Wednesday 2nd August: More subscribers stay if it’s easier to leave

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More subscribers stay if it’s easier to leave

I could write about the subject of subscription cancellation for ever. It has to be the single most frustrating aspect of the rise in reader revenue plays. Publishers are super eager to jump on conversion strategies, much less keen to create (or care about) processes that make it as easier for readers to exit.

Against that backdrop, it’s excellent to see Norway’s Aftenposten trying to make the journey to cancellation a friendlier experience. Noticing that only 1 in 100 attempts to save a subscription succeeded, they decided to reduce the number of steps in the cancellation process from five to three and made the cancel button available on every subscriber’s account page.

By introducing a simplified process with ‘are you sure’ messaging and discounts for unsubscribers that decide to stay, Aftenposten now ‘rescues’ 900 subscribers a month, an increase of 50% over six months. And I’m guessing the ones that do leave go off a lot less enraged than at some other publishers.

The fact that the BBC has launched its own “experimental” Mastodon server, says more to be about the future of Twitter X than about Mastodon. The BBC will try out the server for six months before it decides “whether and how to continue.” Their decision to carry on with Mastodon will depend as much on whether Twitter X has finally given up the ghost by then as it will on Mastodon.

It’s no secret that I love quirky print and this is pretty quirky: a 20-page, print-only broadsheet, which bills itself as ‘a magazine about America in the form of a 19th century newspaper.’ Interesting, though, that it’s scratching a very modern itch. It looks at the places people might consider living since “remote work became acceptable… and that meant it was viable to live in the countryside or someplace you wanted to live.” Decidedly 21st Century.

In my latest for the International Magazine Centre I tried to square the circle of a marketing slowdown and advertising growth. Not sure I managed, but I did get to mention that Kelloggs established its breakfast brand dominance by upping its advertising spend during the Great Depression. And did you know McDonalds only learned to maintain its marketing during downturns because Taco Bell kicked its arches in the 90s.

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