By: Katherine Ruane, Director of Strategic Marketing, and Daniela Lomas, Marketing Specialist at Mather
March 6th, 2025
Background
The Bangor Daily News (BDN) has been a trusted voice in Maine for over a century, but even established institutions must evolve in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. Facing stagnating digital subscriptions and outdated technology, BDN turned to its long-standing partner in pricing and revenue management, Mather, to optimize its paywall strategy. Their key move was adopting Sophi’s AI-powered Dynamic Paywall Engine. This case study explores how that strategic decision revitalized subscription growth, reduced the manual workload on constrained teams, and set the stage for continued innovation and future growth.
Objectives with Sophi
- Transition from a static, rule-based strategy to a dynamic, automated approach that drives subscription and revenue growth while minimizing impact to audience and engagement.
- Implement fast, light-touch onboarding that enables BDN to quickly realize performance gains with minimal effort.
- Enhance BDN’s ability to effortlessly experiment with paywall strategies, driving continuous improvement.
The Path to Success
Consistent with every Sophi implementation, BDN and the Mather team began with strategic working sessions to align on BDN’s objectives with Sophi. Over a focused four-week rollout, Sophi was seamlessly integrated with BDN’s data pipeline, backend analytics were synchronized, and rigorous QA was conducted to ensure accuracy and stability before deployment. Following the launch, continuous performance monitoring confirmed that Sophi not only met but exceeded expectations.
Impact & Results
With the user paywall engine deployed site-wide, BDN makes revenue-optimized paywall decisions in real time based on user features and engagement history—delivering a subscription offer or granting open access based on each reader’s likelihood to subscribe. This streamlined, data-driven approach has generated a robust ROI and enabled BDN's editorial and marketing teams to shift away from paywall guesswork and complex journey management.
Key performance insights include:
- Subscription Growth: BDN has seen a 47% lift in direct paywall subscriptions and improved their paywall conversion rate by 2.3x since the implementation of Sophi.
- Sustained Engagement: The precision and accuracy of Sophi’s model has enabled BDN to grow subscriptions without compromising audience engagement or advertising revenue (no impact to article page views). Through continuous monitoring and adjustments, the average paywall intercept rate has dropped by 11%, reducing user friction while fueling growth.
- Robust ROI: Since implementation, BDN has realized a remarkable monthly ROI of over 6X.
Conclusion
By switching from a static paywall to Sophi’s dynamic, AI-powered user paywall engine, BDN transformed its digital growth trajectory in a matter of weeks. Importantly, this is only the beginning - Sophi’s sustained performance, coupled with Mather’s strategic support, is paving the way for further experimentation and innovation.
