Good Science: IOP Publishing talks about its subscription journey and being a meeting place for scientific community
When it comes to subscriptions, scientific publisher IOP Publishing – the publishing arm of the Institute of Physics in the UK – is just starting to test the waters. It made them a perfect candidate, then, for the FIPP/Atlas Subscription Growth Course, which features lessons from a team of experts with real-world experience in building profitable digital and print media brands.
We speak to Gemma Hougham, Media Marketing Manager for IOP Publishing, to get her impressions of the course and reveal the challenges and rewards of catering to the scientific community.
Why did you decide to take part in the FIPP/Atlas Subscription Growth course?
We run a website called Physics World, which is a prestigious platform showcasing the latest news and content from the physics sector. It is highly regarded within the community, but we feel it has potential to become a subscription model, to enhance the experience of our (target audience) registered users and potentially capitalise on traffic which visit our site through curiosity. Even though we are only just starting our subscriptions journey, we felt that this course would be perfect as a ‘crash course’ before we embark, to understand the challenge points, opportunities, and considerations we may encounter along the way.
What did you think of the course? What were the highlights for you?
The course was brilliant! Every stage from the beginning to the end of the subscription journey was covered in depth. The highlights for me, were the use of case studies and analysing different approaches, as it enabled us to visualise our own, future model. The course provoked us to ask ourselves questions such as; Where would Physics World sit within the subs market? How would we quantify value? How do we understand what our audience needs? Is this different to what we ‘think’ they want? How can we improve the experience for our registered users, to reduce potential churn. In addition, meeting the other members on the course was great. Over the five weeks, we worked together many times – which helped us compare industry challenges (such as product ownership/ demographics). It was super valuable and bought a ‘community’ feel to an online course, which is typically very difficult to do.
Are there any lessons learnt that you have integrated into your company or plan to in the future?
It has encouraged us to take a step back with our strategy, get back to basics and really ask ourselves what we wanted to achieve as an end goal. By doing this, we realised that perhaps we were biting off more than we could chew in the initial stages. Instead of creating this multi- tier model, serving ‘X,Y,Z’ segmented audiences, which we had envisioned, we decided to concentrate on our registered users with whom there is a data exchange, but we can still apply a subscriptions approach. By using the tools Abi and Steve provided, we were able to ask ourselves, what we considered the ‘value’ to our business. For Physics World, we have agreed that actually, the key ‘value’ is not a monetary exchange, but a lifetime value to the whole of our organisation around loyalty, retention, and lead generation. This will benefit beyond the immediate Physics World business unit and serve the entire business – sales, publishing, and the membership of the Institute of Physics.
If we concentrated on maximising the quality of our registered users through a variety of subscription tools such as newsletters etc, we can collect data, respond accordingly with our content and enhance the quality of our target demographics and experience as a whole.
At the same time, but as a secondary goal, we will introduce a paid subscription as an additional offer. Having the main focus on our registered users gives us the luxury and flexibility to experiment with various aspects of the paid subscriptions and we hope we’ll be able to bring in lots of the tactics and approaches we learned about on the course.
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Could you tell us a bit more about IOP Publishing and how your profits go to public and scientific good?
IOP Publishing is a society-owned scientific publisher, providing impact, recognition, and value for the scientific community. As the publishing arm of the Institute of Physics, 100% of our profit goes towards public and scientific good.
Catering to the scientific community must mean the bar is extremely high in terms on content. How do you ensure that IOP Publishing stays relevant across its platforms?
We pride ourselves on having a world-class scientific editorial department, who are at the forefront of research, networking continuously with the community and attending leading events. To stay relevant, we use a multitude of platforms to promote this content and have worked hard to establish, high quality, valuable demographics across our social media channels, newsletters, advertising, events and email campaigns.
Why is it so important that the world of physics is expanded?
Our physics community are niche and specialised. It is important that they feel valued, and we are delivering the content which keeps them up to date with the latest advancements and research. To enhance this experience, we want to understand our registered users, including content accessed, behaviour and requirements.
Could you tell us a bit more about Physics World Live and how it helps to connect the scientific community?
Physics World Live was created for two purposes. Firstly, we saw this as a new, relevant way to engage with our existing audience and work as a lead generation tool for the business, as well as providing a new initiative for our sales team as a commercial opportunity to sell sponsorship. We also saw this new Physics World Live series as an opportunity to leverage some of the brand power of Physics World for our prestigious journal, Reports on Progress in Physics. By forming this partnership, our potential audience was vast, and the brand collaboration strengthened its credentials, within the scientific community.
In terms of format, we really wanted to use this opportunity to provide something different for our audience. After researching the latest consumer trends, it was decided to run the event as a ‘panel discussion’, rather than a formal webinar. By doing this, we allowed various speakers to openly discuss each topic (Quantum, Particle Physics and Battery Technology) without an agenda, which naturally created a more fluid viewing experience. Opening a live Q&A allowed participation. As a series, Physics World Live 2024 has been hugely successful within the community, surpassing 600 registrations for each one. It has allowed us to produce fresh online content, follow- up Q&A’s and new leads for the business. Subsequently we are now in the early stages for planning the 2025 series.
How has writing for the scientific community changed over the last few years? What is the most rewarding part and what are the biggest challenges?
Despite the move to online first, the principles of science writing remain the same as ever: articles still need to tell a story, while at the same time being accurate, concise, entertaining, and timely. However, content is competing for readers’ attention more than ever before, so it’s important to ensure that headlines, images, captions and multimedia are as strong as possible. Adding relevant background and wider context to stories is essential too, as is ensuring content is brought to readers’ attention through use of social media, newsletters and marketing. The most rewarding part of science writing is digging out stories that haven’t been told before and coming up with new ways to cover old topics. Showcasing people from all sections of the scientific community is vital, too – finding rising stars and bright new talents not just people who’ve had lots of exposure already. The challenges are, as always, turning complex scientific ideas into simple language: there aren’t many people who combine those skills so finding and training high quality science journalists is vital.
