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.
ELLE, the fashion and beauty brand, published by Hearst Magazines UK, has broken with cover-shoot tradition to deliver a “trailblazing and extraordinary” success story through the first ever live digital streaming of a cover shoot of Kristen Stewart,
Carolyn Morgan looks at how Windpower Intelligence, the latest addition to the 2012 Media Pioneer Awards shortlist, grew a six-figure subs revenue.
The third annual Specialist Media Insights survey commenced this week and early results show a tipping point being reached for digital publishing.
Telegraph Media Group (TMG) has announced that it will be launching new mobile apps for iPhone and Android in the coming weeks.
The latest Dovetail Subscriber Service Survey was the biggest yet, with over 125,000 active magazine subscribers taking part, making it one of the largest customer service surveys in any industry. Julian Thorne summarises the key findings.
Last October, Apple launched Newsstand, an event almost as seismic for publishers as the launch of the iPad itself! Mike Goldsmith assesses its impact and how publishers can go about taking advantage of this new subs opportunity.
In the last year, writes Carolyn Morgan, a wide range of publishers have been experimenting with paid content, and the old image of an impenetrable barrier with unseen goodies on the far side, has been replaced by an enticing open gate with a glimpse
Following the sudden closure of the News of the World last July, the media industry has been waiting to see where Sunday readers would migrate to, writes Clare Rush.
Singletrack is an independent magazine and website for mountain biking enthusiasts. They have been shortlisted, Carolyn Morgan writes, for the 2012 Media Pioneer Awards for their subscriptions success, focused on their print magazine.
Some of the the UK’s largest regional publishers are launching apps for iPhone, iPad and Newsstand, with a variety of models, using PageSuite’s Dynamic App technology and print replication product.
Centaur Media plc has acquired Profile Group (UK) Limited, a specialist digital information business for media, PR and marketing professionals, for a total cash consideration of £8m.
Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The New York Times Company, has joined the programme for Digital Media Europe, the European digital publishing event organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishe
Dennis Publishing is expanding its subscription acquisition programme in 2012 with the Magnetise Group (Magnetise), and Ten Thousand Hours (TTH).
A new era for Scotland’s national newspaper is beginning with the launch of The Scotsman iPad app, available now on the App Store. It claims to be Scotland’s first dedicated multimedia news iPad app.
The sad truth is that much of the content you find in some local papers is a little on the dull side. This does not bode well for their long term future. The challenge for editors, writes Peter Sands, is to strip out all the padding and focus on qual
