Retention: Harnessing Offline and Online Synergies

Nine cross-platform strategies to supercharge your renewal programs.

By Karlene Lukovitz
Monday, March 30, 2009

With accelerated budget pressures and profitability goals, maximizing subscriber retention is more critical than ever. To achieve immediate and long-term promotion savings, today’s retention game plans are leveraging email to enhance mail series performance, as well as shift renewals online.

Here’s a round-up of some winning email and cross-source strategies from pros who spoke at this year’s DMA Circulation Day.

1. Rodale, Reader’s Digest Association and others report that their biggest e-renewal successes tend to come from closely adapting direct mail renewal creative for email efforts, while tweaking creative to best leverage the email medium’s nature as a direct response vehicle.

2. Showcasing value and urgency—sometimes with a low-cost premium incentive—gets e-renewal efforts opened and acted on, confirmed Rodale senior marketing manager Kimberly Draves.

3. A succinct, action-oriented subject line and featuring the offer prominently and high-up in the copy are basic dos, but another winning approach is leading off the email with a premium (“Click here for your free DVD”), with renewal offer specifics provided once the reader is online.

4. While emails can be used to sell certain benefits that can’t be accommodated in direct mail, email don’ts include overly complex offers, overly long/redundant copy (state editorial benefits once, not repeatedly), and too many images (which increase load time), says Draves.

5. Rodale has upped renewal profitability by sending three e-renewal efforts to readers with emails on file before sending a single direct mail piece. In addition, five emails are interspersed throughout the print renewal series, and at least one follow-up e-effort goes out post-expire.

6. Offering premiums available only with online renewal and/or cut-off dates are effective techniques for generating response to e-renewal efforts or persuading mail-generated readers to convert to online renewing.

7. One early-bird email effort that worked for Rodale offered a duffle bag premium available only to email/online renewers, and only for those responding within 48 hours. The much lower net cost of email makes such premiums cost-justifiable, points out Draves. RDA has seen success with early e-renewals featuring a tote bag premium, as well as with increasing term by tying a premium to two-year, “best deal” online offers, according to marketing director Laurie LeVasseur.

8. Digital editorial premiums that repurpose existing content can be highly cost-effective both as incentives to provide an email address for those all-important future renewal efforts, and as online renewal response drivers.
For instance, RDA has had big wins with using digital premiums as incentives to renew gift subscriptions online.

Variations have included a free digital every-day meal planner with online renewals of Every Day With Rachel Ray gift subs, and a digital “classic Christmas recipes” bookazine with online renewal of Taste of Home gift subs.

9. RDA, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and others also report success with using compelling email offers, sometimes in conjunction with or as an alert to a special offer coming in the mail, to resuscitate even older expires.