Dan Long Built a Subscription Machine at the AJC by Designing for the Human First

There’s a question Dan Long asks at every stage of the subscription funnel. Before a brief is written, while a landing page is in production, and again once the design is done. It isn’t about click-through rates or cost per acquisition. It’s simpler than that, and more human: What’s in it for me?

“Anytime we’re evaluating a product or service, we think about it subconsciously as a consumer,” Long says. “As a marketer, we need to think about the human aspect of marketing.”

Dan recently wrapped up six years at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one of the American South's most storied news organizations, where he served as Senior Manager of Conversions and Optimizations. In that time, AJC grew its digital subscriber base from 24,000 to over 101,000, a transformation driven by a mix of smart product strategy, rigorous testing, and a philosophy that puts the reader at the center of every decision.

We sat down with Dan for a conversation about how he thinks about the subscription funnel, what makes digital media conversion uniquely hard, and why the best optimization work always starts with the human on the other side of the screen.

A career at the intersection of journalism, technology, and revenue

Dan didn't start in conversion optimization. He started in marketing research, helping news organizations, regional papers, the Washington Post, and NPR understand what their readers actually wanted to read and how well they were delivering on it. That grounding in the reader experience never left him.

After moving to the publisher side, first at a regional paper in Dallas-Fort Worth, then at the larger competitor across town, he kept chasing the same question: how do you get people to pay for journalism? Not just tolerate a paywall, but actually recognize the value and subscribe.

"At one point, we thought the biggest challenge was time," he says. "People would say, 'I don't have time to read.' Then it became 'there are different news sources.' Now it's all of that plus: I can get my news from social media. I can use AI. There are a number of different reasons why people could say no."

That evolving challenge shaped how Dan thinks about conversion. It's not just a funnel problem; it's a relevance problem. And the solution isn't as simple as a better CTA button. It's understanding why someone might genuinely care about the product or content, in this moment, and meeting them there.

When he arrived at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2019, the organization had 24,000 paid digital subscribers. The only digital value proposition offered was an ePaper, essentially a digital replica of the print product. The paywall was still in its early days, and there was significant runway ahead.

Designing for the human, not the metric

The "What's in it for me?" question isn't just a gut check; Dan applies it as a lens that has helped shape his success. It reflects how he thinks about the entire reader relationship, from the first piece of content someone clicks on, to the paywall interaction that asks them to commit, to the checkout experience that either seals the deal or loses them.

In practice, designing for the human audience starts with the brief. Before any creative work happens, Dan works with his team to understand who the target audience is, what they already know about the brand, what they perceive about its value, and what would need to be true for them to hand over their credit card.

"What would be valuable to this person?" is the question that drives everything, and it doesn't stop being relevant once the work ships.

"As we're auditing the final conversion product, whether it’s a paywall or a subscription landing page, we think about it again with that perspective of: if I were an outsider looking at this page, if I were interacting with this site, does that answer the questions appropriately? What's in it for me, for all the consumers that we have?"

That last phrase matters. "All the consumers that we have." Dan is deliberate about not treating readers as a monolith.

Different people arrive at a subscription decision from completely different places. A loyal visitor who's been hitting the article limit for months needs a different conversation than someone who landed on an AJC story through a Google search and has never heard of the newspaper or news site. Segmenting those experiences and designing each one to answer that specific person's version of the WIIFM question is where the real gains live.

There's also a persistent tension Dan navigates that most conversion teams face but rarely talk about openly: the pull between designing for the human and designing for the machine. SEO scoring tools, algorithmic recommendations, and platform optimization all have their own logic, and it doesn't always line up with what actually feels right to a reader.

"There's always tension between designing for the human and designing for the machine that's giving you a score. By default, we think about the human aspect. Does this page have personality? Does it signal to the consumer: 'Hey, we get you. We understand you'? Does it support the brand in a way that really resonates?"

When the answer isn't obvious, his team treats it as a signal to test. Which is, in a way, the most human-centered move of all; instead of overriding the uncertainty with an opinion, you ask the reader.

Why "paywall" is the wrong word for most of what you're building

With a clear philosophy about who you're designing for, the next question becomes: what are you asking them to do? Here's where Dan says most teams are working with the wrong mental model from the start when discussing paywalls

People may not expect this, but “paywalls” don't always mean you have to pay for a recurring subscription.

"We use the term fairly generically," he explains. "People tend to throw it around, and you always assume it's a hard stop that causes you to subscribe to a recurring subscription. That's often the case. But a paywall could be a number of things."

In his framework, there are really three distinct conversion mechanisms, and treating paywalls universally like a single concept is one of the most common mistakes in digital media:

• Registration walls (regwalls) collect a reader's email address in exchange for access to a piece of content. It's a simple, low-friction value exchange. The reader gets the article. You get a first-party data point and the beginning of a relationship.
• Digital passes let a reader pay once for short-term access. For example, without the commitment of a recurring subscription, a digital pass may grant access for a day or two or during the course of a local event attracting out-of-town visitors seeking information. Dan sees these as underutilized tools, particularly useful for attracting readers who want access without a long-term relationship.
• Subscription paywalls are what most people picture when they hear the word. These convert high-intent readers into subscribers who generate recurring revenue and therefore unlock more consumer benefits. They require the most convincing and the most attention to friction.

"Using all three together helps you serve more types of readers, build relationships, and capture more value," Dan says. The goal isn't to push everyone to a subscription immediately. It's to match the mechanism to where the reader is in their journey and to answer that WIIFM question in a way that actually makes sense for that moment.

The three conversion surfaces require three different strategies

The paywall/regwall/digital pass distinction is one layer of complexity. There's another layer that Dan thinks about just as carefully: not just what kind of access point you're presenting, but where the reader is coming from when they are engaging with your subscription offer.

In his experience, there are three meaningfully different conversion surfaces, each with its own psychology and requirements:

• Paywall interactions happen in the middle of a reading experience. The reader is already engaged with specific content, which is a signal of relevance. But patience is low. They want access now. "Value must be obvious and friction minimal," as Dan puts it.
• Organic landing pages attract readers who clicked through from on-site CTAs (through a banner, a button in the navigation, or a prompt at the end of a free article). These visitors are in evaluation mode. They're asking that fundamental question: "What's in it for me?" And they need room to answer it. The page has to be more informative, more thorough, more value-forward than a paywall presentation.
• Paid campaign landing pages serve a visitor who saw a social post or ad, felt some connection, and clicked. That emotional connection is the asset, and the page needs to protect it. "We want to keep that emotional tie," Dan says. "We want to make it simple. We do want to make it informative, but that emotional connection is the thread you can't break."

At the AJC, this distinction had real tactical implications. Testing showed that different promotional offers resonated differently depending on where the reader encountered them. A 99¢-for-three-months introductory rate performed well on-site and on the paywall, while a $1-a-week rate performed better for paid social campaigns. Different audiences, different presentations, different context - each optimized for conversion efficiency.

Why cross-functional alignment is the real unlock

Successful subscriber growth initiatives at media companies require cross-functional alignment on shared goals. Conversion optimization at a media company isn't a product team problem or a marketing problem. It's an everything problem.

"Cross-functional work is absolutely important in our type of business," Dan says. "We have so many different small teams. We have to communicate well and work together to be effective."

While the News side and the business side operate independently by design, at the AJC, Dan would occasionally sit in on the newsroom's daily budget meetings, which were internal editorial planning sessions where reporters pitched stories and editors set priorities. He wasn't there to influence coverage. His presence meant he could spot content with subscription conversion potential early, so his team could prepare.

That might mean flagging a story about Georgia's swing-state status as something that could attract out-of-market readers, worth treating as a top-of-funnel engagement play rather than a conversion trigger. Or recognizing that a high-profile local investigation was exactly the kind of unique, irreplaceable content that could push a longtime reader over the edge into subscribing.

"Is it worth an organic social push, or is it something we can invest in with paid social to really amplify the message?" he explains. "And then we establish some business rules: if we're promoting it socially, should we allow people to access this without any barriers, or is this content so valuable that it's worth promoting and then attempting to get a registration or subscription out of it?"

Getting to that kind of coordination requires shared goals and shared metrics across teams. Without them, teams optimize for their own objectives, and the path-to-conversion or engagement journeys may end up being ineffective.

The case for bringing in an outside perspective

Even experienced teams get comfortable with their defaults. You know your product well, your mental models are well-worn, and sometimes that familiarity is the problem.

That's what drew Dan to bringing in The Good for a Digital Experience Optimization (DXO) Audit™ of AJC's subscription landing pages. The Good's CEO, Jon MacDonald, has a phrase that describes well the situation Dan was in: "You can't read the label from inside the jar."

"We all need an additional outside perspective from time to time," Dan says. "The value is that The Good works with a number of industries, not just media. So, having all of that experience and all of those additional perspectives, they may think of an enhancement we haven't thought of yet or use that expertise to reinforce the value of an approach we’re evaluating. It's like sharing some lessons and keeping us grounded, so that we are doing what we should be doing and we’re continuously improving upon things that we think we already know well."

For a DXO collaboration to work, Dan emphasizes the importance of building trust early, investing real time in scoping, and then getting out of the way. "Really sitting down and investing a lot of time and energy into setting the parameters, understanding the capabilities, understanding what's needed, and building that trust between the two so that both feel comfortable allowing the other to do what they do best."

The DXO Audit™ identified a pattern that showed up across user testing and analytics: the subscription landing page was creating cognitive overload rather than confidence. Too many competing offers. Pricing structures that required mental math. A mobile experience that buried the primary CTA below the fold.

When the work was done, he was pleased: "The team was super easy to work with — professional, organized, methodical, yet also very friendly and engaging. It was a worthwhile project with an enjoyable team." He was eager to implement recommendations and find out if they resonated with consumers and improved their subscription landing page conversion rates in a live environment.

AJC implemented the recommendations thoughtfully, adapting guidance to their technical constraints and layering in complementary changes, including a new annual subscription tier and channel-specific offer routing for paid campaigns. Collectively, Dan believed that these optimizations would better address “what’s in it for me” with a more intuitive design, a new offer with special savings for highly engaged readers, and a mobile-friendly design. In the end, the results demonstrated value with the DXO Audit™.

Results: 56% overall lift, 157% mobile improvement

What 25 years at the intersection of journalism, data, and people actually teaches you

Ask Dan what makes conversion leadership in media different from conversion leadership anywhere else, and he doesn't hesitate.

"If I were to think of a company like Nike or Adidas, they're selling shoes — and they have so many different models to sell to different audiences. People think of the news as one thing. But the content changes every day. It's a new product every single day. And that product should have something to appeal to everyone. How do you communicate that to someone visiting the site?"

It's a genuinely hard problem. Unlike a shoe brand that can segment by style, price point, or sport, a news organization is selling one thing, access to journalism, to readers who want wildly different things from it. Sports fans. Business readers. Political junkies. Parents who want to know what's happening in their school district. The product and the access to journalism are the same. The job of the conversion experience is to make each of those people feel like it was made for them. Sports readers reacted favorably to “season pass” offers and the tone used with Varsity content; likewise, Atlanta foodies felt a connection with subscription presentations related to the AJC’s “Atlanta’s 50 Best Restaurants” content.

Compound that with the cultural challenge Dan has encountered in marketing research going back decades: the widespread belief that news and access to journalism should be free. It's a friction point baked into the category itself, and no amount of landing page optimization can eliminate it. What good conversion work does is reduce every other source of friction enough that the value becomes undeniable even for the skeptic.

The data rigor is one-half of how Dan gets there. The other half is something harder to systematize: staying genuinely curious about the humans on the other side.

"Maintain that balance between the human side and the rigor of analytics. Data is super important; we need it to understand things, to make decisions. But it's equally important to always understand the human side. Be observant. Watch people. Listen to people. See how they act, see how they react. Always stay curious."

That curiosity shows up in how he presents findings to leadership, too. When the data says something inconvenient, for example, a test fails, a beloved feature is hurting conversion, a long-held assumption is wrong, Dan's default isn't a slide deck of numbers. It's a story.

"Use the approach to really communicate what we learned, how we learned it, and what does it actually means. Do it in a way that really connects with a person. Make it personal. Make it feel accessible and like it's bringing value, new insights, or additional point of view into how you might want to proceed in future initiatives."

That instinct to translate data into something a person can feel is the same instinct that underlies the whole WIIFM framework. Numbers aren’t the only thing that persuade people. Relevance does. Whether you're trying to convert a first-time reader into a subscriber, or convince a skeptical executive that an inconvenient test result is worth acting on, the approach is the same: find the version of this information that makes it matter to the specific human in front of you.

It's also, Dan would say, what makes the work worth doing.

"Marketing should be fun. We think of it as really data-intensive, and it is, but it should always be fun. Think about the person on the other side. Think about how we can make a difference and connect with somebody. That comes through in your work. That comes through in how you communicate with your audience, and it makes it more relevant for them."

Twenty-five years in, after watching the industry transform from print delivery to ePaper to live paywalls to dynamic segmentation, that's the throughline. Not the technology. Not the platform. It’s the person on the other side and the relentless curiosity about what they actually need.