11 tips to reduce subscriber churn

Bo Sacks distributed an article by Michelle Yeon titled “Stop the churn: Improving subscription retention rates.” It’s a good list, and she has some good commentary on each item, but I think there’s one very obvious thing missing, which I’ll explain later at the end.

Here are Michelle’s 10 tips, with my comments.

1. Personalize User Experiences. Almost everything used to be custom made. Then we moved to mass production of the same item, and that was a huge benefit because of economies of scale and all that. But now we can get the benefits of mass production and personalize things. That's where things are headed, so get on board.

2. Offer Flexible Subscription Plans, by which she means more options. There's good and bad to this. You don't want to have too many options at sign-up. When people are given several options, they're likely to choose none. That's called "choice paralysis," which I mentioned in my most recent letter.

So try this instead. Make the offer simple, but offer flexibility once they're onboard.

3. Improve Your Onboarding Process. Definitely. The renewal process starts immediately after the sale. Establish expectations, get feedback, provide training or support if necessary. You want people to make a habit of using your service.

4. Monitor competitor offerings. This is a good one. It’s easy to forget that your customers have options. Keep an eye on what the other guy is doing.

5. Implement a Paywall Strategy. I’m an advocate of paywalls, but I’m not exactly sure what a paywall strategy has to do with retention, since once people are subscribers they won’t be bothered by the paywall.

6. Provide Excellent Customer Support. For sure. Make it easy for people to find solutions to their problems, and use customer support to find out what those problems are. Also, consider telemarketing campaigns to contact people periodically. That can help with renewals.

7. Offer Exclusive Subscriber Perks. Right. Make them feel special. Remember that fear of loss is a strong cognitive bias. You want people to feel like they’ll lose something if they don’t renew.

8. Monitor Usage and Engagement. This is crucial, not only to identify people who are in danger of churn, but also as feedback on what you’re doing. Maybe people aren’t engaged because you haven’t been providing the right content.

9. Focus on Customer Retention. Aside from the obvious – that it’s easier to keep a customer than get a customer – Michelle says identify your most loyal and valuable customers and focus on them. That is a very key point. Keeping your most engaged customers happy is your best strategy for keeping all your customers happy. For one thing, it’s easier to get feedback from them, and for another, they have the most investment in the service.

10. Conduct Exit Surveys. Yes. Learn what you did wrong, but remember that it’s possible people left because they weren’t the right audience for your service.

Now here’s my bonus tip, which I’m kinda surprised Michelle didn’t mention.

11. Provide content that people want. The best way to keep people is to give them something they value. There are lots of things you need to do to figure out what that is, but keep your focus on giving the people what they want.

Resources

Stop the churn: Improving subscriber retention rates
https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/stop-the-churn-improving-subscription-retention-rates/