The iNews team developed an experiment with FT Strategies to test new ways of gaining more registrations, which enabled them to gather audience data and refine their content strategy to improve audience engagement.

During the DRL program, the iNews team launched a promotion push that led to over 180 new registrations in a two-week period. This move was based on the hypothesis that stronger marketing of the ease of registration, via the website’s integrated Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality, would draw more users to use the system. The 180 additional sign-ups validated the hypothesis and indicated a potential for iNews to further experiment with how they communicate the value of registrations to users, including through varying the frequency and language used in communications.

In the nine months since the program, the functionality has enabled close to 4000 additional sign-ups. Because of this, the iNews team plans to explore other ways to gather registrations for the MNC portfolio and intend to develop bespoke tactics to encourage registrations to its various brands and portals. An example of one such tactic includes the creation of a new online community, “iNews Flash”, where student readers can sign up to receive training from iNews’ editorial team about best practices with photography. Registered readers are also now sent regular newsletters with content recommendations from both iNews.id and the wider MNC Media Group portfolio, including SINDOnews and Okezone.