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.
The Irish Times, one of the most widely read newspapers in Ireland, has selected MPP to deliver an online payment solution to support the Digital Edition of their newspaper.
Dovetail Services, the subscriptions marketing and fulfilment company, has announced the appointment of Debbie Prewett in the newly created role of Head of Data.
Yesterday, Mike Darcey, CEO of News UK, called on the industry to consider a new way of measuring newspaper sales performance by establishing a metric that aggregates and de-duplicates readership across all paid-for publishing platforms thus giving e
The digital magazine has, for many publishers, not strayed very far from its print origins. The look is the same, as is the content and publishing frequency. But, asks Geoff Love, are we limiting ourselves? Isn’t it time for a root and branch rethink
The circulation of Private Eye has been growing these past ten years. This is no print + web sleight of hand; the growth is all print. Is Private Eye the exception that proves the rule, asks Ciar Byrne, or can the rest of our digitally obsessed indus
Johnston Press plc this week announced the appointment of Jeff Moriarty as Chief Digital and Product Officer.
Subscriptions to the Herald and Times website now exceed those for its associated print titles.
News UK has agreed a deal with UK broadcaster ITV to allow readers of its titles early access to the final stages of this season's FA Cup action.
Autism Eye is now offering digital subscriptions to its quarterly magazine free of charge.
At the recent PPA Independent Publisher Conference, Paul Newman, Group Editor of Future’s Photography Portfolio gave a presentation on the success of their digital-only title. James Evelegh was there.
The Daily Mail and the Guardian both drew some encouragement from the latest ABCs.
DC Thomson Family History has appointed Juliet Bauer to the new role of Chief Customer Officer.
InPublishing celebrated its tenth birthday in November 2013, by asking some leading figures in the publishing world to try to predict what different sectors of the industry would look like in ten year’s time.
In the summer, Incisive Media won the AOP Digital Publisher of the Year Award (B2B). The award was recognition, says John Barnes, of the tremendous amount of work the company put into realigning its digital operations and strategy during 2012.
In August, The Sun put up a paywall around its website, with the launch of Sun+. Unsurprisingly, site traffic plummeted, but will the new content package on offer entice enough Sun readers to open their wallets? Ciar Byrne joined the early subscriber
