Welcome to the FIMS Lab newsletter

In this edition:

• FIMS Lab highlight: Are micropayments back?

• One Marketing Thing: Social proof to change behavior

• 🤖 One AI Thing: You’re still not too late

Total read time: ☕️ 2 minutes

FIMS Lab highlights:

If you haven’t reserved your hotel room for your visit to the land of breakfast tacos (Austin), please do so by Friday! 🌮

You may have missed this everything-old-is-new-again moment during our digital subscriptions sprint. Representing everything deja new, Matt Fulton from the Maine Trust presented their recent test with a 48-hour digital access pass. The cost is $4.99 and allows visitors the opportunity to access premium, older content.

This idea has been around since at least 2015 but what’s new is the ability to target, segment and understand the size of the market opportunity to price accordingly.

And, according to Matt, it is showing early promise in subscription conversion! 🎯💰🚀

Here’s a recording of the session. Passcode: WvKs590*

One marketing thing: Dynamic social proof

Although this piece focuses on changing behavior to save the planet, these lessons also apply to the mission-driven efforts of saving local journalism.

In the article linked below the author dives into these suggestions:

• Make the desired behavior super appealing

• Make the changed behavior as visible as possible (Snoopy tote bags anyone?)

• Make people believe they are part of a new movement

Imagine telling your readers that 30 percent of local residents are now subscribing to at least one of your newsletters in an effort to be more informed.

Example: “That means that, in the past year, 3 in 10 residents have changed their behavior and now read the Required Reading newsletter more often than they otherwise would.”

One AI thing: It’s still NOT too late

Haven’t rolled out generative AI in your company yet? You may think you’re behind but surprise!, a new survey shows while everyone is talking about AI only 4.4 percent of companies are actively using it to produce goods or services.

• Having only just passed the one-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s introduction, there remain few enterprise tools on the market.

• Executives are still working to understand all of the associated costs of AI adoption.

• Acquiring AI talent can be an uphill climb; there are only so many pros in the emerging field, raising salaries and competition.

Source: The Hustle 

Upcoming:   

• No regular coaching calls next week, December 18-22 🎁 

• Our next FIMS Group call: will be January 9, at 4pm ET. Topic TBD (but likely a look at plans for 2024)

• Register now for the next Big Branded Call: Clickable Content with David Arkin, Wednesday, Dec. 13

• Google’s SGE and other ranking changes affecting SEO: Webinar with Search Engine Journal, Wednesday, Dec. 13 at 2pm ET

Help shape phase two of the FIMS Lab 💕