Automate more upgrades

Why are we not automating more?

I’m back from the journalism tech conference known as SRCCON. My major takeaway from two full days talking about the future of news?

We’ve gotta talk about automation.

I sat in on a session about whether news orgs should rent or own their software and yes, worth discussing, but way more pressing to me: let’s automate some stuff!

Today, I’ve got three ways you can automate more upgrades ⚙️💰️ 

There’s more where this came from so let me know if you try any of these!

Three ways to automate more upgrades

Fast action discount

When a new reader joins your email list, you redirect them to a special “one time” offer for your subscription. One month free, a month for 0.99 or 20% off three months, whatever you want to offer them!

This is designed to get people in who were likely already thinking they might subscribe (probably they’ve been following your work). If they’re price sensitive, this offer will grab them.

✏️ Set this up: Create a discount code in Stripe, duplicate your thank you page and add in this special offer with the code. Then redirect your newsletter sign ups to this thank you page.

You can use a tool like ClickFunnels to generate and expire unique codes but I wouldn’t bother. It’s pretty unlikely someone will remember how to get to this page. You can also expire the discount code every couple months and change it if you’re concerned about that. (If you want more ideas on this, this method is called a “tripwire” offer)

🛠️ Tools you need: Your website builder, your email newsletter tool and Stripe

Behavior triggered promo

One of the best ways to automate upgrades is by getting in sync with your reader’s mindset. If your reader is clicking on your emails to read your stories, they’re paying attention. It just might be a good time to ask for money.

A simple way to approach this would be to set up an automation that if a free reader clicks on 5 stories in a month, they would be sent this promotional email.

You don’t have to make a discount offer. It can just promote your subscription, share the perks, highlight a couple testimonials from subs or acknowledge that they are clearly a fan!

✏️ Set this up: Set up depends on your newsletter tool but typically you’ll find this in automations or sequences. You’ll add an automation that segments readers who have clicked 5 or more times in last 30 days and you’ll fire off this promo email.

Recommend setting a cool down period so it doesn’t hit your biggest fans every month, maybe 90 day cool down to wait to do it again OR better yet, a separate automation. This will all run behind the scenes.

🛠️ Tools you need: Your email newsletter tool

Also check out: 5 email sequences you need to earn more paying subscribers

Autoplug your subscription

Autoplug is a feature popularized by a tool called Hypefury. You can set Hypefury to post for you after all your tweets AUTOMATICALLY and it can plug whatever you want.

Most people I see using this are doing what Matt’s doing above and promoting their free newsletter but you could absolutely use this to drive to upgrades (and I think that would work because journalists foster so much goodwill on social media, you don’t have to slow roll every upgrade through email).

✏️ Set this up: This takes seconds in Hypefury. Connect your account and toggle this on, add your text and link. Hypefury is paid but it’s worth it if you tweet a lot or if your newsroom account does. Hypefury is really built for X but you can have it do something similar on LinkedIn in the comments.

🛠️ Tools you need: Hypefury for X and LinkedIn (affiliate link)