We love the idea of getting digital readers when they’re young, and even encouraging parents and adults to give a digital magazine as a gift to youngsters.
The problem for Cricket magazine, however, is how they chose to onboard those young eyeballs. In this email blast, they ask the paying subscriber (i.e. parent) to set up the account and create a password — or forward the email to the youngster. Plus, the instructions are incredibly complicated!
A smarter onboarding tactic would have been to collect the youngster’s email at sign-up for gift subscriptions — and even for regular ones. Since parents are the “customer,” you’ll want their email for renewal and any payment issues, but it’s the youngster’s engagement that determines engagement and retention. In short, every digital magazine for children should be a two-user subscription at the very least.