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

niemanlab.org

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

#151

Post by gumby »

> “You’ll need a thought-out plan using proven tactics to start forming habits early. Email newsletters, a welcome letter from the editor, a mobile app download, podcasts, subscription benefits reminders and/or a series of reminder emails over the first week and month have all proven successful with audiences.”

I don’t want any of that crap. I just want the articles you used to produce in print, except now through my RSS feed. The energy you put into hiring podcast consultants or generating auto play video would be better spent on reportage.

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

#152

Post by es7 »

I would pay a decent chunk of money per month if I could get access to all news sources. But my news consumption is never done by going to a source. I just want to read articles linked from HN or Google News or Reddit, etc.

I need something like Spotify for news sources. Ad-free access to any content. I’ll pay for that. But I’m not going to subscribe to each source individually.

Edit: I would want a way to avoid paying for clickbait that I accidentally click on. Maybe sources could be paid per active-viewing-minute and definitely not for clicks.

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

#153

Post by travisjungroth »

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 reactivated were saved. It would be very handy to have a formula of what values make sense to send out these campaigns so you can stomach the short term loss for the long term gain.

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

#154

Post by thibautg »

Spoom wrote: post #21
jwie wrote: post #6

This is just lack of auto renew protections. Consumers are wise to this, and they’re not really canceling. I bet if you could turn off auto-renew they wouldn’t cancel. But, to nobody’s surprise, the MBAs don’t like options where the user doesn’t give away money by accident. Auto renew is one of those things that should be illegal to default users into.

I'm seeing more companies terminate accounts immediately upon cancellation, especially for free trials. This makes people back out of cancellation while it's on their mind, and then they forget to cancel before the deadline. It's a dark pattern I really wish the industry would stop pushing.

Apple is also culprit of this.

I activated the free trial for Apple Arcade because an ad for it was prominently shown in the settings app.

If you cancel the free trial, they immediately terminate the access. But worse: they did not send an email before charging the first non-free month. When I saw a €4.99 charge on my credit card, I canceled the trial (that I did not even use). I was disappointed about Apple using such dark patterns.

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

#155

Post by copperx »

LanceH wrote: post #137
noasaservice wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm going in for assisted suicide tomorrow, and getting my affairs in order."

I appreciate this as darkly humorous, but there is the off chance they send the police around to check on you.

I've used "I was a temporary worker and my visa expired" with great success.

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

#156

Post by copperx »

Someone1234 wrote: post #63
BurningFrog wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that the MBAs are right, and losing the business of people like you is outweighed by larger gains.

And by "people like me" you mean customers that don't want a business to treat them poorly?

Once you understand that most people live in a semi-conscious state because of mental overwhelm, physical frailty, and general life problems, abusive business practices such as this one, loan sharks, etc., start making a lot of sense.

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

#157

Post by popcube »

retcon wrote: post #103
techdragon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just a stereotype it’s often their explicit job description! They get hired or promoted with a performance metric for juicing those metrics either as an expectation of the job or as a requirement for performance incentives and bonus pay… This all of course tends to be set up by fellow MBAs higher up the corporate food chain and since everyone keeps personally profiting no one sees any reason to stop, all the…

I think that corporate sponsorship of education needs of to be outlawed. We've had at least three generations of exponential feedback of antisocial principles dominating business education. Taking much longer to go hockey stick. MBAs can't keep resting on the laurels of bringing the first GI Bill gen from draft to serving technical competence to industrial relevance. For a start the foundation for the qualification i…

this sound like natural selection, if they decide to support the education that only generated employees who give their company negative influences.

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

#158

Post by popcube »

es7 wrote: post #152

I would pay a decent chunk of money per month if I could get access to all news sources. But my news consumption is never done by going to a source. I just want to read articles linked from HN or Google News or Reddit, etc. I need something like Spotify for news sources. Ad-free access to any content. I’ll pay for that. But I’m not going to subscribe to each source individually. Edit: I would want a way to avoid payi…

but people collected best article and published on HN, this is difficult to have a competitive prices when best part of your products had been stolen.

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

#159

Post by smegsicle »

lamontcg wrote: post #145
LaundroMat wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customers they lost don't show up on any metric. I've often wondered about how to measure aversion instead of conversion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy > US Air Force Brigadier General Edward Lansdale reportedly told McNamara,[3] who was trying to develop a list of metrics to allow him to scientifically follow the progress of the war, that he was not considering the feelings of the common rural Vietnamese people. McNamara wrote it down on his list in pencil, then erased it and told Lansdale that he could not measure it,…

was mcnamara autistic?

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

#160

Post by thewebcount »

ssully wrote: post #44
fluidcruft wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I really hate is that there doesn't seem to be some sort of Netflix-type subscription thing (or if there is I'm not aware of it and the subscribe now! banners blasted over everything never seem to suggest them). If there's an interesting story in, say, the Austin local newspaper and I live in Idaho or wherever I am not bothering to subscribe to Austin's local newspaper just to see if the rest of the article is a…

Apple News+ or whatever it is called does this. It has a good spread of papers across the country (Houston Chronical, LA Times, Kansas City Star, etc), but obviously doesn't include the bigger publications like the NYTimes or Washington Post.

It does include the Washington Post. I read WP articles on it all the time.
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