Your Strategy to Boost Digital Magazine Subscriptions

Subscriptions provide the foundation stone for the digital magazine business market. Here, offering subscriptions is the best way to do business with readers who urge for the written content. The recurrent need for quality content and articles has provided magazine publishers with an opportunity to monetize this need to read.

Nevertheless, subscription rates have been dropping recently, which has put pressure on many digital magazines’ ability to remain profitable and sustainable. Take, for example, the case of The Washington Post.

Despite going fully digital, The Washington Post has been losing revenue every year of $100 million per year. This is largely because fewer and fewer people read any sort of publications these days.

All this leads us to ask a few pertinent questions: why do consumers hesitate to purchase digital magazine subscriptions? How can publishers draw in and hold on to a larger subscriber base? How can they make their subscription offers more appealing and valuable?

In this blog, while answering all these questions, we will also be covering some tricks and ideas to boost magazine subscriptions and increase sales for your digital magazine.

The best digital magazine subscriptions and how do they work for the reader?

There are various digital magazine services available. Some allow readers to purchase individual issues or subscriptions, while others give unlimited access to thousands of articles for a set monthly fee. The following are a few of the top digital magazine subscription services:

1. Kindle Unlimited: This Amazon service allows readers to access over a million books and audiobooks, as well as over 6,000 magazines. Reading can take place on any platform. Readers can try it free for 30 days, afterward paying a set monthly fee.
2. Texture: Texture offers you access to more than 200 magazines such as extremely popular ones like Time, Wired, The Atlantic, and Sports Illustrated, which is available through this recently acquired Apple service. Both iOS and Android devices, including Amazon tablets, support reading. Readers can test it out for seven days at no cost, but the monthly cost is applied later on.
3. Zinio: This service allows readers to buy individual magazine issues or subscriptions, just like a traditional bookstore. Over 6,000 international magazines, including Marvel comics, are available for selection. On iOS and Android devices, one can read in mobile-optimized text mode as well as a traditional magazine layout.

Some key factors to track & improve digital magazine subscription management

1. Ensure a flawless reader experience: Readers should have a hassle-free experience using subscription management portals, which should be intuitive to use and aesthetically pleasing. Reader satisfaction can be raised and churn can be decreased by making sure the subscription process is clear and easy to use. Magazine subscription retailers need to personalize the experience for readers so that they may continue subscriptions for their favourite magazines or articles.
2. Make use of tools for automated subscription management: Time and money can be significantly saved by automating subscription management processes like billing, renewals, and cancellations. Publishers can guarantee on-time payments and lower the chance of human error by utilizing subscription management software. So, always opt for an automated platform for the best digital magazine subscription management. Streamlined business operations will also enable magazine retailers and publishers to come up with new ideas to increase readership for their magazines.
3. Provide customised subscription plans: Customised subscription plans have the potential to enhance customer retention and decrease attrition. By analyzing customer data according to customers’ preferences, interests, and behaviour, publishers can customise subscription plans. For instance, some magazines offer subscription plans in which they offer access to a certain number of articles per week or a month. The reader who subscribes to such a subscription plan gets access to the articles of his favourite writers for an affordable monthly or weekly fee.
4. Reader segmentation: If you run a magazine, it is important to segment your readers. You can segment readers based on age, gender, and interests. This will help in identifying people whom you need to target.

It will even play a role in crafting subscription plans for your readers. For instance, if your magazine is about parenting and child care etc. then your primary target to sell your magazine will be mothers especially young mothers or single mothers.

You have done your part.
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You see how segmentation based on age and interest will help you target the right people. It will also cut your efforts and improve the subscription management of the digital magazine.

SubscriptionFlow to manage subscriptions for your digital magazine

The trend to opt for a digital platform to access favourite articles and magazines is not new. However, the recent pandemic played a huge role in making this trend of digitalism widespread. As a result, the competition in the digital magazine market has increased.

If you own a digital magazine (that is probably struggling to do well under the current circumstances), you may have felt the need to work with a subscription-management tool. Because a subscription management tool specified for a digital magazine can help publishers and magazine retailers fight competition in the market.

One such tool that can help you automate and streamline your subscription processes is SubscriptionFlow. You can create and manage different subscription plans, offer trial periods and discounts, send invoices and receipts, handle chargebacks and refunds, and generate reports and insights with the cloud-based platform SubscriptionFlow.

It is also integrated with your payment gateway and website. Additionally, SubscriptionFlow facilitates communication with your subscribers. You can grow your digital magazine business, save time and money, lower errors and fraud, and boost loyalty and retention with SubscriptionFlow.

This plan will meet or exceed your expectations no matter how many subscribers you need to cater to. Nonetheless, keeping all this in mind, there are also specific ways in which SubscriptionFlow can help you manage your digital magazine subscriptions.

1. Construct and oversee various subscription plans, such as trial, gift, group, and regular subscriptions.
2. Bill your customers and send invoices regarding their subscription plans so that they may pay their subscription fees timely.
3. Payment processing is another important feature offered by SubscriptionFlow that will help magazine publishers and retailers offer the best payment experience to their readers. Integrate with your chosen payment gateway and automate subscription billing and payments. There is a range of payment gateways from which you can choose as per the outreach of your magazine. For instance, if you target readers in the US, then you will probably need to integrate Stripe or GoCardless etc.
4. Send out invoices and receipts; manage chargebacks and refunds.
5. Create shipping labels for printed magazines and export them.
6. Communicate with your subscribers via forms for feedback, surveys, and email and SMS alerts. You can also offer tailored recommendations.
7. Analyze data and insights about your revenue, retention, churn rate, and subscription performance.
8. Get hundreds of e-books, blogs, guides, and resources to assist you in managing your magazine subscriptions more effectively.

This platform not only offers a range of features and functionalities to manage a magazine but is also flexible and scalable to integrate with third-party software. This gives companies everything they need to run their magazines seamlessly from a single platform.

Schedule a demo with SubscriptionFlow now to start effectively managing the subscriptions of your digital magazine.