Friday 24th July: Retrying failed payments could save one-third of subscriber churn

July 24, 2020

Good morning, TGIF! Today's Media Roundup was lovingly curated by Peter

We wanted to lead today's newsletter with this thought provoking article from INMA. The link is in the headline, but unfortunately the article by Grzegorz Piechota has been locked behind INMA's timewall. We're providing a link to an MPP blog post that, more generally, covers the research. It's a bit more pitchy than we'd usually link to but we didn't want to leave you hanging.

This might seem obvious, but if the payment on a subscription fails first time, it's really worth trying again. According to research that INMA commisioned from subscriptions solution provider MPP Global, up to one-third of media and entertainment subscribers churn every year because of payment failures, not because they wanted to give up their subscriptions.

Payment failures are caused by subscribers forgetting to update card details, lost or stolen cards, bank rejections, network errors, or subscribers exceeding their credit limit. According to INMA, when The Daily Telegraph surveyed its churned subscribers, it found more than half did not even realise there were any issues with payment.

The research analysed payment data from 13 millions subscribers across some of the world’s leading video streaming services, news and magazine media publishers. It spotlights broadcasters trying much harder to save their subscribers than publishers. They set they're maximum retries at 13.2 on average - while publishers are only retrying an average of 2.6 times.

MPP Global CCO Julian Morelis said: “For maximum performance, you should set retry count to at least 15 and allow grace access over a similar number of days.”

Although they returned to profit in June, ad revenues in DMGT’s consumer media division were down down 45% in the three months to June 30th; circulation revenue was off by 12%. The business made an operating loss of £2m in the period, versus £22m profit in the same period a year earlier. That's despite Mail Online reporting average daily uniques of 17.4m in the nine months to 30 June, up 37% year on year.

Media Nut Josh Sternberg has been speaking with Alex Lieberman, CEO of the five-year-old, 2 million subscriber-strong Morning Brew Newsletter. Now with four newsletters and a podcast his 45-person company is forecasting $20 million in revenue for 2020.

The paused merger of Taboola and Outbrain has been given the go ahead. Taboola and Outbrain? The people that put what the Verge calls 'chumboxes' at the bottom of your web pages. Bait to get clicks, like the 'decomposing fish guts, blood, and bones' used to lure fish but for humans.

This week's episode:

Julia talks about how Meredith's parenting brand are supporting parents who are trying to juggle childcare and their own jobs during the pandemic, how they use SEO to anticipate their audience’s needs, and their explanatory approach to polarising topics.

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