Engagement is the key to retention and renewals

Charlotte Tobitt wrote an interesting article called “How to keep subscribers: What’s working at Hearst, Immediate and Mark Allen Group,” which Bo Sacks distributed recently.

It’s not one of those annoying mystery articles. She gets to it right away with three things: “Friendly friction; personal phone calls, and positive reinforcement.”

The first example is from Gardeners’ World Premium, which offers exclusive digital content, including expert advice, a monthly Q&A, ad-free podcasts, videos, newsletters, discounts, and competitions. It’s £4.99 a month but it’s also free for all print subscribers.

I’m curious whether they try to drive people to the digital content from the print magazine, because generally speaking that’s a hard thing to do. You can use QR codes and such, but when people are reading a magazine they seem to be in non-digital mode, so those efforts don’t alway work well.

However they’re doing it, the online service not only adds value to the print subscription, but creates a way to measure engagement, and also creates a way to personalize content for the reader.

Half of their print magazine subscribers have unlocked this online premium offer, and that group renews at nine percentage points higher. The numbers get better depending on how engaged people are with the online content.

Immediate Media, which owns Gardeners’ World, has tried similar options with its other brands.

Next we have Seema Kumari, the senior director of consumer marketing and CRM at Hearst, who suggests using such “positive reinforcement” as reminding people about their engagement with your product. For example, they tell subscribers how many newsletters they have opened and how many stories they have read. She says people love it, which surprises me, because it might also sound a little creepy.

Seema also encourages “friendly friction” in the cancel process, and refers to how Audible keeps winning her back, when she tries to cancel, with the offer of a free credit. Audible also reminds subscribers how much they use the service.

Finally Tony Hill from the Mark Allen Group recommends something straight out of 1950, which is picking up the phone and calling subscribers as they approach their renewal date. The conversation is not about the renewal. It’s just a chat on a subject the subscriber is likely to care about. According to their tracking, people will get off the phone and renew from some letter that’s been sitting on their desk for a few months.

My key takeaway from all of this is that engagement is the key to renewals. You can’t wait until the end of the year and try to get people to renew based on your genius marketing copy. You need to start the renewal process early with a focus on engagement.

Links

How to keep subscribers: What’s working at Hearst, Immediate and Mark Allen Group
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/subscriber-retention-hearst-immediate-mark-allen-audible-spotify/