6 Insights to Boost Your Digital Magazine Subscription

Did you know that more than 70% of traditional print newspapers’ and magazines’ subscribers are exclusively online now? How did this massive change occur? And does that mean print media is a thing of the past? Or is there some space left for it? These are all questions that you need to answer when factoring in how you intend on implementing a robust strategy to improve your digital magazine subscription.

In this blog, we will address these questions regarding enhancing digital magazine subscription to firstly help you understand how digital magazine and news subscription services work, what makes the best magazine subscription service, and what may be some pitfalls to avoid when looking for a digital magazine subscriptions management service for your magazine.

How do digital magazine and news subscription services work?

The short answer is that most digital magazine and news subscription services work exactly like print ones. It is just that their medium happens to be digital instead of print.

That said, there are few important points of difference between the two that need to be taken into account:

1.   Archive Access

Owing to everything being stored digitally, subscribers of digital magazines have the option of accessing the magazine’s old logs and previous issues at the click of a button. A much-watered down version of this service is also offered by print newspapers when they reprint choice articles from old issues, but the consumer has no control over what article gets reprinted.

2.   Convenience of Readability

Reading on screens is easier compared to reading on print for one very simple reason—customizability. In print, you cannot change the font style or size of the newspaper but when reading digitally, you have the choice of doing just that. Furthermore, you can even tweak the page color when reading digitally and, for those who would prefer reading a particular article in print, E magazine subscriptions also offer the choice of printing select articles.

3.   Different Pricing Models

While the costs of digital and print magazines are generally the same, where the difference usually occurs is in the likelihood of a consumer subscribing to the full service or just buying separate issues in a series of one-off purchases. Digital magazines are far more likely to be subscribed to annually by their consumers as these consumers have access to that magazine everywhere and at every time. This encourages people to invest in online magazine subscriptions as compared to print magazines in which you need to manage both annual subscriptions and one-off purchases.

4.   Wider Reach

The biggest marketing and visibility push that digital magazines get is by having a robust social media presence. The New Yorker has about 9 million followers on Instagram, all of whom can read one free article per month at the click of just a link in their bio. This is a brilliant marketing tactic that embeds people in the magazine’s ecosystem from where it is able to convert possible leads into paying subscribers.

5.   Cost effective

Despite being priced the same as a print magazine, digital magazines are just cheaper to produce as you do not need to print the magazine and have it shipped across the country and the world. While it is true that you incur website maintenance costs when selling digital magazines, these are minimal costs easily offset by the massive reductions in operating costs you will get if you switch completely to digital.

6.   Environment-friendly

The present is all about the environment. Climate change is here to stay and so magazine publishers need to play their part in ensuring that trees aren’t sacrificed for producing the paper that their magazine will be printed on.

Avoid the following pitfalls of digital magazine subscriptions management

To ensure efficient online magazine subscriptions management, you need to stay abreast of the following pitfalls:

1.   Having a cancellation process that is difficult to navigate

This is non-negotiable. While some businesses, like Adobe, do think that adding extra steps to their cancellation process will help retain customers, this is a strategy that only works a little in the short term but causes serious damage in the long run.

In today’s world, especially when customers are inundated with endless subscription options for magazines, they are constantly shuttling in between subscriptions to read a little from everywhere. This is why you need to ensure that you facilitate your customer in cancelling the subscription if they have already reached the decision of cancelling it. In doing so, and while incurring a loss in the short term, you will be ensuring that that customer comes back to you in the future.

2.   Unpunctual delivery

This problem mostly plagues small to medium sized magazines, as larger ones usually have their operations streamlined. As a magazine company in today’s social media driven age, you need to make sure your magazine content is produced and published timely and efficiently.

3.   Overlooking customer feedback

You need to provide clear channels for communication to take place between the customer and the customer care service department for your magazine. For magazines, this can be done through the comments section on your magazine’s social media handles and even through clearly communicating your email and phone number on which readers can contact the customer care staff to register a complaint. A customer who feels heard is a customer who feels well taken care of, and someone who feels they are getting their money’s worth in services.

Bottom line:

SubscriptionFlow is a robust subscription management software that offers all these services of magazine subscription management (and more) for a very reasonable cost. Using SubscriptionFlow greatly simplifies the subscription management process for digital magazines and publishers as SubscriptionFlow is able to efficiently streamline all their operations and even seamlessly integrate with payment gateways and payment processing systems through which subscribers can pay for their subscriptions. Book a demo with SubscriptionFlow now to supercharge your digital magazine subscription!