Renewals are crucial to subscription publishing models, and engagement is crucial to renewals.
This page lists some questions to ask about your retention efforts, and some ideas about measurement and tools.
I’m sure you’re justifiably proud of the good service you provide, but here’s a hard truth: access to your content is not a benefit for anyone. The benefit you provide is what subscribers can do because they have your content. Explore new ways your content can be practically useful to your subscribers, and communicate those benefits to them throughout their experience with your brand.
What does your subscriber really want?
Understand your customers’ expectations.
- What are their goals?
- Where can they achieve quick wins?
- What are their success benchmarks?
How might subscribers be confused?
- Find out with user groups, or user testing
- Make it easy for customers to learn how to use your service
- Provide training videos
- Eliminate friction wherever possible
- Make sure customers are comfortable with your service
- Make getting help very easy
How can you make your service a habit?
- Consider which of your customers’ daily routines are solved by your service
- Find ways to make your content essential to their daily workflow
- Provide information in different formats (quizzes, polls, infographics)
- Be trustworthy
- Create an active community around your content
How can you measure engagement?
- Logins / month
- Pages / session
- Time on site
- Time on page
- Comments
- Social media shares
- Subscriptions to e-newsletters
- Open/click rate on e-newsletters
Engagement / retention tools
- Welcome email
- On-site messaging
- App download
- Videos on how to use the site
- Product tours
- One-on-one guidance
- Journeys for new customers
- Chat with customer support
- Simple feedback mechanisms
- Surveys to measure progress against subscriber goals
What other retention issues would you add to this list? Please enter them in the comments.
Greg really good suggestions. But looks like areas covered reflect different areas of responsibility within a publishing company. Does the cooperation of editorial, circulation and digital really come together on a cooperative basis?
Good observation, Jeff. I was thinking of this checklist from an overall perspective, not a departmental perspective. Getting everyone to cooperate … that’s another story!