Don’t Panic!
The idea of transferring your entire print subscription database to a digital edition can be terrifying for an established publication.
Fortunately, you don’t have to. Just ask Louisiana Sportsman.
Louisiana Sportsman has been catering to Southern fisherman and hunters for nearly 40 years. They’ve had a long time to build up a subscription base. By the time they decided to add a digital edition, they had a long-standing relationship with Palm Coast Data, a full-service fulfillment center for their print mailings.
They wanted to enable digital subscriptions as well as give digital access to their existing subscribers. They did not want to run a separate database for the digital edition.
That’s where Leaky Paywall comes in.
A Hybrid-Metered Paywall
Leaky Paywall is the most flexible hybrid-metered paywall available. That doesn’t just meant that you can experiment with the meter or the subscription levels.
It means that you can integrate your paywall with your existing third-party software and programs. Including fulfillment centers like Palm Coast Data.
For Louisiana Sportsman, it works like this:
All subscriber data is still stored with PCD. Leaky Paywall serves as the meter and gate for online access. It does all the things a paywall is supposed to do: monitor free articles, nag for subscriptions, offer different levels of access (including free and premium levels).
But when someone tries to log in, Leaky Paywall connects to PCD as the ‘source of truth’. It queries whether to grant access and accepts a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.
No special, second database required.
A Problem And An Opportunity
It’s a system that works well, but it did present one small problem. The digital platform requires an email address as the log in for the online edition. Only about half of the existing print subscribers had an email address on file.
Which meant that the other half had no way of accessing the digital Louisiana Sportsman and its many benefits.
Fortunately, we were able to create a workaround.
We custom-built an account number look-up with Palm Coast Data.
Then we created a walkthrough that showed print customers where to find their account number. (Spoiler alert: it’s always part of the address label on their print magazine.)
Once they’d provided that, we set them up with a log in page that acquired their email address and presto! No future problems gaining access.
(And as an added bonus, now Louisiana Sportsman can add their print subscribers to their email list for future newsletters and promotions.)
Want to find out more about how ZEEN101 can ease your way into a digital edition? Let’s talk.
