Australian Community Media (ACM) is Australia’s largest publisher of regional and agricultural news. ACM is undertaking a multi-year digital transformation process which includes implementing paid digital subscriptions on its agricultural mastheads. During planning, audience research identified a strong preference for a native app, and an opportunity to deliver value beyond ACM’s core news content by offering additional features that would be of benefit to the farming community.

To increase the value proposition of a paid digital subscription, ACM decided to invest in a full featured app. In addition to agricultural news content, the app would include functionality for recording rainfall data, viewing historical weather conditions, livestock & grain market reports, and a number of other features.

A workshop with a Google UX / UI expert at the start of the project changed ACM’s initial approach to how the app should look and function, resulting in a more modern and appealing user experience. The bundle of news and broader agricultural functionality landed well with the audience, and more than twice as many people downloaded the apps than expected, indicating strong customer engagement. Once in the app, engagement is strong, and churn is low.

The key insight of this project - that even more traditional audiences will pay for digital subscriptions if the value proposition is right, is now being applied across ACM’s network of 83 paid subscription mastheads.