This is an extract of an article published in Tom Burrell’s Retention Blueprint Newsletter. The Retention Blueprint' is a free, retention-focused digest delivered straight to your inbox every Friday, providing you with the insights you need to drive retention-led growth.

The math is simple: if you meet your retention targets, your acquisition targets don’t move. Miss your retention targets, and your acquisition efforts and associated media costs skyrocket, reducing profitability. The most successful subscription brands (think Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and Apple) prioritise protecting Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), which hinges on successful retention. 

The Problem – Lack of Focus 

While working within and consulting to subscription brands, one of the key challenges I have observed is a real lack of understanding of where to focus retention efforts. There can be a desire to optimize all customer interactions and this would be fine with infinite resources, but I have never encountered an organization that has infinite resources. So what ultimately transpires is a very haphazard approach to customer retention efforts, with teams often differing to HIPPO syndrome (the highest paid person’s opinion). 

Where to Focus Customer Retention Efforts 

There are two key aspects to focus: 

1. Focusing on the right customers 
2. Focussing on the right moments 

Focusing on the right customers is about leveraging customer lifetime value to prioritise your retention efforts. This is the subject for another post. 

In this post, we will explore how to focus on the right moments. 

Focussing On The Right Moments 

In any subscription business, there are key moments in the relationship; the first 90 days, or in life when usage drops, an important service issue, the cancel journey – these are all often key moments of truth which require the most focus. Other aspects of the experience matter much less. 

The key is to understand your subscription business’s most important moments of truth. You can do this using analytics and data science to understand what happened immediately before a churn event or to identify which types of interactions, experiences, or behaviors have led to improved retention. You can also understand these moments through experiential NPS tracking or qualitative research. 

The Path Forwards 

Once you have identified the right moments, you must obsess about them to drive the most optimum retention and, therefore, P&L outcomes. This means extensive experimentation and a program of always-on optimisation, ideally at a sub-cohort level. As you do this, you will see ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) grow. 

Case Study – Amazon Prime

One of the best examples of a brand prioritizing its their most important moment comes from Amazon Prime. In 2005, when Jeff Bezos launched Amazon Prime, there was a lot of concern at Amazon that this would be a margin reducer and indeed, when it first launched it absolutely was. Jeff even acknowledged this at the launch: “We expect Amazon Prime will be expensive for Amazon in the short term. In the long term, we hope to earn even more of your business..”

Almost 20 years later Amazon Prime customers are worth 5X more than the rest and the company has grown 30X since the Prime launch ($30m v $900m), all as a result of protecting the highest value customers and prioritizing the moment that mattered most to them, the delivery window. 

Some case studies:

Like many data-heavy brands, The Financial Times runs a digest of each subscriber’s consumption, e.g., articles viewed, number of stories per month, favourite topics, etc. However, rather than being an annual all-subscriber communication sent at a specific time of year (like Spotify), it is tailored to each subscriber’s contract end date, and where usage is heavy, it is linked to an upsell.  

Netflix approached one moment of truth very differently from most subscription brands. Netflix used to offer free trials and near the end of the free trial period, they provided a clear reminder that customers would be charged after they ended the free trial period (many brands simply avoid communication and let the customer roll onto a paid plan). This transparency helped to avoid bill shock, reduce complaints, improve brand perception, facilitate referrals, and, in fact, reduce churn from cohorts who would have been annoyed had Netflix not told them about the expiry of the trial. This is an excellent example of examing customer data and behaviour at a moment of truth and responding accordingly, despite being against common wisdom. 

The Starbucks loyalty program is a brilliant tool for understanding customer behaviour and optimising moments of truth and is leveraged by more than 40million people in the US. By linking purchase history, payment history, and basic demographic information, Starbucks can create highly personalised experiences that drive retention (2). For instance, when you visit a Starbucks in a new city and leverage your loyalty program details, the order screen will display your favourite drink, recommend your favourite treat, the barista will call you by your name and you will earn rewards for your transaction, which you can use in any other Starbucks in the country. This is another great example of leveraging customer data to optimise a key moment of truth.

For more from Tom, and to transform your retention impact in just 5 minutes per week, subscribe to ‘The Retention Blueprint’ Newsletter.

This article provides recommendations on which steps to include in your onboarding journey to effectively engage and retain subscribers. Scroll to the bottom for benchmarks of on-site onboarding journeys from leading publishing brands (a list we're continuously adding to!)

But there’s often a disconnect between acquisition and retention teams. If acquisition try to convert as many readers as quickly as possible, to achieve their individual KPIs, the retention job is tougher.

The solution? Well, aside from collaborating between these teams with shared KPIs around increasing subscriber value, it’s the collective understanding that retention starts from the moment a reader first visits your site. It’s therefore essential to integrate retention-optimizing strategies throughout the funnel, before, during and post conversion.

One moment in particular when retention work is essential is in the moments immediately after subscription, the on-site onboarding journey.

How should you choose your onboarding steps?

Onboarding steps should be chosen by combining…

• How popular a product is (proxied by the average proportion of users that use it at least once over a 30-day timeframe)
• How impactful a product is on engagement (proxied by how engaged a user of that product is 30 days after using it)

According to FT Strategies, you can then rank features by how ‘likely’ they are to drive adoption and generate engagement, using this to structure your onboarding process accordingly.

Newsletter subscription

Newsletters are widely recognized as valuable engagement, conversion and retention tools. So it’s no wonder that they’re considered an essential part of any good onboarding journey.

At El Confidencial, for instance, readers who are registered for a newsletter have a 15% greater chance of renewing their subscription. At La Vanguardia, churn is reduced by 50% when a subscriber is signed up to the newsletter, and this content has proven to build subscriber loyalty. 

According to data from EL PAÍS, 63% of subscribers are signed up to a newsletter which has proven to directly impact churn, reducing it by up to 22%. Premium newsletter subscribers have 29% lower churn, whilst this figure is at 15% for app users.

At The Financial Times, research has proven that 18% of engaged subscribers would be disengaged if it wasn’t for the newsletters. What’s more, they’re also hugely impactful when it comes to lifetime value.

The essentials for newsletter sign up onboarding step:

• Communicate when you’ll send the newsletter and how frequently – it’s often clearer to the readers to say “Tuesdays” rather than “weekly”
• Consider highlighting the fact that these newsletters are only available to subscribers, thus forefronting the value this reader now has access to
• Images help quick comprehension of the newsletter topic
• Run research to discover why readers are so engaged in your newsletters and be sure to highlight this. For instance, for The Atlantic, it’s likely the journalist writing the content, as this is what the page focuses on
• Make sign up easy – a single click via a check box is often the preferred method
• Quality not quantity – you don’t need to feature all newsletters but maybe just those that are the most popular, most valuable for increasing engagement/forming habits or even personalized recommendations most suited to that individual

App download

Whilst websites excel at acquisition, attracting massive audiences that not only have their own intrinsic added value but who have the potential to be encouraged into a deeper and more lucrative relationship with the brand, apps often play the role of a hub for a publisher’s most loyal readers to come and engage with their brand on a regular basis, reinforcing a direct relationship and creating a level of stickiness that can’t be achieved elsewhere.

Plus apps are super sticky in terms of time spent and frequency of visits, key engagement metrics that correlate with high retention.

The essentials for the app download step in subscriber onboarding:

• The tricky thing here is to go from desktop to mobile, but the QR code idea is an effective one that makes for a smooth, frictionless experience

• Balance simplicity (“Download the app”) and ensuring a subscriber understands the value of your app. Why should they download it? How will it benefit them?
• Images support comprehension and provide a preview of the product
• If you can create a segment of subscribers who haven’t yet downloaded the app, why not integrate a banner like L’Équipe post-onboarding

Engagement and discovery of subscriber value

Of course, onboarding is also so much more than just newsletters and apps. It’s also about

• Building trust – following through on your brand promise and doing what you say you’ll do to help customers perceive your brand as trustworthy
• Demonstrating and immediately delivering unique value that users can’t get elsewhere or without subscribing

• Welcoming your user & thanking them for converting
• Showing them around, signposting them to content and features
• Personalizing their experience to ensure it’s the best it can be from the moment they start accessing the content
• Activation – if you have community features, such as comment sections or social groups, help them be a part of them and encourage participation

The Washington Post is an interesting, impressive example here. They keep onboarding very simple (just 3 steps) focusing mainly on newsletter sign but also personalizing based on a user’s interests and routine. In this way, they bring the newsletter to the reader, based on their existing reading habits, rather than trying to build a new habit.

This also delivers immediate value in the form of a very personalized selection of newsletters for the subscriber.

> The Washington Post’s attention to detail: 12 things you can learn from their strategy

How long should subscriber onboarding go on for?

Of course on-site onboarding is only the start, and this journey should continue across multiple channels. But a common question is how many days should you continue to onboard for?

As usual, the answer depends on the company, with publishers telling us anything from 2 days to 100. And it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a habit!… But the important this is to start strong on day 1.

General onboarding best practices

• The worst thing you can do is nothing! Test, analyze, optimize
• Have a single goal for each step
• Consider the importance of each step carefully to ensure its value to the subscriber – every click, scroll and redirection counts!
• Work cross channel – online, via email, app, WhatsApp, phone… – considering the type of message and when you’re sending it
• …but don’t over communicate during this period. Bolak of The Globe and Mail for instance shared that they don’t allow for any other email communication during the subscriber’s introductory period (currently 180 days), only their loyalty and retention team strategically communicates to new subscribers by email
• Consider segmenting newly converted subscribers and personalizing the onboarding experience to deliver as much value as possible in the moments immediately after paying. For instance, subscribers with high churn propensity will need more engagement
• Always give readers the option of skipping an onboarding step and make help easily accessible, online, via a chatbot or by phone
• Talk to subscribers! Listen, act and highlight changes
• Be creative! The Economist launched a print brochure, some publishers send letters or postcards, Financial Times offer the chance to book a walk through (the banner at the bottom of this screen)…

• As always, track performance at each step and through the onboarding journey as a whole

Some of the key onboarding metrics to track, mentioned by publishing professionals:

• Activation rate of each onboarding step
• Number of active days/frequency of site/app visits (considering daily active users [DAU], weekly active users [WAU], and monthly active users [MAU]) post conversion
• Newsletter signup rate post-onboarding, engagement with the newsletter and the correlation between retention/churn and newsletter subscription
• App downloads and app usage
• Activation or use of subscriber-only features or benefits, such as ability to share a subscription or play games
• Active churn rate
• Churn rate at first pricing step up or number of trial subscribers who convert to a full offer

Benchmarking

In June, we organized a subscription speed-dating workshop in London. Speed-dating you said? Yes: a new kind of workshop aimed at facilitating knowledge-sharing among participants while... having fun.

As a result of which, your end goal is to make people:

• Interact with you (comment on your articles, fill up a survey…)
• Download your mobile app
• Subscribe to your newsletters
• Join your WhatsApp groups
• Listen to your podcasts
• Attend your events
• Buy from your e-shop…

Once you understand the purpose behind your actions, you can begin the work.

Step 1: Segment your onboarded users

By segmenting your new clients, you empower them with the best onboarding experience possible. It’s not just a good idea, it’s a strategy that puts your clients in the drivers seat of their onboarding journey.

You can adjust a variety of things, including…

• The length of the onboarding journey: long or short depending on the user’s engagement 
• The content you push to them based on the content that converted the user in the first place
• Channels you use: automatic onboarding, or add a human touch for big B2B accounts…

Based on…

• The offer they’re subscribing to (free member, trial subscriber, bundle…)
• Their use of the product (Are they using your mobile app? Did they come to your events?)
• The data you have on them (location, job, family, age…)
• The platform they’ve created their account on (mobile, desktop, app…)

> Read more on L’Équipe: limiting churn when increasing the price from a highly discounted subscription offer

Step 2: Carefully choose your communication channels

Which tools should you use to onboard new clients? 

Whilst email welcome series are the most common, various other channels can help build relationships and engagement:

• On-site onboarding journeys, like The Telegraph (see here)
• Postal series, like The Economist (3.5% increase in engagement)
• Phonecalls by real humans, like La Tribune or The FT
• Demo/video calls
• Webinar-type onboarding
• Push notifications
• Private Whatsapp message
• In-app onboarding scheme
• In-app onboarding messages
• But of course, all participants agreed that welcome series by email do the heavy lifting

Step 3: Decide which content you want to share

Workshop participants’ ideas were endless. But here are the main ones:

• Message from the editor-in-chief
• Manifest on who we are, humanize the brand
• Forefront the subscription benefits
• Share the most popular subscriber-only content
• Share the more recent content from the newsroom
• Handwritten postcards
• Fictional person (AI) welcome message
• Welcome video

We’d also recommend allowing the new subscriber to easily return to the article they were trying to read before being blocked by the paywall.

Step 4: Define how long your onboarding journey should last

Spoiler: there’s no right answer. Our workshop’s attendees shared what they do, and it couldn’t be more diverse:

• 1 day
• 25 days
• 1 month
• 2 months
• a 90 day-period

Step 5: Decide what should be the frequency of communication

When deciding on the frequency of communication, it’s important to strike a balance between keeping clients engaged without overwhelming them. 

Our workshop found the decreasing rhythm of one publisher particularly interesting: 1 email per day in the first week, then 2 emails per week, and finally 1 email per week.

Step 6: Chose your success KPIs

They may vary depending on your business, but attendees agreed that these were the most important:

• How many people discover the benefits of your offer
• Performance of welcome emails
  • Open rates
  • CTR
• Newsletter sign-ups
• Podcasts listens
• App downloads
• How many days do they spend on our platforms after the onboarding (next 30 days of activity)
• Recency of visit
• Long-term retention of subscribers

> Unlocking Customer Lifetime Value: The Power of Personalized Subscriber Onboarding at The Washington Post

Step 7: keep calm and carry on, everybody has the same challenges

Do you find onboarding strategies hard to orchestrate? Good news: you’re not alone. Audiencers shared their main challenges with us:

• Getting the data (track reading habits, know where the value comes from for each user)
• Consolidating the data you have on members/subscribers
• Tracking the impact of what you’re doing/choosing the right KPIs
• Trying not to repeat the same messages on all channels (emails, on-site..)
• The difficulty of converting existing members or subs to a new platform
• Monitoring usage habits after the onboarding period

And the question we all had in mind, without daring to ask it:

Should you pause your editorial emails during onboarding? The answer is a big YES, but of course you need to fit the editorial content into the onboarding experience…

The solution

Working with our creative team, we designed a booklet that introduces subscribers to all of their benefits. It also enables them to quickly get started, explore our journalism and establish a reading habit. The booklet complements our existing email welcomes series by guiding new subscribers on using our app—a key retention-driving action—and managing their subscription, which gives them confidence in their purchase.

We also address pain points raised in customer surveys such as understanding the breadth of our newsletter coverage. Additionally, the pack includes a letter from our editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, to provide a  personal touch and to welcome them into our community. 

To measure the impact of the pack, we worked with our Data Insights team to determine test design and KPI. Rather than rolling the pack out to everyone, we conducted an A/B test with 50% of new subscribers receiving a pack and a 50% control group receiving nothing.

The KPI was to determine if the pack increased subscriber engagement as we know this has a direct correlation with retention rates. Engagement at The Economist is defined by the number of pieces of content consumed within a month. This can range from articles read to newsletter opens, and is something we are continuously optimizing towards.

> To read next: NZZ: How do you inspire people in the first 100 days?

Results and next steps

The test had a statistically significant impact with the test group showing an observed engagement uplift of 3.5%. Interestingly, some regional differences were observed, but these could also be due to the start mixes—further testing is required to reach statistical significance.

We are planning our next test to further optimize the pack and see if we can increase the engagement uplift—watch this space!  

Advice for others

If I were to advise other businesses on introducing a physical welcome pack I would recommend analyzing whether the cost of mailing a pack is justified and the relevance of a pack to your audience and product offering. For example, at The Economist we know we offer a premium product therefore want to reflect this in the customer experience. Additionally, although our proportion of bundle subscribers (print and digital) is declining, a welcome pack complements this cohort particularly well. However, perhaps for something like a streaming service where the audience is likely to be younger, is a purely digital offering and has a low CLTV; it may not be the best fit. 

When designing a welcome pack, I would suggest selecting the key actions you want new customers to take within their first few weeks and work with your creative team to effectively translate this into print. QR codes and vanity URLs are also great ways to seamlessly direct customers online. To keep your welcome pack concise, be discerning about which benefits you include and which actions you’d like subscribers to take—information should be easily absorbed and the pack should not be a chore to read. 

And finally, I would always advise testing rather than rolling out 100%. Direct mail campaigns are expensive and may not resonate with your audience—they may even drive churn in trialists by serving as a reminder.

Here are four things you can learn from the NZZ:

1. Four Mission Teams along the Subscriber Journey

The NZZ works in four cross-functional mission teams that are organized along the subscriber journey: Discover, Subscribe, Engage and Delve deeper.

So the first step is to create a positive first contact with the NZZ for as many people as possible, then to bring them closer to the brand through registrations, podcasts and newsletters  convert them to a subscription and finally build loyalty and increase ARPU through additional offers and upgrades such as the premium subscription “PRO Global”.

The missions are intended to break down silos and bring product, UX design, technology, marketing, data and editorial teams closely together. Each mission consists of a core team from three disciplines (product, design, technology), which draws support from adjacent teams depending on the project.

Aligning the customer journey means that there are clear responsibilities and each team has KPIs that are easy to measure. But Alban also sees challenges in that users are not accompanied from start to finish and there are sometimes dependencies between teams that make the work more difficult.

That’s why he’s currently working on revising the team structure as part of his leadership program at Columbia University. Because, just like product development, organizational development should be driven forward iteratively and learnings implemented efficiently.

2. From registration to subscription

Alban’s team is responsible for discovery, which roughly means from the first contact with the brand to registration and subsequent onboarding.

They are currently experimenting with registration walls and when this makes more sense than a paywall to build up a pool of interested users.

After registration, he considers the first 100 days to be crucial, because if you don’t take out a subscription by then, in most cases you won’t do so again.

The most important product to get started with is the daily NZZ Briefing. Readers receive this automatically after registering and it is designed to build a habit of reading NZZ journalism.

But it is also important for them to ensure that their offerings are used as widely as possible. That’s why podcasts and videos are also recommended to registered readers, even if they are usually available for free. It’s about building a relationship with the brand in a variety of ways, developing loyalty and trust.

3. Using personalization to combat the filter bubble

Personalization plays a major role on NZZ, especially in the newsletter, “My NZZ”, and in reading recommendations below articles.

However, one should pay attention to the users’ needs and concerns. They fear missing out on important topics because they don’t match their profile or because they sink deeper and deeper into their own bubble.

That’s why the personalized NZZ products are designed so that you always see the most important news whilst also getting targeted inspiration for topics that broaden your horizons.

To do this, the internal data team develops models based, for example, on users with similar profiles.

The homepage and the NZZ Briefing are not yet personalized. Alban hasn’t ruled this out, but they would like to use more editorial expertise in this area and curate topics that are relevant to readers.

He generally sees personalization as a retention rather than acquisition tool. On the one hand, the data to give good recommendations is (still) missing at the acquisition moment, but on the other hand, the reading recommendations are only valuable if you have a subscription in order to access the articles.

4. Develop new markets with verticals

NZZ, for example, has set up verticals with “Planet A” for climate journalism and “Well-Being” to attract users in new subject areas.

The verticals often start with a newsletter or podcast, but are then expanded to other areas.

They are managed by editors who serve as the face of the brand and work closely with the product team. This is also one of the big differences to departments, because verticals can work like small startups within the company, pursuing their own goals and being developed by cross-functional teams.

Even if the verticals open up new topics, they must always have a connection to the core product, because only then can readers be transferred to the core subscription. Depending on how much they already offer for these target groups, Alban recommends different strategies.

What he advises against: cheap subscriptions for individual verticals. They should continue to contribute to the core business and not shift the focus away from the normal NZZ subscription.

Find more of Lennart’s work on Subscribe Now.

Anjali Iyer is Head of Lifecycle Marketing at The Washington Post with over 15 years of deep knowledge in customer experience, customer insights, and strategy.

Our primary focus is to promote consumption, which drives both subscription and advertising revenue. By encouraging subscribers to spend more time with our journalism, we increase the likelihood of subscription renewals and active engagement with branded content and advertisements.

To achieve this, we have implemented an automated email subscriber journey that incorporates algorithmic triggers. This approach actively encourages subscribers to visit our site regularly and develop habits that enrich their overall experience, thereby driving revenue growth and maximizing the lifetime value of our subscribers.

Based on internal research, we have identified significant trends that further reinforce the importance of our approach:

1) The first two weeks of a subscriber’s journey are crucial as they significantly influence the subscriber’s perception. We have a limited window of 14 days to showcase the value we provide and build engagement.

2) Subscribers who have made fewer than four visits exhibit a retention rate that is 10 percentage points lower than those who have made 15 or more visits. This emphasizes the need for proactive engagement strategies to encourage subscribers to develop a consistent presence on our platforms.

3) Subscribers who utilize our app and visit us 15 or more times showcase higher Net Promoter Scores (NPS) than other subscribers. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric used to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction with a product, service, or brand. It provides insight into how likely customers are to recommend a company to others. To calculate NPS, the percentage of detractors (score 0-6) is subtracted from the percentage of promoters (score 9-10).  The resulting score can range from -100 to +100. A higher NPS indicates a higher proportion of satisfied and loyal customers, while a lower score suggests a larger base of dissatisfied customers.

This underscores the positive impact of fostering a robust subscriber experience and promoting frequent usage. Engaging subscribers is crucial for renewal and ensuring they continue to receive the value and benefits they signed up for. It also provides an opportunity for us to segment subscriber behaviors and take appropriate actions.

New Subscriber Onboarding

The subscriber journey begins with recommended onsite onboarding actions, seamlessly transitioning into triggered email communications.

During the onsite onboarding process, subscribers are prompted to select their interests and to receive personalized newsletter recommendations. This information enables us to better understand subscriber needs and preferences, facilitating the delivery of personalized experiences in the future. We have high completion rates for onsite onboarding.

The first email serves as a warm welcome note from our authors, establishing a personal connection with subscribers and sharing The Washington Post’s mission. It presents an opportunity to communicate our beliefs and reaffirm why subscribers have chosen to be a part of our community.

As the email series progresses, each subscriber receives tailored messages based on their individual preferences. Our objective is to ensure that subscribers only receive information that is relevant to their level of engagement thus far. For instance, we encourage premium subscribers to share their bonus subscriptions, one of the perks for premium subscribers. Other examples include sending email reminders to subscribers who have not completed onsite onboarding to select their interests and enroll in newsletters.

Behavioral data is utilized to personalize the onboarding experience at the subscriber level. Our goal is to educate subscribers about the benefits early on in their tenure and instill habits that positively impact retention and customer lifetime value.

Onsite Onboarding

Email Onboarding

Email Onboarding Results

To measure the effectiveness of our email onboarding journey, we withheld a control group to evaluate metrics such as total visits, days visited within 30 days, article pageviews, habit adoption, and retention.

Since the launch of the subscriber onboarding journey, we have observed statistically significant lift in retention and incremental customer lifetime value after 12 weeks compared to the control group.

These results highlight the success of our approach in enhancing engagement and providing greater value to our subscribers. Subscriber onboarding plays a pivotal role in achieving our subscription marketing goals, including increased consumption, reduced churn, and maximized CLV (subscription and ad revenue).