The most successful subscription sites are those who retain their members year after year – after all, repeat business is the name of the game. Yet before making the hard sell, it must be preceded by retention-focused activities to keep the subscriber’s interest intact and demonstrate overall value. According to our BEST PRACTICE: Retention Messaging Tip Sheet, the most successful subscription businesses use the following retention tactics:

• Onboarding Activities – reaching out to new subscribers during the first minutes, week and month of an account
• Member Engagement – establishing value and get subscribers to visit your site
• Auto-Renewal Messaging – decreasing involuntary customer churn due to bad credit card numbers
• Customer Delight – keeping subscribers happy with surprise content or perks
• Retention Marketing – dedicating a team member to focus on retention marketing for increased renewals

Here are two examples of different approaches to retention marketing:

LegalZoom is a legal solutions site, offering customers services such as wills, trusts, incorporation, and trademarks.

This is an email sent to a segmented audience that has started their own business in the past year. It contains:

1. A focus on the business challenges faced by the recipient
2. An annual startup survey
3. A chance to win a $100 Amazon Gift Card

Insider Take:

This is a simple email sent to a recipient who had started a business in the past year. It is timely and segmented correctly to the audience it serves. While we don’t know how LegalZoom benefits from getting people to take their survey, they entice readers to complete it with an offer of a $100 gift card. Surveys certainly have their time and place but we caution against using them too much for retention marketing purposes, lest your audience gets overloaded and begins to tune you out.

Angie’s List is a site that offers crowd-sourced reviews of local businesses.

This retention email is an example of a spring newsletter sent to subscribers by the company. It contains:

1. A generic introduction with a link to search reviews of contractors for spring home improvement and a companion checklist
2. A button to “See What’s Trending” for users to catch up on the latest happenings on the site
3. A call-to-action to download the Angie’s List app
4. A link to the top post of the week, presumably from the company’s blog
5. A quiz: “How Much Do You Love (or Hate) Your Home?”

Insider Take:

We think this is a good example of a monthly newsletter intended to engage an existing audience. It encourages the user to proactively consider their home improvement needs, acting as a subtle promotion of their services. The content, app, and quiz all serve to increase brand loyalty and awareness, which will in turn influence a higher rate of subscription renewals.