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.
New York Times said it could introduce an online subscription cancellation, after the US Federal Trade Commission said it intends to crack down on practices which make it hard for consumers to exit subscription products.
Subscription newsletter platform Substack is readying a push to attract writers in the UK, appointing Elle UK editor-in-chief Farrah Storr as head of partnerships in the country.
Digital magazine and newspaper subscription app Readly has boosted its content portfolio with the addition of a number of popular titles across its markets over the last month.
News Corp Australia is launching Code, a subscription sports news offering costing A$8.99 per month.
PageSuite has announced a collaboration with McClatchy, one of the largest publishing companies in North America, spanning markets from California to Florida and winner of more than 50 Pulitzer Prizes.
Instagram has added a subscriptions option to its App Store listing in the US, bolstering speculation that it is to introduce direct monetisation for creators.
Apple charges 30% on in-app transactions, but Facebook says it has found a way for creators to circumvent this “tax”.
News Corp has had the most profitable first-quarter revenue since 2013, with revenue up 18% year-on-year at $2.5bn and net profit up to $267m from $47m.
The New York Times announced it now has more than 1m digital news subscriptions outside the United States, with total paid subscriptions standing at 8.3m.
Following Readly’s acquisition of Toutabo, the digital subscription service ePresse has unveiled a new co-branded name and logo.
Brighton daily The Argus has introduced a partial paywall for its online football content to “support local journalism and local jobs.”
Aquila announced yesterday that it had completed the acquisition of Jaicom Oy through its subsidiary Atex Media Limited.
Well-targeted sampling, with appropriate messaging, is one proven technique for acquiring new subscribers. We grab five minutes with NewsTeam Group’s Andrew Parkinson to talk about this and the overall outlook for subscriptions.
Research, commissioned by Readly, shows that British seniors have become more digital since the pandemic started with almost half of those aged 60+ reporting more digital reading over the last year.
Zephr, a subscription experience platform, has announced the launch of ‘Optimize’, which is designed to unlock the potential of first-party data to personalise subscription experiences.
