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.
News International has announced that the number of subscribers to the new digital products for The Times and The Sunday Times rose more than 60 per cent in the last four months, fuelling a three per cent increase year-on-year in the paid readership
New subscribers to the May issue of Q will receive a world exclusive Foo Fighters album, Medium Rare - a previously unreleased collection of covers by the band.
Amazon has announced that customers who subscribe to The New York Times for Kindle will be receiving access to The New York Times Web site at no additional charge.
The latest Media Pioneer, writes Carolyn Morgan, is VRL Financial News, a company that has transformed itself from a newsletter based business for the UK leasing sector into an online information services business.
Adam Sherman, Air Business Group Managing Director, gave a presentation in Berlin on 16th March, to the FIPP Senior Management Board Meeting on the current distribution dilemmas within the publishing market.
iSUBSCRiBE has announced a number of new group company initiatives.
With Climate Week kicking off this week, Magazine Group has announced that when you buy a magazine subscription from www.1000trees.co.uk they will plant a tree in the Heart of England Forest.
Consumer expectations of customer service continue to rise. They are also becoming more complex, as consumers are increasingly looking for a digital dimension to their relationship with their favourite brands. Julian Thorne summarises the main findin
Results from this year's Convergence Survey published by Olswang LLP shows that both consumers and business are engaging with both tablets and e-book readers and that both formats continue to drive take up of digital published material.
Is the cult of celebrity dead? Dramatic circulation falls and increasingly frantic marketing activity point to tough times ahead for the celebrity weeklies. Richard Isaac looks at these and other trends thrown up by the recent ABCs.
The pricing structure of Time Inc’s new “all access” digital and / or print sub options may reveal much about its vision for the two platforms’ relative contributions to a profitable business model going forward, observes US-scene columnist Karlene L
For all the excitement and froth generated by each new digital development, the newspaper industry will be heavily reliant on print revenues for many years to come, writes Jim Chisholm.
A new website from ThreePM allows consumers to subscribe to a dozen of the UK’s top cycling magazines, as well as digital versions of 20 cycling titles from around the world.
How should Apple’s and Google’s recent subscription announcements affect publishers’ mobile app strategies, asks Dominic Jacquesson.
Exact Editions launches 3-month recurring digital subscriptions to The Spectator for £19.95.
