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Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

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Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#161

Post by thewebcount »

colinmhayes wrote: post #52
registeredcorn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer a higher subscription rate for the service. The sensation of paying for something, then paying on top of that thing is infuriating. It's like paying admission to enter a theme park, then having to pay a fee for each ride: either let me enter for free, and pay for each ride, or pay to enter, and ride for free. Assuming a higher subscription rate would be prohibitively expensive, then yes, I would prefer no…

You can change Amazon video to only show free options. A subscription that made all the rentable movies free would be prohibitively expensive. You should basically be thinking of prime video and the movie rental service as different businesses.

I mean, for a long time, when a new movie came out on iTunes, I would first check Netflix to see if it was included in my subscription, and about 50% of the time it was. You likely wouldn't get the same selection, but it would not be prohibitively expensive to have at least some of the movies available on their service.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#162

Post by eganist »

irowe wrote: post #144
eganist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got names? Useful to know and to avoid.

ClassPass is one example I recently ran into. I’ve already bought credits for the month and am planning to cancel my current plan, but if I do I immediately forfeit my (prepaid!) credits.

Interesting. Might as well try charging that one back if you need the money back and they refuse.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#163

Post by Schroedingersat »

b112 wrote: post #140
aeruder wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company that used A/B testing to justify call-to-cancel; makes me angry every time I think about it. I guess that's one of the tricky things about A/B testing - it is easy to measure that call-to-cancel decreases customer churn, not so easy to measure the number of people that will never sign up for your service or the number of customers that do churn and swear to never use you again.

And, word of mouth is still a thing, which no advertising buddget can fix, when deeply bad, toxic, prevalent.

Just go the nestle route and don't put your name on 90% of your products.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#164

Post by fomine3 »

hef19898 wrote: post #60
Someone1234 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Growth hackers" imply they're doing this for the long term, which I don't believe at all. All these strategies do is give the organization a short term bump in exchange for a negative long term reputation and customer loss. I've literally been warned not to sub to the New York Times by random people without prompting when the newspaper was mentioned in passing. Is that "growth hacking?" They've made having a subscri…

I just cancelled my NYT subscription, took me 5 minutes. Trying to cancel my Wired subscription, non-US subscriber, means I have to wait for the next delivery to use a number on the envelope to identify myself in order to cancel the subscription. Well, be it I guess.

It's funny that NYT has international help line for cancel, but can't just put a unsubscribe button. https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014792927-Inte...

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#165

Post by ec109685 »

travisjungroth wrote: post #153
ec109685 wrote: post #73

This is unethical: “It makes sense that sleepers churn: They aren’t getting much value from their subscription. Yet they don’t churn right away. In any given month, 90% of sleepers will simply continue to stay inactive. It’s only when they wake up again and come back that their cancellation rates soar, generally accounting for about 30% of active churn. This makes re-engaging sleepers difficult. How do you bring them…

I've seen the hazards of "raise the dead" campaigns before. You send out a campaign to your inactive users and get 20% engagement. Half of those are cancellations. With 30% sleeper rate, you just immediately 3% of your users. Not fun. What I haven't seen is an analysis of the effect on retention rate. That's going to play out over time. Some of the users who cancelled were going to anyway and some people you reactiva…

Companies talk about being obsessed with their customers and being customer first.

I hope those companies are not concerned if raising the dead causes cancellations.

The slack model that automatically charges you based on last months active users seems like the best way.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#166

Post by colinmhayes »

thewebcount wrote: post #161
colinmhayes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can change Amazon video to only show free options. A subscription that made all the rentable movies free would be prohibitively expensive. You should basically be thinking of prime video and the movie rental service as different businesses.

I mean, for a long time, when a new movie came out on iTunes, I would first check Netflix to see if it was included in my subscription, and about 50% of the time it was. You likely wouldn't get the same selection, but it would not be prohibitively expensive to have at least some of the movies available on their service.

They do have some of the movies available on their service

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#167

Post by 1123581321 »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #91
auggierose wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you prefer the movies you can rent were not there at all?

What an odd question. I would prefer the movies that are on the service I pay for to be included in my package. It's a different service, rentals, smashed into the service I pay for, prime "free" videos. That is what makes it frustrating. I do in fact sometimes end up renting those videos which is why they include them. But it's not a good customer experience by any means.

It was a great question. Contentment eludes you if you can’t recognize you have enough, while being aware more is possible. If that’s not possible, switch to a service that gives you “everything” (but costs more or has fewer titles.)

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#168

Post by 1123581321 »

thewebcount wrote: post #161
colinmhayes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can change Amazon video to only show free options. A subscription that made all the rentable movies free would be prohibitively expensive. You should basically be thinking of prime video and the movie rental service as different businesses.

I mean, for a long time, when a new movie came out on iTunes, I would first check Netflix to see if it was included in my subscription, and about 50% of the time it was. You likely wouldn't get the same selection, but it would not be prohibitively expensive to have at least some of the movies available on their service.

Licensing was underpriced back then and studios didn’t strategically withhold much.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#169

Post by 1123581321 »

phailhaus wrote: post #135
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a paper delivered to my door as well as magazines like Atlantic, New Yorker, and Economist. Worth every penny.

Cool! Anyways, most people don't do this because they don't read articles frequently enough, or they read from too many sources.

I think you're misunderstanding. You're getting less from your scattered reading than he is from investing in a few, well-packaged publications, assuming you spend the same amount of effort reading. A regular reader of a publication gains an expertise that saves a lot of time and allows for much more reading between the lines. That's a big part of what people are paying for. It wouldn't make sense to pay for more publications than you can master, even if they cost what you'd consider a fair per-article rate. It's not really about minimizing cost per article by buying articles in bulk, especially in the digital age, as you previously noted.

Re: Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in the first 24hrs

#170

Post by steve_taylor »

josephcsible wrote: post #96
steve_taylor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto-renew is fine, as long as the product's billing system has the necessary protections, such as - low-friction cancellation - email users a few days before monthly renewals and twice before annual renewals - ability to remove the payment method altogether - don't require a credit card for a free trial If cancellation takes effect immediately, the service should provide an immediate pro rata refund.

> don't require a credit card for a free trial This doesn't bother me as much as most of the other complaints here. How else can you keep someone from creating multiple accounts to get multiple free trials?

That's an issue for a subset of SaaS products that deliver value without stickiness. Sticky products, though, should definitely not take a credit card upfront. For example, a project management product is sticky because I put my data into it and it's too much hassle to recreate that data every 14 days.

For non-sticky SaaS products, there may be a case for taking a credit card in order to prevent multiple free trials per credit card fingerprint, but there are alternatives, such as taking their phone number and sending a verification code. It's not foolproof, but it will stop the majority of free trial abuse.

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