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.
FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, has announced that Emap Insight, a division of Emap, has selected FinancialForce Accounting to improve the order to cash process, and serve as a complementary financial application to its Salesforce
In the fast moving digital world, everyone is experimenting and few claim to have got it right. But, by general consensus, one publisher that has got it more right than most is the Financial Times. Meg Carter talks to FT.com managing director, Rob Gr
Nearly nine months into 2011, the US Congressional gridlock and Standard & Poor’s’ US credit downgrading have managed to threaten, if not derail, a tenuous recovery by sending already-skittish US and global financial markets reeling, writes Karlene L
Marketing in general, and subscriptions marketing in particular, can be measured down to the last penny. So why, asks grumpy old copywriter Andy Maslen, do publishers keep making these five strangely emotion-led decisions?
The annual Content & Trends Census, published by the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) today, reveals UK Publishers will focus on audience profiling in the next 12 months, while driving content across mobile platforms, such as iPad/tablets and s
To celebrate 25 years in print, Prima magazine has made their first ever issue available digitally as an online issue, complete with fashion spreads, knitting patterns and diet tips from October 1986, when the title first launched.
Good Food magazine’s industry acclaimed iPad edition is available as a digital subscription for the first time.
Are magazine apps cannibalising magazine newsstand sales? During the recent 2011 Retail Marketplace conference, writes Karlene Lukovitz, publishers and distributors strove to reassure retailers in attendance that this is not the case.
The accountants are lurking, asking for initial thoughts regarding 2012. As you start to fret over the figures, Jim Chisholm offers ten strategic pointers.
Guardian News & Media (GNM) has announced it will cease publishing the international editions of the Guardian and Observer from 1 October 2011.
The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday’s Rewards Club claims to be the fastest growing Rewards Club in Britain with over half a million members signing up since it launched on June 11th.
News International has announced that the number of digital subscribers to The Times and The Sunday Times has exceeded 100,000.
Last Thursday, T3 published the 10th consecutive issue of its iPad edition. Nial Ferguson, T3’s Group Publishing Director, says the experience has been illuminating.
David Milnes of research consultancy Kytemark Solutions discusses a new report on marketing consent.
Gramophone Magazine has launched the latest version of its digital edition as an App and is available to download for iPad and iPhone on iTunes and the app store.
