Australian Geographic

OVERVIEW

Each year a large portion of Australian Geographic’s budget was spent on acquiring new customers, but at the end of each year approximately 80% of these new customers chose not to renew their subscription. This meant that they were not recouping their acquisition costs or growing the overall subscription base – resulting in a severe leaky bucket.

STRATEGIC SOLUTION

• Conducted an audit of their existing program and communication elements to determine what was working and where improvements could be made.
• Identified key areas of improvement such as increasing the focus on the subscription product offered and less on the free gift to try and get a better quality customer upfront.
• Reduced costs by focusing on the most cost-effective opportunities within their internal environment and across their partner network.
• Continually constructed intensive testing scenarios to gain up-to-date insights into the best offers, communication channels and messages to various audience segments.
• Used insights gained to evolve the communication program so that they could acquire better quality subscribers and retain them for longer.
• Increased the focus on gift-giving from active subscribers who were already happy with the product.
• Introduced an anniversary mailing into the program (before the first and second annual renewal mailing). This enabled them to present customers with a timely and relevant ‘positive’ communication before inviting them to renew their subscription

OUTCOME

• After 2 years of this new approach, we no longer had to discount the upfront subscription price to achieve our target response rates.
• Achieved record response rates and overall positive ROI.
• The acquisition costs were reduced by 30%.
• The anniversary mailing consistently generated renewal response rates of around 34%, helping to increase the overall renewal rate. This initiative became an integral part of their annual customer communication program.