Ack! Not another industry post about customer retention and churn. (Nope, this isn’t that!)
In the publishing industry, most “experts” will recommend your company start implementing ideas A, B and C to reduce churn and improve retention. I’ve seen these experts say things like “Start your retention program!” So, you’re telling me that a retention strategy is to … start doing retention? And, are there 7 strategies? 22? Just 5?
Let’s move on.
Businesses have been trying to retain customers and prevent churn since Kongō Gumi was trying to prevent Buddhists from contracting a competitor to build the next temple. (Kongō Gumi has the distinction of being the world’s oldest business that is still around.) Very cool. So, why is this a hot topic in 2023, over 1,400 years later? In discussions with clients and leaders in markets that AdvantageCS serves, revenue margins are thinning, revenue sources are being reduced and competition is increasing. The focus used to be more aligned with how to keep acquiring customers, but that shifted in recent years to a more balanced approach of retaining existing customers while trying to attain new ones. Some clients have actually created entire departments focused on retention and reducing churn.
The question of whether you should be making retention a core part of your business has already been answered (hint: the answer is yes!). The “things” you should be doing are well laid out but be careful — there is a surprisingly large variety of retention and churn reduction techniques out there that may not translate well to the publishing and/or subscription world. To get you started, we like Digiday’s take on subscriber retention, Recurly’s strategies and subscriber insights, and Zendesk’s optimism in their trends analysis.
So, how can Advantage assist our clients and our market with retention and churn? Well, let’s look at the top “4” ways:
We’re confident that Advantage can assist you in adopting many of these retention and churn ideas your company implements. And … soon, I’d like to introduce you to a 5th way that combines all these techniques! If you’ve been paying attention at all to any form of media, then you know that AI-powered applications are getting incredible hype right now ... some of it warranted, some not. We are pleased to announce that AdvantageCS has been exploring this area for several years, waiting for the right opportunity that will provide the most value to our software and to our clients. We think we’ve found it and look forward to sharing that with our community this year.
Questions about how Advantage can support your retention and churn reduction efforts? Please contact Kelly at kelly.grace@advantagecs.com.