“What began as a PoC (proof of concept) initiative has now grown into a reliable driver of ongoing conversions. The efficiency of our measures has improved dramatically, and in our most recent campaign we recorded the highest number of conversions to date, giving us a strong sense of confidence in the results.”

So says Mr. Kim of The Asahi Shimbun Company’s Asa-Digi Business Center. The Asahi Shimbun Company, which boasts a history of more than 140 years, chose “BOTCHAN Engagement,” a LINE-based solution, as its new customer acquisition initiative for the digital edition of The Asahi Shimbun.

While experimenting with numerous web marketing initiatives, the company faced several challenges: the difficulty of developing new measures, strategies for users who leave the site, and approaches to younger audiences. Faced with these deep-rooted issues, how did the company manage to find a breakthrough using LINE as a new channel, ultimately increasing the number of conversions (CVs) by up to 5.5 times and boosting the post-friend-add conversion rate on LINE (hereafter, post-add CVR) by a factor of 3.8?

In this article, drawing on the words of Mr. Kim, who led the initiative, we explore the journey from the background to the introduction, through the trial-and-error process of overcoming industry-specific challenges, to ultimately achieving significant results through our partnership-style support.

Company Introduction: From “Paper” to “Digital” – The Ongoing Evolutionary Challenge of The Asahi Shimbun

Asahi Shimbun Company develops a wide range of information services, including digital media and event businesses, with its newspaper operations at the core. Among these, the “Asa-Digi Business Center” is a specialized organization responsible for managing the business operations of Asahi Shimbun Digital. It brings together diverse professionals, from marketing specialists to engineers, and handles everything from service planning and development through to promotion in an integrated manner.

In recent years, we have undertaken major app overhauls and rebranding campaigns, and we continue to pursue new initiatives every day so that we can move beyond the traditional image of a “print newspaper” and deliver the unique value of digital media to an even wider readership.

The Asahi Shimbun (Digital Edition) Service Site: https://www.asahi.com/ Comprehensive Guide to The Asahi Shimbun: https://digital.asahi.com/info/ The Asahi Shimbun Company Corporate Site: https://www.asahi.com/corporate/

Team introduction: Connecting awareness to retention through data and a customer-centric perspective

Asahi Shimbun Company, Morning Digital Business Center, Strategy Department, Promotion Team – Ms. Eunji Kim
Joined The Asahi Shimbun Company in 2023 and was assigned to the Morning Digital Business Center.
Since then, she has been primarily responsible for planning and operating initiatives to acquire paid subscribers for the digital edition and for retention measures that encourage continued use. In recent years, she has been working to enhance the customer experience end-to-end—from awareness to acquisition and retention—through branding campaigns and promotions for the app renewal, among other initiatives.

Mr. Kin:
“I believe it is important to design everything from awareness to acquisition and then retention as one coherent story. In particular, among the many possible initiatives, we have constantly felt challenged by the acquisition phase: how to approach new customers and communicate the value of the Asahi Shimbun (digital edition).”

Mr. Kim Eun-ji

Challenges and background before implementation: approaches to younger audiences and the next steps for re-engaging churned users

Asahi Shimbun (Digital Edition) has implemented a variety of web marketing initiatives in an effort to acquire paid subscribers. However, they say that over the course of these long-running efforts, new challenges have come to light.

Mr. Kim:
“We felt we had tried all the standard web marketing measures, and we were hitting a wall in trying to improve existing initiatives to drive the numbers further. To continue growing the business, it had become essential to roll out initiatives from a new angle.”

One of the biggest challenges we faced was how to reach younger audiences in their 20s and 30s. Among this demographic, the belief that “free online news is enough” remains deeply rooted, and for many years our key issue has been how to communicate the value of paid media and convert that into subscriptions.

Mr. Kim:
“There is also a certain number of customers who visit our service site via advertisements and the like, but leave without completing an application. For these customers, we have not had any effective approach other than retargeting ads, and we strongly felt this was a serious issue causing lost opportunities.”

On the business side, they had not yet begun utilizing LINE; although they recognized that they needed to do so, they say they had been unable to take any concrete first step.

How we discovered BOTCHAN and why we chose to implement it: performance-based fees and hands-on support lowered the hurdle for PoC

While we were exploring various initiatives, a business partner introduced us to“BOTCHAN Engagement”.

Mr. Kim:
“Just as we were considering initiatives for new customer acquisition and measures for churned users, the ‘nurturing’ approach of using LINE to increase customers’ willingness to subscribe struck me as very compelling. What really clinched our decision to implement it was the performance-based pricing model. With new initiatives, there are many aspects where you cannot know the impact until you actually try them, so being able to test it while keeping the initial investment risk low was extremely helpful in building consensus within the company.”

In addition, they say that when they considered another tool in the past, they were required to handle scenario design and creative production in-house, and due to resource constraints, they ultimately decided not to implement it.

Mr. Kim:
“With only our own resources, it would be difficult to launch initiatives from scratch and firmly establish them. We heard that BOTCHAN takes our challenges seriously and can work with us consistently from designing measures through to daily operations, and we felt that this would make implementation much smoother. The reassurance of being able to move forward together with an external team that has specialized expertise was a major factor in our decision to adopt the service.”

Decision criteria for implementation and operation: confronting industry characteristics and pursuing optimal solutions through PDCA

They decided to introduce it first as a proof of concept (PoC) on a trial basis. However, challenges unique to subscription-based news services soon stood in the way of the initial operation.

A winning pattern created by three-legged-race-style PDCA

Although the number of conversions initially struggled to grow, we worked in close coordination with wevnal’s customer success team and persistently continued to run the PDCA cycle.
In particular, to communicate the “value of paid media” to younger audiences, we jointly developed diagnostic content that focused not on simple feature promotion, but on the future persona that can be gained by reading the Asahi Shimbun digital edition (such as information-gathering skills, ability to respond to current affairs, and information literacy). We then rolled out a multifaceted approach using PUSH distribution (*1), STEP distribution (*2), and rich menus (*3).

[Notes]
*1 Push distribution: A mechanism by which companies and media can send notifications to users’ smartphones at any time they choose, delivering information directly. In the case of LINE Official Accounts, this refers to the function that sends messages all at once to all users who have registered the account as a “friend.”

※2 STEP distribution: A function that automatically sends out multiple pre-prepared messages in stages according to a defined schedule, triggered by actions such as adding a LINE friend. It is used for the purpose of building and nurturing (nurturing) relationships with customers.

※3 Rich menu: A menu feature that is fixed in a tiled format at the bottom of the chat screen of a LINE Official Account. It allows companies to permanently set entry points to multiple types of information they define, such as directing users to websites or displaying coupons.

Mr. Kim:
“At first, we were so focused on driving conversions that our initiatives were not producing results. After discussing this with the person in charge, we shifted our approach to gradually building touchpoints with users, starting with goals like ‘first, get them to click’ and ‘first, get them to add us as a friend.’ Even a small change, such as switching the banner color from orange to red, improved the friend-add rate. By steadily implementing these kinds of refinements, the number of new friends increased significantly and ultimately led to more conversions.”

Through this process of trial and error, we identified Asahi Shimbun’s unique “winning pattern,” such as highlighting themes that attract heightened interest during election periods. The number of conversions steadily increased, and during the campaign period it grew to the point of delivering results on an entirely different scale.

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Results and value after implementation: the number of conversions increased by up to 5.5 times, dramatically boosting campaign performance.

After persistent, incremental improvements, “BOTCHAN Engagement” has become one of the indispensable initiatives for Asahi Shimbun’s digital edition.

Conversion efficiency improved dramatically, and total results increased by up to 5.5 times.

The most significant achievement is the dramatic improvement in conversion efficiency. By enhancing the precision of our nurturing efforts,the CVR after adding a friend on LINE has improved by approximately 3.8 times,demonstrating that we are guiding users connected via LINE to conversion with a much higher probability.

These improvements in the efficiency of our initiatives have significantly boosted final results, and in the most recent campaign, combined with substantial discounts,the number of conversions via “BOTCHAN Engagement” increased to approximately 5.5 times that of the campaign with the fewest conversions,marking the highest number of conversions ever achieved for this initiative.

These figures clearly show how an initiative that began as a proof of concept has, through trial and error, grown to significantly contribute to business results.

Improved “customer quality” after acquisition as well, contributing to the development of high-value customers

The results delivered by “BOTCHAN Engagement” are not limited to acquisition-stage metrics such as the number of conversions or conversion rate. Even in terms of the “conversion rate” of users who move from discounted subscription periods, such as campaigns, to the regular price, users acquired via “BOTCHAN Engagement” demonstrate higher quality.

According to the data, the conversion rate of users coming through “BOTCHAN Engagement” consistently exceeds the overall average,and in some periods it tends to be about 10 percentage points higherthan the average.

This strongly suggests that even customers who were on the verge of leaving the site can, through nurturing via LINE, become more engaged, and as a result,this leads to the development of highly loyal, high-value customers,in a very compelling way.

Prevent lost opportunities and reach younger audiences

Mr. Kim:
“What BOTCHAN is responsible for is approaching customers who were about to leave the site—customers we might otherwise have lost. Because its area of responsibility does not overlap with other initiatives, it directly contributes to reducing pure opportunity loss, which we find extremely reassuring. We are also seeing that, compared with measures such as email newsletters, customers in relatively younger age groups respond better when they come through BOTCHAN Engagement. The fact that we are now able to reach segments we had not fully approached before is also a major source of value.”

Future outlook and key initiatives: Pursuing maximum CV and further strengthening collaboration

As BOTCHAN continues to deliver steadily improving results, Mr. Kim has even higher expectations for its future.

Mr. Kim:
“First of all, we would like to continue aiming to maximize the number of conversions. To that end, we would appreciate your proactive proposals of other companies’ success stories and new creatives that appear likely to be effective, so that we can incorporate them into our own initiatives. Looking ahead, we would also like to expand the use of these efforts to include retention measures for paid members, and take on initiatives that help us build longer-term relationships with our customers.”

A message to companies facing similar challenges

Finally, Mr. Kim shared a message for corporate representatives facing similar challenges.

Mr. Kim:
“Unlike email or advertising, LINE is used by most people on a daily basis and has become an indispensable tool for communication with our customers. However, starting LINE initiatives from scratch in-house without prior expertise, achieving results, and then embedding them in our operations is, in my view, extremely difficult from a resource standpoint. wevnal is a highly reliable partner that, drawing on extensive know-how, works with us from identifying issues through to executing initiatives and driving improvements. In particular, for companies facing challenges such as ‘We want to prevent users from leaving our site, but don’t know where to start,’ or ‘We lack the resources to embark on new initiatives,’ I believe this is an optimal solution. I recommend first trying it as a PoC, keeping risk under control, and experiencing the impact for yourself.”

A historic media company took on the challenge of building new customer communication for the digital age. BOTCHAN Engagement will continue to be a powerful partner in supporting that effort.

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