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.
RCNi, a provider of information solutions for nurses, has launched a new journals platform. All 10 RCNi Journals, including Nursing Standard, are now hosted on Scholarstor, a cloud-based publishing platform.
Susan Duffin, managing director of subscriptions bureau ESco, answers our questions about her life in publishing.
Were publishers too quick to write off the digital edition? After plateauing a couple of years back, says Readly MD Ranj Begley, digital magazines are now growing their audience footprint once again. Publishers should take another look…
Faversham House, the Sussex-based B2B media group, has been around since the 60s. Since a 2010 MBO, the company has put great emphasis on rationalising its brand portfolio and getting its company culture absolutely right. Chief Executive Amanda Barne
The recent announcement of the closure of Dovetail Services has caused another disruption in the UK subscriptions management market. This isn’t, writes Alan Weaver, a new phenomenon – industry watchers will remember market upheavals after the closure
Jim Foster’s publishing world…
Guardian Media Group (GMG) – publisher of the Guardian and The Observer newspapers and theguardian.com – yesterday announced financial results for the 12 months to 2 April, 2017.
Dennis has announced the acquisition of MoneyWeek Ltd. The brand will join Dennis’ Current Affairs division, which includes The Week and The Week Junior, TheWeek.co.uk and The WeekDay app.
Exact Editions, the digital publishing platform, yesterday announced two senior appointments to bolster its management team.
Guardian News & Media yesterday announced the appointment of Anna Bateson into the newly created role of chief customer officer.
This week marks the relaunch of Bloomberg Businessweek and the adoption of a two-tiered membership model.
DC Thomson has selected MPP Global as it enhances its digital services with a new metering, subscription and eCommerce platform.
As business-to-business (B2B) publishers and brand marketers grapple with increasing volumes of data, tighter rules proposed under new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and ePrivacy legislation, and a bewildering number of content touch-point
Magazine Club is a new multi-title subscription service offering users unlimited access to over 35 monthly magazine publications from Archant.
Karlene Lukovitz spots some encouraging trends in the US, with some publishers successfully growing subs and erecting paywalls.
