As publishers learn to adapt to the new challenges posed by a changing digital world, they’re looking for new ways to attract and retain subscribers.

During the Webinar How to battle subscriber churn and return to growth, INMA members learned some best practices and strategies for reducing churn.

Greg Piechota, INMA’s researcher-in-residence and lead of the Readers First Initiative, led a discussion with Angelica Domínguez Martín, customer strategy director of El País in Spain, and Anjali Iyer, head of lifecycle marketing of The Washington Post in the United States, to learn what is working for them.

Piechota kicked off the Webinar with some good news based on data collected by INMA: “When we look at the median change in the total number of digital-only subscriptions, we saw an increase of almost 4% versus the last quarter in 2022. And when we compare the first quarter this year to the same quarter last year, we see an increase of the number of subscriptions by almost 14%.”

Revenue is performing similarly, showing increases over last year. This allows the industry to breathe a sigh of relief, considering that the last quarter of 2022 saw a decline in subscriptions and had many publishers concerned. But Piechota said the research indicates that slowdown was temporary.

“No wonder publishers have become much more optimistic,” he said. But individual results vary, and he added some publishers are experiencing higher levels of churn, which made it the perfect time to have this discussion.

The challenges of subscription growth

Both Domínguez and Iyer said the focus for their companies was fairly evenly split between new subscriber acquisition and retention.

In the wake of the “Trump bump” and the COVID-19 pandemic, The Washington Post was among the many publishers who enjoyed an acceleration of subscription growth in 2020. But what goes up must come down, and Iyer shared that it faced four critical challenges in retaining those subscribers:

1. Competition from news sources. “Consumers now have so many options to consume news online and offline,” she said. “The biggest challenge for us is finding a way to differentiate ourselves and provide the value that our subscribers can’t get anywhere else.”
2. The current state of the economy. Costs are rising for publishers at the same time customers are trying to save money — and many are not renewing subscriptions. “With inflation we know consumers are reducing the total number of subscriptions,” she said, adding that up to 31% of consumers have reduced their spending in the past six months, adding to more competition amongst publishers.
3. Changing consumer behaviour. “With COVID we also have seen big changes in the way consumers consume news today,” Iyer said, pointing to social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. “The challenge is for us to find readers where they are and meet them there.”
4. News fatigue. Recent surveys have shown that 62% of people are concerned by the news, and 42% have stopped watching or reading news because of negative stories. “So our focus really has been to provide subscribers news that is accurate and engaging.” That includes ensuring that it provides a balanced news perspective.

Additionally, The Washington Post is improving the user experience and personalisation, building loyalty habits, and ensuring content quality is relevant. “Because if you do all of those three things, I would hope naturally it would increase engagement and positively impact retention,” Iyer said.

Pricing and personalisation for retention

El País launched its digital subscription product in 2020. Part of its strategy requires defining a good price that lends itself to retention, Domínguez said. The company has found that long-term offers are better than short-term offers for retention, and those longer offers also allow more opportunities to keep subscribers engaged.

“We can work in a very good onboarding [process],” she said, which includes presenting content through the newsletter and app and giving subscribers more opportunities to use more of its products. The challenge is scaling the price to have a good retention rate without damaging its output.  

“In Spain, we are focused on price offers because the Spanish market has been almost the last one going to subscription modelling in news,” she explained. “We are making a very big effort to convince people to pay for news.”

The Washington Post relies heavily on data analytics to inform its retention strategies and create a personalised experience, Iyer said: “Personalisation starts in different ways,” she said, pointing to its onboarding process as a starting point. “Then you have relevant information that we try to collect from users who have recently become our paying subscribers. That information is really important as we think about personalisation during their life cycle, what their interests are, what industry they may belong to, what newsletters do they like. It’s all helpful first-party data information that will inform future strategies.”

She said The Washington Post’s most successful retention tactics have been tailored onboarding for new subscribers and subscriber exclusive content. Personalised emails and newsletters, and providing relevant content based on subscriber interest also plays heavily into its retention success rate.

Domínguez echoed Iyer’s comments, noting the success of tailored onboarding for new users: “We have a tailored onboarding based on the use of the subscriber,” she said, adding the company uses factors like geography, answers to certain questions, and even their behaviour before becoming a subscriber. Personalised campaigns and newsletters are shown to be particularly effective.

“The editorial newsletter has had results for us as a feature that really engages the user,” she said. “The impact to churn is 24% lower for a user who reads our newsletters. Based on their interest, we’re always working on e-mail campaigns to increase the news.”

Creating a churn reduction campaign

Personalised pricing also can be effective in retention, but Piechota noted the tactic isn’t being leveraged everywhere in the world. During a recent conference by Mather Economics, Piechota said he learned that 80% of subscriptions in the U.S. are sold based on personalised pricing. “But at the same time, it is less than 50% in Europe. So it seems that this kind of modern pricing tactics are spreading across the world,” Piechota said, but they are not yet universal.

To reduce churn, publishers must find out what is causing it. Domínguez and Iyer agreed that next to understanding the cause, implementing effective retention campaigns is the most important thing a publisher can do.

At The Post, the retention team is part of the subscription marketing team that has grown to nearly 30 people; El País has a team of nine focused on retention, loyalty, and cultural events. That team sits within the 15-person subscriptions department. But both women said they work with the newsroom to discuss what content is driving acquisition and engaging readers:

“I think collaboration between editorial product marketing teams is definitely helping with the driving not only starts but also retention,” Iyer said.

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