By: Katherine Ruane, Director of Strategic Marketing
Background
Aller Media Nordic, founded in 1873, is one of the largest media houses in the Nordics with more than 60 lifestyle, health, entertainment, and news brands. Its portfolio includes well-known titles such as Seiska and Katso, reaching millions of readers each week.
For many years, Aller Finland relied on a traditional print subscription model with autorenewals at a uniform price. This one-size-fits-all structure limited flexibility and constrained revenue growth—a challenge familiar to publishers worldwide.
As reader behavior shifted and the transition to digital gained momentum, Aller saw the need for a more precise approach to sustain and grow subscription revenue. Beginning in 2015, the company partnered with Mather Economics to transform pricing into a strategic driver of growth. That collaboration has since evolved into a decade-long partnership focused on building sustainable revenue models and adapting to a rapidly changing media landscape.
Objectives with Mather
Aller set out to transform renewal pricing from a blunt, rules-based system into a dynamic, data-driven engine for growth. Their goals included:
- Deepening their understanding of the balance between ARPU growth and churn.
- Refining business rules to ensure pricing decisions supported long-term sustainability.
- Leveraging a data-driven approach tailored to subscriber willingness to pay.
- Equipping internal teams with insights to make confident, evidence-based decisions while maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements.
The Path to Success
On the path to smarter pricing, Aller and Mather began with strategic sessions to explore revenue opportunities under different pricing scenarios and align on pricing guardrails that would need to be considered.
The next step was understanding subscriber price sensitivity. Using predictive analytics, Mather identified key factors influencing willingness to pay, such as tenure, broad demographic data, payment channel, and transaction behavior, and applied these insights to design a smarter pricing algorithm. In parallel, a review of Aller’s existing pricing rules revealed refinements that could unlock additional revenue.
With the model in place, the teams introduced structured A/B tests to measure impact. They tracked key metrics such as revenue yield from pricing actions, stop rates across test and control groups, and shifts in delivery status. Transparent, step-by-step reporting gave Aller’s leadership the confidence to adjust carefully and establish a disciplined framework for continuous improvement.
Once the Mather approach proved effective, Aller scaled it across a larger share of their subscriber base. Pricing rules were applied consistently at every renewal, manual effort was reduced, and data-driven recommendations flowed directly into existing workflows.
Impact & Results
By shifting from a one-size-fits-all model to Mather’s Intelligent Pricing, Aller saw significant revenue gains while keeping retention stable:
- +32% increase in the ceiling price: By refining business rules and applying more strategic pricing aligned with willingness to pay, Aller unlocked new revenue opportunities. This uplift was realized at each renewal stage, expanding ARPU potential.
- 4X boost in additional revenue: Compared to a single-price approach, Intelligent Pricing unlocked nearly four times the incremental subscription revenue.
- 23% fewer stops: Intelligent Pricing reduced cancellations compared to the single-price approach, proving revenue growth can be achieved with minimal risk to volume.
- Greater organizational confidence: Transparent testing and reporting turned pricing into a trusted lever for long-term growth and alignment.
Conclusion
Aller Media’s decade-long partnership with Mather shows the impact of combining deep analysis, structured testing, and intelligent automation. Together, they transformed pricing from a static function into a strategic lever, unlocking new revenue while keeping churn stable. Having seen how the approach can scale and adapt to different brands and market conditions, Aller is well positioned to extend it across more of its portfolio and continue building for the future.
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