Brilliant post. Just what I needed as my earliest paid subscribers reach the end of their first year. Keep protecting free speech and empowering writers!
I've found it tricky to improve retention. Most of the time, I'm trying to improve the top-of-funnel - especially the onboarding flow - to have a positive impact on retention. But the tactics you've shared are super inspiring to try out. Thanks a lot 🙌
Re: onboarding, absolutely! That’s going to be a pretty big part of the next post. Still very hard and tricky to have major improvements in onboarding, but it’s such a crucial window of time to help new folks understand your product, and to start delivering them value as quickly as possible.
Sounds super interesting and something I am working on as well right now. Would definitely be interested in something like knowing how many emails during onboarding are a fair amount, which time between works best etc.
I wrote for years to an audience that definitely read my stuff, but so few people took time to tell me it was helpful, and I almost quit. LESSON LEARNED! If I want you to keep writing (I do!) I need to make sure you know that! :)
Great tips Reid. Many thanks. Just a question on that Customer Lifetime Value measure for substacks. Is it something already in the Subscriber report? Something on the plan. I go to my Stripe account to see their version, but I’m never quite sure what it means...
I could see us adding CLV to the dashboard at some point. Since it's a forecast, it's not the easiest thing to standardize across the entire platform, but there's probably a way to do it.
IMO, Stripe's approach to calculating CLV is too simplistic and has a dangerously high margin of error. As an extension, it's kind of hard to understand what exactly the number means.
Great post Reid! I am currently giving away 50% discount on the annual plan because it's a travel platform so you usually don't get full value out of the product the entire year. Is this still too big of a discount? Still most of the users go with the monthly plan since they usually travel a few weeks, cancel it and book it again next year. Thank you for your opinion!
I think a stronger nudge toward annual plans can make a ton of sense for products that are particularly vulnerable to seasonality. For example, sports products / services (e.g., sports bloggers, NBA TV, MLB Network, etc.) tend to do well *during* the season, but struggle to keep folks engaged and retained outside the season. Same thing can be said for activity-based products / services: there's less demand for skiing/snowboarding apps during the summer, and vice versa for warm-weather activities during the winter.
Even in the streaming world, we saw smaller, more nascent services push toward annual plans because they didn't have enough new shows or movies to keep folks around the full year. Usually, they would have 2 or 3 really important shows, but that would only cover half the year (assuming a weekly release schedule). In that case, it made sense to try to get folks on annual plans.
So long-winded way of saying that it could totally make sense to give a steeper discount for product / services that are especially vulnerable to seasonality. I would also try to think about ways you could reduce the impact of seasonality. For example, ESPN bundles all sports together, which helps combat seasonality. If you were running a ski/snowboard app, you could try to partner with a surf app to offer a combined subscription. Just make sure it's a complementary service (not competitive) and that the combination would make sense for a large enough portion of the audience.
Brilliant post. Just what I needed as my earliest paid subscribers reach the end of their first year. Keep protecting free speech and empowering writers!
I've found it tricky to improve retention. Most of the time, I'm trying to improve the top-of-funnel - especially the onboarding flow - to have a positive impact on retention. But the tactics you've shared are super inspiring to try out. Thanks a lot 🙌
Re: onboarding, absolutely! That’s going to be a pretty big part of the next post. Still very hard and tricky to have major improvements in onboarding, but it’s such a crucial window of time to help new folks understand your product, and to start delivering them value as quickly as possible.
Thank you for the note & kind words!
Sounds super interesting and something I am working on as well right now. Would definitely be interested in something like knowing how many emails during onboarding are a fair amount, which time between works best etc.
These are ALWAYS helpful, uplifting, and inspiring! Thank you!
Dang man, I feel like I have to say this every week, but you are the absolute best!!
Seriously, thank you, Mike - really appreciate your support. 🙏
I wrote for years to an audience that definitely read my stuff, but so few people took time to tell me it was helpful, and I almost quit. LESSON LEARNED! If I want you to keep writing (I do!) I need to make sure you know that! :)
It’s such a great point. In my own experience, comments and email replies are so motivating.
Great tips Reid. Many thanks. Just a question on that Customer Lifetime Value measure for substacks. Is it something already in the Subscriber report? Something on the plan. I go to my Stripe account to see their version, but I’m never quite sure what it means...
Thanks Bernard!
I could see us adding CLV to the dashboard at some point. Since it's a forecast, it's not the easiest thing to standardize across the entire platform, but there's probably a way to do it.
IMO, Stripe's approach to calculating CLV is too simplistic and has a dangerously high margin of error. As an extension, it's kind of hard to understand what exactly the number means.
I wrote a little bit about it on Twitter here:
https://twitter.com/reidtandy/status/1619033267315048448
And then there's a fairly old post diving into the risks of using churn rate:
https://reidtandy.substack.com/p/the-pitfalls-of-churn-rate-a45b4f5bdf00
Let me know any thoughts or questions!
Thanks again for the kind words.
Great post Reid! I am currently giving away 50% discount on the annual plan because it's a travel platform so you usually don't get full value out of the product the entire year. Is this still too big of a discount? Still most of the users go with the monthly plan since they usually travel a few weeks, cancel it and book it again next year. Thank you for your opinion!
Hi Manuel - thank you for the question!
I think a stronger nudge toward annual plans can make a ton of sense for products that are particularly vulnerable to seasonality. For example, sports products / services (e.g., sports bloggers, NBA TV, MLB Network, etc.) tend to do well *during* the season, but struggle to keep folks engaged and retained outside the season. Same thing can be said for activity-based products / services: there's less demand for skiing/snowboarding apps during the summer, and vice versa for warm-weather activities during the winter.
Even in the streaming world, we saw smaller, more nascent services push toward annual plans because they didn't have enough new shows or movies to keep folks around the full year. Usually, they would have 2 or 3 really important shows, but that would only cover half the year (assuming a weekly release schedule). In that case, it made sense to try to get folks on annual plans.
So long-winded way of saying that it could totally make sense to give a steeper discount for product / services that are especially vulnerable to seasonality. I would also try to think about ways you could reduce the impact of seasonality. For example, ESPN bundles all sports together, which helps combat seasonality. If you were running a ski/snowboard app, you could try to partner with a surf app to offer a combined subscription. Just make sure it's a complementary service (not competitive) and that the combination would make sense for a large enough portion of the audience.
Thanks again for dropping by with the question!
I really like how you are thinking, thank you very much for your opinion, really appreciate it.