• by Ray Schultz , October 27, 2022

Sports website Defector had a successful second year, bringing in $3.8 million, almost all from readers. 

But it drew complaints with a promotional email from Editor-in-chief Tom Ley: some felt it had  a menacing tone in its subject line (“I see what you’re up to”), according to NiemanLab. 

The email addresses the product’s paywall in a way that some might find creepy. It says: 

“All right, wise guy. Let’s be straight with each other. You’ve visited Defector a few times. You’ve read enough articles to hit our soft paywall and hand over your email address so that you could read more. And yet, you have not subscribed to the website. I know what you’re doing.

“This whole time you’ve been waiting for a deal, possible because you are one of those people who can’t buy anything without being able to say, ‘I got a really good deal on this’ to anyone who asks you about your purchase. Well, fair play to you. Here’s your deal: If you subscribe to Defector right now, you will pay just 99 cents for your first month of access. Now that’s as a deal, if I do say so myself. Think of how many blogs you could read in one month’s time—probably hundreds, maybe even thousands. All for 98 measly cents. Then, the next time you are chatting with some guy and they start asking about some article, you can cut them off and say, ‘Oh yeah, well I read 762 articles last month alone. I got a really good deal on them, by the way.’”

Some readers might have been put off by the idea that their behavior was being tracked to that degree. 

What this copy doesn’t say (at least as presented by NiemanLab) is what the cost goes up to after the first month. However, 60% converted after signing up for the 99-cent deal, although not necessarily in response to this email. 

The title reports that its most successful email “generated ~1.5x the normal open rate and ~2x the normal clickthrough rate of our subscription appeal emails,” according to NiemanLab.