By Minal Bopaiah
How long can you expect your annual subscribers to stick with you?
Most digital subscription companies have a hard time estimating that figure since they’re early into annual subscription sales, and therefore just measure retention as the percentage of annual subscribers that renew each year.
But Angie’s List has nearly 20 years in the digital subscription industry (the company was started in 1995). And the company’s most recent annual report stated that the average annual or multi-year subscription lasts 76 months, or a little over 6 years. (Their average monthly account lifetime was 15 months.)
It probably takes about 15 or 20 years to come up with an average annual subscription lifetime number, but Angie’s List’s number is illuminating for other sites looking to estimate how long they think they can retain subscribers. (Revenue estimates are impossible since Angie’s List has variable pricing based on zip code.)
Keep in mind that Angie’s List is a subscription service with possibly less legs than an information or news publication; therefore, other subscription content sites could see longer account lifetimes, especially if they have a solid retention program in place.
