Why Right Now is the Time to Focus On Subscriber Strategies

As you may be well aware, there’s a lot of activity and media attention surrounding publishing and subscriptions of late thanks to our friends over at Netflix, so we thought we’d share some thoughts on the market and our strong view that right now is the perfect time to focus on subscriber growth and retention strategies.

A market in growth

Thanks to unprecedented growth during the pandemic, Rupert Murdoch’s news corporation doubled its market value and the Financial Times and Guardian both surpassed one million digital subscribers.

These aren’t isolated stories from the “big guns”, these growth stories are shared by independent publishers across the globe. ABCs latest consumer magazine data shows a shift in how content is being accessed, with 85% of titles reporting circulation increases alongside an 84% rise in paid subscriptions. This is phenomenal and exponential growth.

These increases clearly help to build confidence in the sector and provides the publishing industry with the opportunity to build a community of new readers and convert them into loyal, long-term subscribers.

What goes up, often comes down

Many publishing executives are no doubt kept awake at night with the worry that subscription numbers can fall, just as quickly as they can rise. It’s a fickle world where resting on laurels is simply not an option. The recent news of Netflix’s drop in subscribers and fifty billion dollars wiped from the valuation shines a stark spotlight on this, and emphasises the need for a well-planned, robust and consistent subscription renewal strategy.

Growing your subscription model

In order to engage, retain and grow subscribers, ongoing communication is essential. Without a communication strategy in place, renewing subscriptions, or reengaging lapsed subscribers is almost impossible.

Telemarketing is without doubt a tried, tested and proven model that can significantly help, and be the cornerstone of a successful subscription renewal strategy. But how?

· Digital Acquisition – A digital acquisition strategy enables publishers to acquire subscribers from their most engaged readers. Putting in place a simple data capture, where readers register to access a set number of articles, allows you to track user activity. With this one process, suddenly, you have a ready-made database if hot subscriber leads to follow up on via email or telephone marketing. The Telegraph have led on this activity for some time with phenomenal results. At ANT Marketing, we’ve seen significant success in contacting prospects using data, seeing high conversion rates on customers contacted predominantly via telephone.

· Lapsed Renewals – Telemarketing is a successful channel to renew lapsed subscriptions. Bespoke campaigns can be created with tailored scripts using data and insights from user

activity, making sure any communications and conversations are wholly tailored to the customer. At ANT there is no one-size-fits-all approach, our sales executives are trained to adapt their pitch to the subscriber, and they have in-depth training ensuring they have understanding of the entire renewal series. In the last 3 years, we have seen over a 50% increase in successful conversion rates of subscribers when combining data insights with telemarketing.

Why Ant Marketing

ANT Marketing has been an industry leader in subscriber acquisition and renewals for the past 30 years working with top names such as The Economist, The Daily Mail and Reach PLC. Our approach is to use data, combined with highly trained sales executives to renew lapsed subscribers, rescue bounced payment data and convert regular browsers into lucrative paid subscribers.

Our approach and agility make us stand out from our competitors, as well as our commitment to continuous development and improvement. We position ourselves as a partner, aiming to add value to our clients, not to simply provide a service. This deep-rooted ethos run through ANT and means we are constantly looking for ways to innovate. We do this by ensuring all information, data and insight we gather from every single customer interaction is fed back into the campaign and client so together we’re constantly learning, evolving and enhancing our offering and your results.

It has been a delight to see the publishing industry grow and evolve in these last few challenging years and to see the public fall back in love with written media, even at a time when there seemed to be a distinct lack of good news stories. But now is not the time to allow complacency to creep in.

It’s our belief that there is no better time than now to re-engage with your existing and prospect subscriber base, and that by using a combination of data, alongside engaging and tailored telemarketing, you can maintain and significantly grow this channel.

For more information and to speak to the ANT team about how we can help, please get in touch for a no obligations chat at 0800 0737 300