In this case study, read how Mike worked collaboratively with the teams at a global publisher to expand the customer lifecycle, enhance segmentation and targeting, introduce CVM and help lay the groundwork for the brand to better differentiate amongst its peers, helping to drive 27% higher ARPUs and the lowest churn rate of any comparable business in the parent group.*
Context
Publishers have undergone immense change over the last twenty years, with many moving from wholesale to direct-to-consumer models. The subscription is the pricing strategy of choice for many publishers, but the problem of customer engagement and retention and more broadly, the problem of differentiation is one that many publishers, including this one had to tackle head on.
Challenge
Mike was tasked with improving customer engagement to drive retention; to drive up ARPUs and LTVs and deepen subscriber relationships.
The work
Expansion of the Customer Lifecycle
- Use of propensity modelling – Mike led the integration of churn and conversion propensity modelling into the lifecycle, improving results and reducing wastage in spend
- Award-Winning Onboarding Programme – CVG led the cross-functional effort to design and launch a new trigger-based, multi-channel onboarding programme that improved early tenure churn (Best Use of Commercial Data, 2014, British Media Awards)
- Award-Winning Trial Conversion Programme – CVG led the cross-functional effort to design and launch a new trigger-based, multi-channel conversion programme that improved (Best Direct Mail, Data and Marketing Awards, 2016)
- Award-Winning Content Engagement Programme – CVG designed and implemented the strategy cross-functionally to drive content consumption amongst customers with varying degrees of engagement. (Best Customer Retention Programme, Data and Marketing Awards, 2019)
Introduction of CVM
- Price Migration – Mike designed the strategy to communicate price rises to the customer base, introducing a new engagement/risk-based approach to dictate how and when customers would be notified, as well as designing the message hierarchy for the comms.
- Launch of Upsell and Cross-Sell – CVG oversaw the launch of two key programmes designed to improve LTV and ARPU by promoting relevant internal and external partner offers to relevant subscribers.
Better targeting and Segmentation
- Introduction of Engagement Scoring – Mike worked closely with the data science team to launch a blended metric that reflected the depth and breadth of customer engagement with the product.
- New framework for engagement-based segmentation – Mike worked
- Monetisation of GDPR – Mike worked closely with compliance teams during the launch of GDPR and PECR to design a permission strategy that gave customers more flexibility in choosing what they received from the business, whilst also making recommendations on proposition changes that could facilitate revenue generation in the new privacy focused world.
Position as competitive advantage
- Deeper customer relationships – through highly relevant targeting, data-driven content distribution and repeated value reinforcement, this business was able to successfully use it’s customer lifecycle as a means of differentiation versus the competition, one of the key factors that led to launching “Membership” as a competitive position.
Results
- Lowest churn rates of any comparable business for three years consistently
- Lifecycle expansion from two automated programmes to nine
- Improved ARPUs for digital and print customers, 27% and 12% respectively
- Successful launch of membership as a positioning
*Mike was employed by this business as a perm member of staff for this work.