Go Back to Former Readers to Grow Your Audience

When a relationship ends, a big question is whether you can ever talk to the other person again. There are tons of threads on Reddit that ask, “Are you still talking to your ex?”

In media, we also have exes: our former readers. While their unsubscribing or churning seems like a hard end to their interaction with you, they could actually be a good source of readers. In the case of growing your publication, I’d argue that you should absolutely be talking to your exes.

Consider the various ways a reader churns…

The first is they actively unsubscribe. For whatever reason, they’ve decided that they’re no longer interested in reading. They may have changed jobs or industries (the most common excuse for active churn for AMO) or they are not interested in that topic or coverage anymore. It could also be price.

The second is they passively unsubscribe. This is where the user has unknowingly unsubscribed because of problems with their credit card. Perhaps it was stolen and they canceled it; maybe it’s expired; or, maybe the payment processor is just having a bug that day (another common problem for passive churn for AMO). Whatever the case, these folks didn’t explicitly say that they wanted to churn.

The biggest thing you can do with these passive folks is to communicate to them before the churn takes place. This is known as dunning and it’s a multi-touch email series that alerts customers that their subscription is going to end. Because it’s passive churn, they may see the email and rectify the problem before the churn takes place. You can’t account for things like lost credit cards, but for expired cards, some basic communication might get them to upgrade their information.

On the active front, these are the folks you are going to struggle to renew primarily because they’ve made a conscious decision that the product’s not right for them. That’s why they churned. But if you can make it slightly harder when they churn, you may save some of them. Here’s how…

Add an incremental step in the unsubscribe process to ask why the user has opted to churn. There are legal reasons to not do this—California requires cancellation to be as simple as signing up—but in many cases, you can ask the reader why they’ve unsubscribed as a middle step.

For the most part, the answers are purely to help you make the product better. One answer that you can use to have an immediate impact is price. If a reader says that they’re churning because of price, offer them a discount. It’s better to retain some amount of revenue tied to that subscriber than lose everything. In the flow, make it possible for them to auto-renew at the lower price for the next year.

When it comes to digital subscriptions, the marginal cost of having one incremental subscriber is effectively zero. In other words, unlike a physical good which carries a cost per unit, digital subscribers don’t have that. Being flexible on price could win back some readers. It’s pure margin.

But once the churn has occurred, it’s time to start working to get them back.

In the case of passive churn, tell them that they have actually churned and give them a reason why. If it’s because your credit card processor says that their credit card has failed or expired, then tell the reader that. And tell them a couple of times. I’d be cautious about giving a discount right from the start of their because price isn’t why they churned to begin with, but overtime, it’s a viable strategy. On the other hand, for active churn, follow up once a month with an offer—if that’s your strategy—or promote some of the biggest stories. Churning from a paid subscription is different than unsubscribing from email, so market to them if it makes sense.

But don’t stop with just email. Paid acquisition is critical at this stage. With their emails, you can target them with focused ads promoting specific pieces of content that they may find interesting or an offer to come back. They know the brand, so they are more likely to pay attention than a random publisher promoting content.

The key thing to remember is that it takes time. The goal is to win back some of the subscribers. You won’t get them all, but these ex-readers could make for good renewed subscribers.

And it works with newsletters too.

While these sorts of tactics are more common with paid subscriptions—due to the higher LTV associated—you should be trying to win back these free subscribers also.

In this case, the primary tactic you will use is paid acquisition. As your list of unsubscribed readers grows, start adding them to a paid marketing campaign. Most of them will ignore the ads—especially if it was active churn—but some will come back.

The main point here is that an ex-reader is just someone who has not yet started reading you again. I’m not suggesting you should spam them—hence why it’s mostly paid marketing that I am advocating for—but I believe these folks are easier to pull back into the fold than someone totally unaware of the brand.

Ultimately, my advice to publishers is simple: most of your paid budget should go to acquiring new subscribers. However, some of that budget should be tested on reacquiring your former readers. Track how well it performs. You may be surprised that some of your exes have actually decided to come back.