。

Work can then be put into uncovering these “appropriate strategies”, analyzing subscribers with high retention rates and their behavior. 
工作随后可以投入到挖掘这些“适当的策略”中，分析具有高留存率的订阅者及其行为。

For instance, Luis Baena Reig, Chief Marketing Officer at El Pais, who have now surpassed 250,000 digital subscribers, spoke at INMA's recent Media Subscriptions Summit about linking engagement actions to retention: 
例如，现已超过 250,000 名数字订阅用户的 El Pais 首席营销官 Luis Baena Reig 在 INMA 最近的媒体订阅峰会上谈到了将互动行为与留存率联系起来：

“We know that engagement is key,” Reig said. “This is something that most of us know. Those subscribers that subscribe to newsletters, which in our case is like 60%, have 24% less churn. Those that subscribe to our premium newsletters, only available for subscribers, have 29% less churn. And those that use our loyalty schemes with additional benefits have 30% less churn.”
“我们知道互动是关键，”Reig 说。“这是我们大多数人都知道的。那些订阅了时事通讯的订阅者，在我们这里约占 60%，流失率低 24%。那些订阅了我们高级时事通讯（仅限订阅者）的用户的流失率低 29%。而那些使用我们带附加福利的忠诚度计划的人员流失率低 30%。”

For Katja Fleischmann, product manager at dpa infocom, and Dr. Ole Marin, data scientist at Schickler consultancy, who work together on the DRIVE unique data initiative, it's not so much about individual actions (e.g. final click attribution score) but more the engagement along a user's journey to conversion:
卡娅·弗莱施曼（dpa infocom 产品经理）和奥莱·马林博士（Schickler 咨询公司数据科学家）共同致力于 DRIVE 独特数据计划，他们更关注用户的转化历程中的互动，而不是个别操作（例如，最终点击归因得分）。

“We incorporate engagement-metrics in the main relevant revenue-metrics. I.e. for conversions we do not focus on the total number of conversions on an article paywall as last-click-attribution. However, we use a Conversion-Attribution-Score that assigns a Conversion-Attribution to all articles read by a user in the previous 28 days before they convert. And this Conversion-Attribution-Score is proportional to the Media-Time (Engagement) spent on the articles. In this way we attribute the conversion to all user engagement on the journey to conversion. In a soccer analogy we do not only look at “goal-scorers” (articles, on which users convert) but also at the “assist-givers” (articles that keep users engaged so that they finally click on a goal-scorer-article. These can also be free articles). As in soccer there are usually way more articles setting up the conversion than articles that convert. And the role of the assist-givers is often underestimated. 
“我们将互动指标纳入了主要的相关收入指标。即，对于转化，我们不关注文章付费墙上转化的总次数作为最终点击归因。但是，我们使用转化归因得分，该得分将转化归因于用户在转化前 28 天内阅读的所有文章。此转化归因得分与在文章上花费的媒体时间（互动）成比例。通过这种方式，我们将转化归因于用户在转化过程中所有互动。用足球类比，我们不仅关注“进球者”（用户在其中转化的文章），还关注“助攻者”（让用户保持互动并最终点击进球者文章的文章。这些也可以是免费文章）。正如在足球运动中，通常设置转化的文章比转化文章多得多。而且助攻者的作用常常被低估。”

In the future, the ultimate goal is to use a reader value model that attributes monetary values (uplifts in CLV) to the engagement drivers. This would give you accurate information such as about how much additional subscription revenue you generate directly and indirectly through newsletters (increase conversions and decrease churn). Without these numbers you can't accurately estimate how much money you should invest in creating newsletters. However, such a model is very complex and difficult to create and maintain. Until then we use heuristics to incorporate engagement-metrics into conversion- and retention-metrics. Although this does not give us exact results, it takes us closer to our goal.”
“未来的最终目标是使用一个读者价值模型，该模型将货币价值（CLV 提升）归因于参与驱动因素。这将为您提供准确的信息，例如通过新闻通讯您直接和间接产生的额外订阅收入（提高转化率和降低流失率）。如果没有这些数字，您就无法准确估计投资创建新闻通讯应该花多少钱。但是，这样一种模型非常复杂，难以创建和维护。在此之前，我们使用启发式方法将参与指标纳入转化和留存指标。虽然这不能给我们带来确切的结果，但它使我们更接近我们的目标。”

How do you make this strategy a success? 
如何使此策略取得成功？

Steve Price brought up two essentials for successfully linking engagement to revenue: 
史蒂夫·普莱斯提出了成功地将员工敬业度与收入联系起来的两个要素：

• You need to invest in 2 key teams – analytics and engagement. This is where the long term cash lies
  你需要投资 2 个关键团队——分析和参与。长期现金投资就在这里。
• Make sure the management team buys into your KPIs. Lifetime value takes time to develop – at least a year – and it's not as easy to see the value in the short term. It takes investment, more so than engagement, but will yield the greatest returns and secure a sustainable reader revenue model for your business. 
  确保管理团队认可您的 KPI。终身价值需要时间来发展 - 至少一年 - 而且短期内不容易看到价值。它需要投资，比参与度更多，但会产生最大的回报，并确保您的企业获得可持续的读者收入模式。

The team at Manifesto Growth Architects would also add the importance of aligning all teams on these KPIs: 
Manifesto Growth Architects 团队还将补充说明所有团队在这些 KPI 上保持一致性的重要性：

“For publishers, it involves aligning editorial, product and marketing around a common engagement goals for the different value stages, for example; editorial teams focus on content types and formats that drive repeat usage (rather than one-off views), product teams focus on features that build daily habits and marketing campaigns promote actions such as app downloads that correlate to improved engagement and retention.” 
“对于出版商而言，这意味着围绕不同价值阶段的共同参与目标统一编辑、产品和营销工作，例如；编辑团队专注于驱动重复使用（而非一次性浏览）的内容类型和格式，产品团队专注于构建日常习惯的功能，营销活动则推广应用下载等与提高参与度和留存率相关的操作。”

Laura Graham, Growth Consultant for Media Entertainment Clients
劳拉·格雷厄姆，媒体娱乐客户增长顾问

Ultimately, as Die Presse points out, “all departments depend on a strong user and subscriber engagement”…
最终，正如 Die Presse 指出的，“所有部门都依赖于强大的用户和订阅者参与”…

“A high level of reach and interaction with our products is a basic requirement for the editorial content to get the attention it deserves, for the advertising department to sell ads, and for subscriptions to be acquired and maintained. Periods of high or low engagement automatically influence main KPIs like conversion and churn rates. Thus engagement serves as a kind of warning system for the main KPIs in all of our departments.”
“高水平的触达和互动是内容编辑获得应有关注、广告部门销售广告以及订阅获取和维持的基本要求。高互动或低互动时期会自动影响转化率和流失率等主要 KPI。因此，互动是所有部门的主要 KPI 的一种预警系统。”

Katja Trost, Die Presse 卡佳·特罗斯特，《新闻报》

Got your own question to ask the experts? Send me an email at madeleine@theaudiencers.com or a Linkedin message and I'll see what I can do!
向专家提出你自己的问题？发送电子邮件至 madeleine@theaudiencers.com 或 LinkedIn 消息，我会尽力而为！