In a small country of 18 million, I cannot churn new digital subscribers in just 21 months. Otherwise, I will soon run out of people to convert — Riske Betten, B2C product director of Mediahuis Nederland.

Betten faces a challenge that likely sounds familiar to many colleagues. As the B2C product director at Mediahuis, she’s facing the brutal math. 

With median subscription lifetimes hovering around 21 months, publishers like hers are burning through their addressable markets faster than they can replace it. 

“How do we keep our subscribers forever?” Betten asked when we met in May at the 2025 INMA World Congress of News Media in New York. 

“We need to redefine what retention is and act like one-time subscribers will never stop being part of our family.”

New benchmarks from INMA

In the past five years, most news brands have lost nearly twice as many subscriptions than they currently hold active, a new analysis from INMA revealed.

This is based on the data of 136 news brands, a sub-sample of publishers benchmarking with INMA. This analysis was first shared with the participants of the study.

We counted all monthly digital-only subscription stops from January 2019 to March 2025 and then compared it with the total number of active subscriptions in March.

• The median news brand lost 1.7 times more subscriptions than it currently has active. 

• 25% brands have lost nearly three times as many. 

• One publisher in the study had lost 10 times more subscribers than their current active base.

Although the INMA analysis did not account for customers who resubscribed, it’s clear the past subscribers represent a large untapped future growth opportunity.

This is all qualified audience: They know the brand and demonstrated preference for it, they have had access to a digital device and payments, and the means to buy the subscription. 

If retargeted with the right offer, they are likely to convert at higher rates than new prospects.

Serial subscribers

For years, subscription marketers have treated serial subscribers (called also “serial trialists” or “serial churners”) like a problem to be solved or, worse, customers to be avoided.

Professor V. Kumar from Brock University in Canada spent his career studying customer relationship management and reached a surprising conclusion: We’ve been thinking all wrong about win backs.

Kumar’s research into customer lifetime value led him to develop what I like to call the “forever subscriber” framework. 

Instead of viewing each customer as having one subscription lifetime, in the article published in the academic Journal of Marketing, professor Kumar and his colleagues suggest we think of households as having multiple subscription relationships with us over time. 

A customer acquires a subscription for their first lifetime, churns, hopefully returns with the right win-back offer for their second lifetime, may churn again, and potentially return again.

The most counterintuitive finding from Kumar’s research? Customers who left for price-related reasons can actually be more attractive to firms than those who never churned at all. 

These price-sensitive former subscribers tend to stay longer in their second lifetime, challenging the conventional wisdom that discount-driven customers are inherently less valuable.

A new retention agenda

Riske Betten of Mediahuis and other news marketers are beginning to fundamentally redefine what subscriber relationships look like. 

Instead of viewing cancellation as relationship termination, they treat former subscribers as family members who might step away temporarily but remain part of the community.

This philosophical shift has practical implications: 

• Instead of making cancellation a one-way door, publishers are creating pause options.

• Instead of requiring customers to restart completely, they’re enabling one-click reactivation. 

• Instead of treating departing subscribers as lost causes, they’re investing in systematic winback campaigns that acknowledge the cyclical nature of modern subscription behaviour.

Greg’s Readers First newsletter is a public face of a revenue and media subscriptions initiative by INMA, outlined here. INMA members can subscribe here.

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