By Katherine Ruane, Director of Strategic Marketing, and Ignaz van Hasselt, Director of Europe at Mather
May 15th, 2025
For publishers today, turning anonymous visitors into known users isn’t just a step at checkout anymore—it’s become a key driver of revenue. When done right, registration helps build stronger relationships, improves targeting, and boosts performance across both subscriptions and advertising.
As strategies mature, publishers are asking more sophisticated questions: When’s the right moment to ask for registration? How can AI make that decision smarter? And what really changes once someone registers?
We spoke with Ignaz Van Hasselt, Director of Europe at Mather, to dig into these questions and more. Before joining Mather, Ignaz led digital strategy and subscription growth at Mediahuis, one of Europe’s largest publishing groups—bringing deep, hands-on experience with registration strategies across a wide range of markets and maturity levels.
Q1: Why is registration such a valuable tool for driving revenue?
Registration is one of the most effective ways to unlock more value from your audience. By converting an anonymous visitor into a known user, publishers can better reach them across channels, personalize the experience, and guide them toward higher-value actions.
It’s common for publishers to worry that requiring registration might hurt traffic or cannibalize subscriptions—and that concern is valid. But when implemented thoughtfully, registration strategies can maintain engagement, protect ad revenue, and strengthen the subscription pipeline.
From a subscription perspective, the impact is clear. Our modeling at Mather shows that registered users are about ten times more likely to subscribe than anonymous visitors. And because known users tend to return more often and engage more deeply, they also contribute to stronger advertising performance—improving targeting and boosting eCPMs.
Q2: How should publishers decide when and how to ask for registration?
We’ve found that registration works best when it’s positioned as a fair value exchange. A reader may not be ready to pay, but they might be willing to share an email address to keep reading or unlock a specific feature. It’s a give and take.
That said, figuring out the right moment in the user journey to prompt for registration is difficult to do manually, especially at scale. Many publishers start with static rules, like showing a registration wall on the third pageview for every reader. As they mature, they often tailor them by audience segment.
Some ask why bother with two steps—why not just go straight to the paywall? But in many cases, the shortest path isn’t the most effective. Registration can ease the reader into a value exchange, lower friction for those not yet ready to pay, and create better data signals that improve conversion and retention downstream.
To truly optimize when and how these prompts appear, more publishers are now using AI to make smarter, real-time decisions that account for each reader’s unique journey.
Q3: What role does AI play in making registration decisions smarter and more effective?
Leveraging AI brings a level of precision to registration strategies that manual approaches can’t match. Instead of relying on static thresholds or broad audience segments, publishers can tap into machine learning models that analyze each reader’s behavior and intent, based on both real-time signals and historical engagement.
This helps determine whether a reader is likely to register and whether now is the right moment to ask. Sometimes it’s smarter to delay the prompt, continue building the habit, or even offer a subscription—especially if the reader is showing strong signals they’re ready to convert.
Sophi’s Dynamic Paywall Engine helps support these decisions by continuously evaluating each reader’s potential value in real time—whether through registration, subscription, or advertising—and weighing the tradeoffs across different user paths. It then automatically selects the action most likely to drive long-term revenue.
Q4: What should publishers do after a reader registers?
Registration is just the beginning. What happens next can make all the difference in whether someone drifts away or becomes a loyal, high-value reader. The primary goals of onboarding are to introduce the value of your product and start building habits, both of which are key to moving readers further down the funnel. This might include welcome emails, curated content, or personalized recommendations. For those looking for inspiration, I highly recommend reading about The Economist’s onboarding series.
Once you’ve invested in onboarding, it’s important to build on that momentum. Dig into your audience and content data to see what’s working, what’s resonating with your core readers, and use those insights to keep improving the experience along with other downstream efforts like proactive churn management.
Q5: Any final thoughts?
A registration strategy isn’t just about collecting emails; it’s about understanding your audience and making smarter decisions across the funnel. It’s becoming a core part of how modern publishers build stronger, more sustainable audience relationships—and it’s a strategy worth investing in.
Ignaz partners with publishers to grow revenue through strategy and analytics—developing sustainable audiences, improving acquisition and pricing, and reducing churn.
Connect with Ignaz to learn how a smarter registration strategy can support your revenue goals.
Receive Mather's insights directly in your inbox!
