In Fall 2025, Les Coops de l'information, a collective of six Canadian outlets including Le Soleil and Le Droit, launched its "Pay What You Can" subscription drive. Timed with the municipal elections, the initiative sought to make local news more accessible while highlighting the value of cooperative journalism.
The campaign significantly outperformed expectations:
- Subscriber growth: Total subscribers increased by 4.2%.
- Revenue resilience: While the minimum entry was just $1/month, the initial average payment was $3.12.
- Price sensitivity: After raising the suggested price, the average monthly contribution climbed to $3.50
And all this with marketing autonomy in building marketed paywalls and landing pages thanks to Poool!
The "Pay what you can" strategy
To drive growth during the 2025 municipal elections, the collective replaced traditional fixed-rate discounts with a flexible pricing model for the first three months of new subscriptions. This gamble aimed to capitalize on peak interest in local politics by giving users the autonomy to set their own price, reinforcing the value of independent journalism.
Alongside high quality journalism and strategic feature gating (including the ability to save content for later or listen to articles, establishing a clear value exchange), the team also needed targeted paywalls and landing pages that fore-fronted this unique offer.
Part of the value exchange: archived content & chroniques
Whilst most content has adapted access rights based on the user’s profile and context, chroniques (articles written by columnists) and archives (articles published more than 30 days ago) have been hard paywalled for all non-subscribers.
Marketing across site
As with any campaign, design and messaging needs to be consistent across the website and platforms, including the paywall.
Dedicated paywalls: Les Coops d’Information built dedicated “Pay what you can” paywalls in Poool, including a live countdown to create urgency.
The countdown module is part of Poool's no-code design builder which includes drag-and-drop modules to add into the paywall.
A targeted landing page: This same messaging and pricing model should continue through the user journey, so the team built dedicated subscription landing pages with Poool, highlighting the benefits of this unique offer.
Behind the scenes, in the Poool Dashboard, this is built in the same way as the paywall, with drag-and-drop modules.
Results beyond expectations
"The final results were pretty impressive. By the end of the five weeks of promotion, our total subscriber base had increased by 4.2%, more than our targets and very close to our most optimistic forecast.
What was the most interesting though was the fact that, despite the minimum amount requested being 1$ per month for the first three months of subscription, the average amount paid was 3.12$ per month. This average increased to 3.39$ when we suggested 5$ in the price field and to 3.50$ when suggesting 6$. Each time we changed the suggested amount, we saw an increase in the number of users choosing to go with the suggested amount."
-Marc Gendron, Principal Director, Audiences and Platforms
Interested in benefiting from the same level of marketing autonomy for your subscription campaigns? Let's chat! Book a call with our team here.