speaker: Ulrike Langer

topic: Die gläserne Decke durchstoßen - Wie US-Medien mit Hilfe von KI Gelegenheitsnutzer zu zahlenden Abonnenten konvertieren

I just want to show you a few cases and some strategies of what US publishers do to reduce churn or keep subscribers or get.

subscribers back that have already cancelled their subscription.

Let's, let's skip all this, so Christian Roke has already mentioned the right keyword churn and how hard it is to grow if you're on the other hand, losing subscribers. It's like trying to get water into a bucket that is full of holes at the bottom, and in the US, the numbers are that monthly acquisition numbers are down from 4.1 to 2.8.

While churn is up.

from 3% to 5.5%. So if churn numbers are rising faster than acquisition numbers, that is not good for your subscription strategy.

And you all know that it is easier to keep your existing subscribers than it is, and it's also cheaper to keep your existing subscribers than to get new ones, so reducing churn is, is a really important strategy.

I'm gonna skip a lot. I'm going to show you a few cases of what some of the publishers in the US are doing.

So the Washington Post.

On the one hand, the Washington Post, is deep, deep in trouble, but that is because of the recent decisions of Jeff Bezos. what they're actually have been doing well for the last years is how to reduce churn.

So, what they did, and they've been doing this for 3 or 4 years now is, every once in a while they come up with a bundle.

the, the best example I think of what they did is they had a subscription bundle with the meditation app Headspace, and that was a one year subscription. and the idea behind it was that the usual onboarding phase of 30 days is not long enough to, to build habits if you want your subscribers to get used to reading you every day or reading a week.

newsletter every week. It takes longer than just 30 days to form that habit. So they bundled with an annual subscription to free annual subscription to Headspace and even if initially the subscribers only went for that subscription because they wanted headspace, um.

After they were here was over 37% resubscribed even though they did not get headspace anymore for the same price and before that, the resubscription numbers after the first year with a with a for a lower price point before that, the resubscribing rate was much lower, so, so this was one strategy that really worked for them.

the Boston Globe, they

needed also, they needed more digital growth and they needed reader engagement.

And what they did is that they looked at their newsletter strategy and built their newsletters more for winning subscribers and retaining subscribers. they have 30 now have more than 30 targeted newsletters that they send out to people that read certain topics on the web page. They show them those newsletters, and they say, look,

If you're interested in this topic, you can go deeper with these newsletters.

and they improved their

The retention by 7% ever since they've been doing this, and they actually had a had a revenue increase of 13% from this strategy alone.

The New York Times. Now this is an example, which is also 2 years old, but they're still doing this. So before 2023, they had already had more than 100 newsletters at that time. Now it's actually more than 150 newsletters and this was way too much and too, too much unsystematic of an offering that

subscribers didn't really know what should I subscribe to what not. So the New York Times, organised their subscribers into 3 buckets, and the second bucket.

Those, those were the subscribers who were on the fence. Do I want to resubscribe to The New York Times. Do I want to have a subscription at all, and these, this, these people in the second bucket were targeted with engagement news letters specifically for their interests by what they have been reading.

And at the same time, they created a 3rd bucket, and those are the subscriber only premium newsletters which before then did not exist. There are now newsletters behind the paywall and lots of newsletters, of course, in front of the pay wall because newsletters are a huge driver towards paid description, and this also really worked for the New York Times to increase retention.

the Atlantic,

They did something similar, they needed more sustainable growth. They also had low subscriber engagement.

And they

created a system where, which they called the first best action system. Again, targeting readers by their interests and creating a first best action, showing them either a podcast or a newsletter or a vertical within the magazine, within the digital magazine that also conforms with their interests but which they may not be aware.

off. this is something that Morning Brew, the newsletter that we heard about this morning, which they also do. If you like our podcast.

Here's also a newsletter you might be interested to, so using the verticals to

to, support.

The to support other verticals.

the Wall Street Journal again did something which they call the 100-day marathon. they, this is when they increase their onboarding, which they still do up to this day, they started this 4 years ago, they're still doing it.

30 days is not enough.

To form habits, so within the 1st 100 days,

is the period where if you subscribe to the Washington Post, you now get welcome emails if you subscribe to their newsletters, you get welcome emails that show you what else is out there.

those 100 days versus 30 days have really worked for them to

Work in terms of forming, forming usage habits.

OK,

What do they all have in common? They use, they are all using tools in a retention tool kit.

their mastering the first critical week in 3 actions and this is something you can do, this is like ideas to steal, multi-format guidance, show new users what they what you can offer them in terms of video or if they are subscribe, if they have the app, show them what they can do in the app or if they subscribe to a newsletter.

Show them your other newsletters or your video, like, make, make clear to them that they are missing out if they only use a very small sliver of your editorial offerings.

Track if they're actually forming habits. You can track how often they open your app, how often they open your newsletters. If those engagement rates are very low, they will probably cancel their subscription. if, I mean, you know this, but if the engagement rate is high, they will probably stay. So how can you increase their engagement rates, one of the strategies is show them what else.

you have.

Strategy too is pricing for retention. Now this is something that is very common in the US. I hardly ever see this in for German subscription. If you subscribe to a newspaper or a pay newsletter or a magazine in the US, the annual price is lower.

usually you have a monthly subscription, but if you go for an annual subscription, there is a range of maybe 15% to 40% off, 40% off for the annual subscription is on the high side, but

There it has been evaluated that if you offer a 17% of a discount for an annual subscription, that is the sweet spot. You will actually make more money even though the annual subscription is less because you are

Psychologically offering better value. And of course you have then have subscribers who are staying a whole year, and again, you have a longer period in which you can be forming habits with them so that they don't want to miss your product anymore.

what the Boston Globe additionally does is

Of those people who already have decided to cancel, in a second step or so they offer them really, really cheap deals and 30% of those people who do want to cancel, then stay for the lower price.

Now this is of course a tricky strategy. You want to be, if you do this, you will need to be unpredictable. If your subscribers know, I just need to click cancel often enough, and then I get a really cheap subscription, then, of course, everyone will do this and you will lose and it needs to be sometimes and only to some people, and that's where you're data strategy comes in.

Strategy free, use your early warning metrics, payment changes when the engagement drops, when the newsletter engagement comes, comes in when, when cancellations,

Start to increase, give them loyalty offers like the, like the Boston Globe. use your data,

Test AB with AB testing, what works, what doesn't, churn reducing strategies are a lot about just testing what works and what doesn't.

Strategy 5 might be a counterintuitive, but make living easy, which subscribe, which magazine would you rather resubscribe to one that lets you go easily or one that made it really, really difficult to cancel a subscription. Often, new subscribers are actually old subscribers. They might not have subscribed to you the last year, but they did the year before and now they happily come back because you parted in good ways.

And think beyond single verticals we already talked about that.

Food for thought. I'm leaving you with this, um.

But

I think I'm over time. So,

Subscribe to my newsletter and then you can get a lot of more food for thought, um.

The question isn't whether to prioritise retention, it is whether you will be early or late to figure it out because you all have to deal with, deal with churn, but smarter strategies to actually make churn better will make subscription strategies way more valuable.

yes, thank you very much. I don't want to, I need to cut it short. I don't want to be in the way of your nap or your beer.