• by Melynda Fuller , September 3, 2019

As the Washington Post continues to deepen its offering of personalized products to subscribers, it has promoted Kat Downs Mulder to the position of vice president of product, Axios reports.

Downs Mulder has been with the company for 11 years, and she’s run the product division for over half that time. 

The Post also plans to roll out a series of personalized newsletter products through the fall and will also test dynamic paywalls and personalization within apps. 

Downs Mulder told Axios that subscribers who use the publisher’s apps consume three times more content than website subscribers. In fact, features like the Washington Post app’s Discover tab and rich notifications have driven growth across app page views 10% year over year.

The series of newsletters will contain personalized recommendations and a reading list of stories saved by subscribers, with delivery frequencies to be tested later.

The publisher will eventually grow its newsletter products to reach across its site and apps, according to Axios. 

The Washington Post’s product team will also test dynamic paywalls that ask readers to register user profiles upon hitting a paywall. That data will be used to optimize paywall efforts by supplying information like a record of what content triggered a hit paywall and where the user came from and what device they used, says Axios.

Fred Ryan, CEO and publisher, told Axios, “We view the Washington Post as a subscription product, and any non-subscriber access is viewed as sampling in hopes that the reader becomes a subscriber.”