In a highly competitive digital news landscape, The Indian Express (IE), which offers premium digital subscriptions for in-depth news coverage, analysis, and exclusive features, faced a critical objective: deepen engagement and boost content discovery among its paying subscribers and reinforce subscriber retention. The core challenge was to continuously leverage innovative solutions that would enhance the value proposition for their loyal readership while ensuring they remained committed to uninterrupted, high-quality journalism and additional digital benefits.

The Subscription Linking API, a core feature of Reader Revenue Manager Enterprise (RRME), allows paying readers to link their publisher subscriptions directly to their own Google accounts. These users then see their paid subscription content highlighted on Google Search and Discover.

For The Indian Express, leveraging this feature meant their loyal readers could seamlessly connect their existing IE subscriptions to their Google Accounts. This integration provided a significant advantage: it not only enhanced the visibility of IE's premium content on Google Search and Discover for these linked subscribers, this strategic product adoption also strengthened IE's reader relationships by delivering a more integrated and valuable content discovery experience for their most engaged audience.

Over a crucial six-month period, The Indian Express carefully measured the impact of Subscription Linking on subscriber activities and outcomes. They analyzed three distinct cohorts of subscribers:

Cohort 1: Subscribers who had linked their Indian Express accounts with their Google Accounts.

Cohort 2: Subscribers who had not yet linked their accounts.

Cohort 3: Brand Lovers (visiting site more than 15 times a month)

The analysis measured page views per user, specifically comparing overall engagement before and after by users who had linked their publisher and Google accounts.

Those who linked their publisher and Google accounts had deeper engagement and loyalty. Amongst IE subscribers, there was a 34% increase in page views per user after linking their accounts over a 3 month period. In contrast, amongst unlinked subscribers, there was only a 9% increase in page views per user over the same period. Total page views per user for all brand lovers remained stable. This comparative analysis across cohorts was essential to control for the influence of news cycles and diverse user loyalty profiles.