Independent.ie celebrates hitting over 22,000 subscribers within months of launch

In February, INM started asking readers of independent.ie to continue to support journalism by subscribing to independent.ie for stories that are unique and exclusive. Real stories, worth paying for.

Since launching their subscription model, over 22,000 people have subscribed to independent.ie. This phenomenal uptake in such a short space of time is testament to the fact that independent.ie is a brand that people trust, rely upon and can relate to. Not only has every one of the subscribers paid for the service, 26% have signed up to the Premium+ bundle (with ePaper) showing that independent.ie readers really believe that independent.ie has “Real Stories Worth Paying For”. This has led to a 3X uplift in downloads of ePapers (across Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Sunday World and The Herald) since the beginning of the year.

This new strategy is hyper focused on two numbers: did subscriptions go up, and how much does this affect our advertisers? This is a balancing act INM’s new CEO, Marc Vangeel and Publisher, Peter Vandermeersch have succeeded in with both De Telegraff and NRC. The new strategy is designed to sustain quality journalism and advertising into the future. The new reader data allows them to enrich its offering to advertisers. It’s well known that INM’s titles delivers reach but this move to a subscription model will allow INM to further improve its advertising solutions. By using informed insights on subscribed users it will ensure the audience that advertisers put their budgets behind are truly engaged with the platform and are predisposed to pay for products and services online.  

Following on from the success of independent.ie, INM have launched ePapers for all of its regional titles and are expanding their digital subscriptions footprint with the Belfast Telegraph. For 150 years the Belfast Telegraph has been connecting the people of Northern Ireland with informed and detailed journalism, providing insight and opinion on the news that matters most to the people of Northern Ireland. From May 19^th readers of belfasttelegraph.co.uk were asked to continue to support our journalism by subscribing to belfasttelegraph.co.uk for stories that are unique and exclusive. These stories continue to appear in the print edition of the Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life.