Every subscriber who leaves has to be replaced before a subscription business can grow, which makes retention the quieter half of reader revenue and often the more profitable one. The first renewal is the real test of whether acquisition brought in the right people.
Retention starts with habit. The publishers that keep subscribers longest engage them well beyond the welcome emails, and renew on the strength of the brand rather than another discount. A surprising share of churn isn't a decision at all. Expired cards and failed payments quietly lose revenue that can often be recovered.
Some brands are losing subscribers and hard-fought revenue that could be saved with some attention and effort.
Tracy Larner Our subs retention strategy: William Reed
When someone does want to leave, how it is handled matters. Understand why before offering anything, and make the exit easy, because subscribers treated well on the way out are far more likely to come back.
Below you'll find some of our best feature articles on subscriber retention and churn, from engagement and renewal pricing to payment failure and cancellation, alongside our latest news and industry commentary.
Does your CEO know what your subscriber retention rate is? The chances are, probably not. But, according to Julian Thorne, author of our Guide to Retention Strategies for Publishers, this number should never be far from his or her (or your) mind.
A subscriber’s first 30 days are important to build habit but so is every day after, says Emma Robinson, head of customer experience.
You cannot improve a process until you have documented it, and you cannot achieve an objective until you have a process and system to support it, says Rosa Sherwood, head of CRM, engagement and loyalty.
It’s a well-known fact that engaged subscribers stay for longer, says Susanne Kinnaird, head of digital reader revenue.
It’s important not to lose subscribers and hard-fought revenue through involuntary churn, says Tracy Larner, subscriptions director.
It’s important to understand the reason for cancellation and to ensure the retention offer directly addresses the subscriber’s stated concern, says Mike Halstead, managing director of HH&S.
What determines pricing power is not only the category of need, says Andy Burden, founder of Substribe, it’s the stakes.
Making it super-hard to cancel a subscription does no one any favours.
Revolting readers are not nice; especially when the cause of their disaffection is the very carefully thought through and expensively researched re-launch you’ve just undertaken. The Norwich Evening News’ Philip Preston takes up the story.
We all dream of cracking the US market. For the Guardian, the high numbers of US visitors to its Guardian Unlimited web site demonstrated a demand for a global news perspective and an awareness of the Guardian brand. The Guardian decided to capitalis
Over the past decade, most publishers have struggled to create a coherent web strategy to complement their print products. Online publisher K9 Media was faced with the opposite problem – how to create a successful print brand to complement its thrivi
Rosemary Smith, director of data protection consultancy Opt-4, uses recent research to challenge publishers about permissioning and assesses the impact of increasing opt-out on the magazine business.
All publishers have access to the data with which to create and track key performance indicators (KPIs). Some don’t bother; some pay lip-service to analysis but don’t invest in the data manipulation skills required to present them properly. Some, lik
Consumer publishers have, for many years, paid lip service to the need to develop subs. Now, faced with increasing pressures at the newsstand, some are regretting not taking action earlier. One title which did act is Time Out and it has enjoyed aston
There is no point newspaper circulators wringing their hands over declining print audiences and rising online ones. Satisfying the information needs of today’s consumer is paramount, says the FT’s Martin Ashford, and offering platform choice is the k
Every subscription publisher knows that their business is based on renewals. Why then do so many practitioners neglect this vital dimension of their business model? Simply put, it's human nature. Here, Chris Gregory lists nineteen different aspects o
An awareness of what’s gone before makes for better planning and decision making. In direct marketing this is achieved through a culture of testing and documentation. James Evelegh talks to Natmag’s Karen Louth about her knowledge based approach to m
What else are you selling to your readers in addition to their subscription? If the answer is “nothing” then you are missing a trick. Successful publishers have realised that the real value of a subscriber is in what else you can market to them. Pete
In the final part of his data series, Qbase’s Gary Olive urges you to think outside the box. Opportunities that were just pipe dreams a few short months ago are now in play but you need to think big to realise them.
Collectively, specialist magazines are massively important to the industry. Yet, individually, many of them are small-scale and are often produced by independent publishers who feel very vulnerable to the forces that are currently shaping the supply
Perpetual motion and no rest are the secrets of success for business titles in the newstrade – that and having quality product. Martin Parr, newstrade manager of Reed Business Information talks us through the ins and outs of marketing RBI’s titles th
We spend a lot of time ranting and raving about supermarkets and perhaps not enough time studying them. A better understanding of how the big multiples operate would not only put publishers in a better position to negotiate with them but would also h
Few regional publishers do planning well, although those that do tend to be more successful than those that don’t. Too often, planning is tokenist, done with little enthusiasm and is likely to produce a lack lustre document fit only to gather dust –
