Nancy Lane, President of the Local Media Association, spoke yesterday at the Digital Media LATAM conference in Bogota, Colombia showcasing case studies of US-based news organizations making progress with digital subscription and consumer revenue strategies.

She shared the success stories of The Star Tribune, Spirited Media, The Denver Post and The Buffalo News.

Here are some of the highlights of her presentation.

First, let’s start with some of the common themes from the case studies.

The first case study is The Star Tribune in Minneapolis. A funnel strategy has been key to their growth.

Moving readers down the funnel is the key to success. Registered users are 30x more likely to subscribe.

Managing the funnel starts at the top but accounts for less than 5% of total budget.

The middle funnel really focuses on those who have read five or more stories in the last 60 days.

The bottom is made up of the most engaged users with the greatest propensity to subscribe.

Now let’s look at the Buffalo News.

They realized their products needed some work on the technology side. So they did these five things.

They developed a “what if” report that compared page view/ad revenue loss with new subscriber revenue. This gave them the confidence to set their meter at 10 per week.

And it worked. Their growth has been incredible.

Let’s now move on to the Denver Post.

Participating in the Facebook Accelerator program identified three important needs.

The Post’s work in digital subscriptions has provided a host of key learnings. Here are a few of them.

They worked with Mather Economics to understand what content had the highest conversion rates.

And finally, Spirited Media.

They put a huge focus on experience.

And this is what their membership levels look like.

Membership revenue now accounts for 27% of their total revenue.

Interested in seeing the whole 57-page presentation? Contact lindsey.estes@localmedia.org for a complimentary copy.