In the 90s, when I was working in the circulation department of a B2B publisher, I recall there being much debate about what colour the envelope should be for shot #5 of a renewal series.
I forget what the final decision was or if indeed it made any noticeable difference to the renewal rate. I remember doubting whether it would.
Anyway, how much retention marketing has changed in the last thirty years was brought home to me when editing the ‘subscriber retention special’ which we’re running in the March / April issue of InPublishing magazine (not yet on the free mailing list? Register now).
In the publisher written contributions, there were zero mentions of colour, envelopes or shot 5s (or indeed of any other shots). The word ‘series’ appeared once and that related not to ‘renewal’ but to ‘onboarding’.
The widespread take-up of continuous payment methods, marketers’ reliance on email marketing and new more powerful tech has made retention marketing of the 2020s look very different to that of the 1990s.
The focus now is less on colour palette and more on continuous product improvement, engagement metrics, propensity modelling, involuntary churn and how AI can be harnessed to further personalise the retention process.
High retention is the secret to subscription growth, said Julian Thorne in an article he wrote for InPublishing in 2019: “It sounds counter intuitive but the secret to growing a subscription business is to focus on retaining subscribers rather than just acquiring new ones. Typically, acquiring a new subscriber can cost 4 to 15 times more than retaining a current subscriber so the maths supports this strategy.”
To be fair to my 1990s self – and the others in the room arguing over colour schemes – the importance of retention was appreciated as much then as it is now, it’s just the tools at our disposal that have changed.
You can catch James Evelegh’s regular column in the InPubWeekly newsletter, which you can register to receive here.
