Comply with click-to-cancel regulations while saving more subscribers from canceling. NSS Online Cancel Intervention is a truly unique solution that influences subscribers to modify a subscription so they don’t cancel. A best-of-the-best solution from NSS educates and advocates for your subscribers. It helps customers reconnect with the value behind — and in front of — their subscription. It is a tool that works 24/7. It’s the retention manager's new best friend.
Are you doing enough?
Earlier regulation placed the penalty at $16,000 per violation. The FTC and states attorneys-general require marketers now to provide a "simple mechanism" to cancel a subscription. Likewise, major credit card issuers adopted rules that say, “If you let customers buy online, you must allow them to cancel online.”
However, a formal provision (March 2023) will enable the FTC to penalize companies more easily, however, by handing out fines of $50,000 per day for non-compliance, according to FTC chair Lina Khan.
“If adopted, this rule would enable more efficient enforcement. It would create a more powerful deterrent by introducing the risk of civil penalties,” Khan said in a statement, adding that “The click-to-cancel section of the proposed rule would give companies clear and specific instructions.”
It’s not about compliance alone.
Newspaper Subscription Services (NSS) pioneered a "simple mechanism" that educates your subscribers on the benefits of retaining their subscription, and ultimately modifying the subscription instead of canceling it. Taking the stop order is only a part of the story.
How to position your Online Cancel Intervention Solution:
Go beyond the stop!
It is all about listening, not canceling. Dozens of newspapers leverage the NSS Online cancellation Intervention app to listen AND respond to subscribers immediately and effectively with the app. How do you reduce cancellations? Transparency is key.
Don’t hide the cancel button. When customers intend to cancel, provide the options to begin the process without delay. Subscribers enjoy the rare choice of how and where to cancel; not just through the call center. The cancellation intervention app lives in the online account management portal, in your FAQs, or in outbound email to subscribers. Place it next to all the other account management selections.
The FTC issued an Enforcement Policy Statement in November 2021 stating that companies must offer ways for customers to cancel subscriptions or trials that are “at least as easy to use” as the mechanisms they used to initiate them. Many publishers have opted to interpret that message creatively, however, and continue to require subscribers to engage with online chat functions and require subscribers to call a customer service number to make changes to their subscriptions. Under the new provisions, legal experts have opined that this will fall short and not meet compliance. The public will no longer be able to comment on the provision after mid-May.
Build a better experience with NSS Online Cancel Intervention:
The #1 reason subscribers cancel is money.
Lack of money, tight household budgets, and sky-rocketing subscription rates are all causes for subscription cancellation. Followed by other reasons that shouldn't surprise us are content, ideology and too much to read in too little time. The Nieman Lab found that the "local paper" is the most-cancelled type of news publication.
The biggest benefit.
Battle silent churn. Before online cancel intervention, most subscribers who canceled just let their bill lapse and never contacted customer service. However, today’s subscribers communicate with newspapers quickly and seamlessly thanks to the NSS Online Cancellation Intervention app.
The NSS advantage:
Meeting subscribers where they're at makes happy customers. Providing a strong user experience ensures customer satisfaction. Adding Online Cancel Intervention to your tech stack results in fewer subscriber cancels, less cost, and when they do cancel they are more likely to come back.
ROI is off the charts.
Every online cancellation intervention solution is custom-tailored by the NSS professional services team to exceed your expectations. If you do only one thing this year, add the NSS online cancellation intervention app. Nothing you do this year will be easier. Recent law changes require you to provide a simple mechanism to cancel. Reported ROI is well over 100%! It's not about the cancel, it's about the save. Let's design your program today.
The Perfect Subscription Begins with the Perfect Retention Plan.
1. Capture the save at time of cancellation
2. Offer an online cancel module to subscribers
3. Remarket your stops before — and after — their stop date
Bottom line: Does it work?
The question we like to answer the most. Yes! It absolutely works. Total save rates as high as 70%. Creating a clear and conspicuous strategy does two things. 1) It signals to the subscriber you care about them. You make it easy to do business, including cancellation, and 2) If the subscriber decides to go ahead and take a break, it isn't forever. How long will he or she stay away? That depends on how easy (or difficult) you make it to cancel in the first place.
Pat Leader, former audience director at the Spokane Spokesman-Review, said that the NSS program is a huge win. "Our numbers show that the cancellation intervention app performs as well as my customer service department.” She uses the same criteria to track both channels — pricing, save codes, stop codes and revenue saved. Doing so allows Leader to measure an apples-to-apples comparison. Speaking of revenue, Leader said that the NSS Online Cancellation Intervention app is saving the same proportion of revenue as her customer service team. "What makes the NSS results remarkable is that it is measured against my reps, who are highly incentivized to save their stops."
Click-to-cancel is here. Be ready with NSS Online Cancel Intervention.
Photo credit: "Lina Khan" by New America is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.
