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.
Lifetime Value is not a difficult concept to grasp. Most publishing companies say they use it extensively, but few actually do. Yet LTV is essential to navigating a course through the current media whirlpool.
Le Monde has launched a new English language digital edition, as part of ambition to double its subscriber base to one million by 2025.
ACE has revealed the short list for its forthcoming Newspaper and Magazine Awards.
The Sounthern Daily Echo has announced the launch this week of Saintsplus, a subscription-only site dedicated to Southampton FC.
Readly has launched a partnership with The Wall Street Journal which involves its membership benefits program offering two months complimentary access to Readly.
The Financial Times has launched FT Edit, a new app that offers readers eight hand-picked stories every weekday chosen, say the publishers, to surprise and inform a new group of readers.
Readly has teamed up with Three, one of the UK’s largest mobile operators, to offer Three customers an offer for unlimited digital magazine and newspaper reading.
Newsquest Media Group announced on Friday that it has completed the acquisition of Archant Community Media Ltd from Rcapital, a private investment firm.
Naviga Inc this week announced that it has acquired Abacus, a SaaS digital subscription and audience insight supplier whose customers include publishers, professional institutions and corporate brands.
Archant has launched another news app – its third in a month, this one being for the Norwich Evening News.
Independent retailers have condemned Archant’s reported move to persuade its Life magazine subscribers to switch from printed editions to digital.
The Financial Times now has one million paying digital subscribers, an all-time high and significant moment in its digital transformation, says the company.
Reach plc yesterday published its full year results, for the 52 weeks up to 26 December 2021 and announced that they had hit their 10 million registrations target.
Individual and institutional subscribers to Dancing Times now have fully searchable access to over 700 issues, dating back to January 1963.
MPP Global has joined forces with Mather Economics to offer an integrated solution that allows publishers to implement sophisticated pricing strategies within the eSuite platform.
