Known as Norway’s quality national daily, Schibsted-owned Aftenposten’s revenues are today highly dependent on reader revenues, so ensuring they retain as many paying subscribers as possible is vital for them.

They currently have around 150,000 paying digital-only subscribers, a sizeable figure in a country that has just over 5.4 million people.

Priced at around the equivalent of 27 euros a month (or about 325 euros a year), Aftenposten is fairly pricey.

“So it’s really, really important for us to find ways to engage people on other platforms and get them back to us and use the product,” Schibsted’s Sidney Glastad told participants at WAN-IFRA’s recent Digital Media Europe conference, which took place at Schibsted’s headquarters in Oslo.
Sharing is caring (and also helpful for retaining)
The publisher continually experiments with various features to retain users and Glastad, who is in charge of growth and target groups, discussed some of the things they have found to be most successful.

For example, Aftenposten gives subscribers the ability to share their digital subscription with someone else, and in fact, they strongly encourage this practice. Why? For one thing, it helps users to see extra value in their subscription. For another, it’s a powerful force in retention. If a reader goes to cancel their subscription, the first screen in the cancellation process shows the name of the person they share their subscription with and asks the user if they are sure they …