Le Figaro logo
Le Figaro leverages Firebase to increase paid subscription across mobile and web apps
Screenshot of Le Figaro

Introduction

Le Figaro, established in 1826, is France's oldest and largest daily morning newspaper. The company's mission is to provide timely, digestible and engaging news to their readers. As one of the first in the industry to offer digital content, Le Figaro engages their subscribers across 11 Android, iOS and web apps that cover news, sports, lifestyle and games. Le Figaro has about 22M monthly active users on their mobile and web apps and 120K paid digital subscribers.


Challenge

In a saturated news app market, Le Figaro was looking to increase paying customers and to retain existing paid subscribers. To do this, Le Figaro's development team needed to engage readers with personalized content at the right price point, but how could they pull it off with limited time and resources?

Screenshot of Le Figaro

Solution

Le Figaro used a number of Firebase products to retain existing users and increase paid subscriptions. They sent targeted notifications through Firebase Cloud Messaging reminding customers to follow topics and journalists they found interesting. This helped reduce churn by keeping subscribers engaged in content they valued. They also tested different subscription amounts using Firebase A/B testing, which helped Le Figaro identify the price points that led to the highest number of conversions among both Android and iOS users.

Le Figaro found their biggest increase in paid subscriptions came from embedding real time interactive infographics into their mobile and web app articles. When a user added information into the infographic, it triggered a Cloud Function that accessed data stored in Cloud Firestore and returned a personalized infographic to the user in real time. For example, in the article "Are you rich?" readers could input their income into the infographic and compare it against different income groups in Paris instantaneously. The infographics was behind a paywall and users had to subscribe to gain access. According to Le Figaro, this infographic saw 3X the rate of paid subscription sign-ups compared to their other infographics. The team built this interactive infographic system in 3 days instead of their average time of 2-3 weeks using a traditional backend service. Using Cloud Functions and Cloud Firestore, they estimate they were able to reduce development time by 86%.


Results

86% Decrease in development time

3X Increased paid subscriptions sign-ups on interactive content

Le Figaro logo

"Using Firebase has completely transformed Le Figaro's digital business by making it easy to rapidly innovate and personalize content for our readers. With Firebase we have seen continuous increases in retention, downloads and screen time in our apps!"

- Valentin Paquot, Mobile CTO, Le Figaro