With news brands in the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Germany, Mediahuis was building what it calls the Essential Subscription bundle — with news, practical service content, and standalone apps in a single offering.

In 2023, it acquired the hiking and biking app RouteYou, which became the first enabling service added to the Essential Subscription strategy. 

About 60% of Mediahuis subscribers are now digital, but operational margins on those subscriptions remain lower than on print. The Essential Subscription is the mechanism for closing that gap, by making the digital offering more compelling and driving subscribers towards the fuller, higher-priced tier.

A new direction

With RouteYou, Mediahuis has found the perfect partner: high-quality routes created by professionals, local organisations, and a community. Its powerful route planner lets users create personalised routes, all combined with a loyal and active community.

Our primary objective was to reduce subscriber churn by adding an extra enabling service to our news subscription. But we also had a secondary objective: Make RouteYou a commercially profitable company beyond Mediahuis subscribers.

We wanted to grow the number of paying users, create new B2B opportunities, and become an international brand beyond Belgium and the Netherlands.

Mediahuis’s regional titles had long published hiking and biking content, especially in weekend editions, but the next step was always missing: readers could learn about a trail, but had nowhere to go from there. Now, an integration in the article links directly to the route in the RouteYou app.

A close collaboration with editorial rooms is key to its success; we provide a direct connection between the content and the ability to experience it via RouteYou.

Immediate engagement

As the first enabling service, RouteYou proved to be an effective engagement and retention product. The response to the offer of a free RouteYou PLUS subscription (worth €42.99) was overwhelming: 175,000 subscribers activated their advantage in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and Ireland.

This resulted in an overall activation rate of 20% across all Mediahuis news brands, peaking at almost 30% in Belgium, driven by strong editorial collaboration. Since the launch of the new app in April 2024, there have been 900,000 unique app downloads. Exclusive Webinars that guided users through the RouteYou app saw a 12% attendance rate.

This is no one-hit wonder: Subscriber usage remains stable, peaking during the active season. Subscribers log in 2.4-3.0 times per month on average, proving consistent usage and engagement. And 15% of subscribers log in at least once a week, with a growing group logging in multiple times per week. Subscribers who have activated and tried the RouteYou app are convinced: 82% consider the addition of RouteYou (very) valuable.

Furthermore, users with a news brand subscription who activated RouteYou stay longer than those who did not. Based on RouteYou usage in Belgium between June 1 and October 1, we can confirm a 26.5% lower churn rate. The campaign successfully aligned digital journalism with an active lifestyle, positioning Mediahuis uniquely within the competitive subscription market.

Finally, Mediahuis acts as a growth driver for RouteYou. Increased visibility, a change in the PLUS strategy, and smarter paywall usage helped RouteYou achieve 98% subscriber growth in 2025.

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