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.
Banipal, a magazine of contemporary Arab literature, has partnered with Exact Editions to launch a digital edition of its Spanish-language counterpart, Revista Banipal de literatura árabe moderna.
Last year, The Telegraph grew its podcast listenership 126%, one of the reasons its podcast team has been nominated for a host of awards. Meg Carter talks to Telegraph Podcast Editor Theodora Louloudis about their strategy.
Daily Mail and General Trust plc has announced that dmg media, its consumer media business, has acquired New Scientist.
Computeractive, Dennis’ fortnightly technology magazine, has just published its 600th issue. We grab five minutes with editor Daniel Booth to talk about the past, present and future of the magazine.
Regional and national publisher Reach saw a record year-on-year increase of 26 per cent in digital revenues in the last quarter of 2020, according to its full-year results.
The Big Issue has marked the milestone of more than £1 million of support given to struggling vendors in lockdown.
The Baffler, an American journal of art, criticism and political analysis, has launched digital subscriptions that are available for individuals and institutions through the Exact Editions platform.
Diet Coke has teamed up with digital magazine and newspaper subscription service Readly to offer fans a new “Diet Coke break experience”.
The BBC’s former political editor Brian Taylor has joined The Herald in a major expansion of the newspaper’s Voices section.
IOP Publishing has struck a new open access (OA) transformative agreement with Swedish consortium, Bibsam.
Newsquest has reported record growth in the digital audience of its 160 local news sites.
The ABC yesterday released the consumer magazine circulation results for the July – December 2020 period and publishers have responded with their interpretation of the figures.
Lineup Systems has unveiled their new subscriptions platform, Amplio.
What’s the outlook for the consumer media sector in 2021? DC Thomson Media’s Sally Hampton looks into the future.
For all his many faults, Donald Trump sold lots of newspapers. Joe Biden will probably sell fewer…
