AAM Subscriber Growth Problem
A SUBSCRIBER GROWTH PROBLEM
Over the last 18 months, I have noticed that our subscriber and membership growth has steadily declined. About three years ago, new management wanted cleaner lists, so we implemented a double-opt to our range of newsletters and membership joins. Still, the percentage of people clicking on the COI email was dwindling. From a high of 83% for those who confirmed years ago to almost 54% at the beginning of 2024, we were losing a ton of revenue because the average CLTV (customer lifetime value) of a subscriber alone was over $13, so we knew something had to be done.
Clearly, this isn’t just a subscriber growth problem; it's a revenue problem that affects all aspects of our organization. From converting new paying members to managing ad sales and departmental budgets, the impact is far-reaching. This underscores the need for a comprehensive solution that involves all teams and their unique contributions.
What We Were Faced With
The signup process for AAM (American Association of Millennials) is pretty straightforward, and IMHO is one of the easier steps to take to engage with us. Essentially, it starts by asking you to fill out basic information, and the only thing we require is your email address and a password. We make the following bits of information optional if you simply want to check out our content, but do require some of these later if they're going to join
Home address
Socials
Preferences
Newsletter choices (we have like eight newsletters)
Employment status
Household income
If the subscriber wants just to give out the base information, they do so. Immediately after creating the “login,” we send them to a jump page, which only thanks them for signing up but, more importantly, for them to check their inbox because a verification email is coming, and they must take one additional step to get the weekly newsletter. All in all, it's very minimal, with the understanding that our audience (millennials) are savvy and have a bit of ADHD when it comes to digital things.
In near real-time, an email is triggered with our branding at the top and a simple message with a CTA button that says:
Dear Fellow Millennial,
Thank you for signing up for our weekly newsletter, which caters to millennials. To receive it, you must click on the button below to confirm that you did sign up, which tells us you are a human and are excited to receive our emails.
-CTA BUTTON- (which reads - Yes, I want it!)
If the email isn’t clicked on within 24 hours, we would trigger the same email nearly a day after they signed up and then stop sending them anything if no action was taken on their part. We thought that sending two emails in 24 hours would be sufficient, but we clearly underestimated it. To top that off, we also followed the “best practices” guidelines around the email creative and modeled it after some other brands we admired.
That said, we set it up and forgot about it but only looked at the performance about twice a year, and when our numbers really started to go down, this is where, by really diving into it, we knew we had a more significant problem on our hands.
A Plan That Started With Pushback, Confusion & Ended With Research
We first met on a Tuesday morning with nearly every email program stakeholder, and after spending almost 30 minutes coming up with a project name, we officially kicked off “Project Persuade.” I was assigned as the lead of this project and was told that just about everything I came up with had to be vetted by the “Project Persuade” team, which would meet every other week. I was expecting quick decisions and movement on this project. Those team members wanted a project plan to be put in our PM tool by the end of the week and for them to review it at the next meeting, and the hope was that this project could be wrapped up in three to four weeks.
After I created the project plan and opened it up for review, I was flooded with ideas about where to go next. Here are some of the suggestions:
This is simple, Oliver; keep the same creative and just send out the same email until they unsubscribe or just confirm
Offer a discounted membership by clicking on the button
Send a text-based email and eliminate all branding
Why are we wanting to change this at all? Just keep sending this email, even if it's hourly, and then we can re-target them on a lot of sites.
Why do we need then to confirm anyway? Didn’t they just give us permission by signing up? How about we just eliminate this?
Oliver, just auto-subscribe them and send out this email as a courtesy reminder that they will get a weekly newsletter. Let’s change the narrative on this.
Are we even sure this is being sent out? I just did a test, and it came to my spam folder. Something is wrong.
We are AAM, and our audience wants to get emails from us; why else would they have visited our site?
Let’s put some ads inside that email so, at the very least, we can see an ROI
The next meeting was interesting, as nearly 50% more people attended to give their opinions on what to do, all from different departments like sales and IT, along with someone from the billing department. It seemed as if everyone was an expert on COI/DOI emails and believed that this project could be quickly completed with a consensus vote on the changes to make. It was suggested that we take this online and vote for the changes, and whatever one had the most votes, we just implement and move on. The “committee” wanted fewer meetings and more action, believing this was a simple solution.
However, I came to the meeting armed with data and research and took the last 15 minutes to show them my findings. Over the last two weeks, I managed to sign up for 86 companies that had COI/DOI procedures put in place, and there were some interesting data points that I shared:
The average number of emails sent to get me to confirm was three
36 brands sent two emails
22 brands sent three emails
12 brands sent more than three
The rest only sent one
The average number of words in the first email was 46, and the average
Of those who sent more than one email, 78% changed the messaging in each email, and the rest kept it the same.
I plotted out the average time between emails for top brands and organizations similar to AAM's. While it was all over the board, it meant that companies were experimenting with cadence.
I showed all different CTA buttons; some were on brand, some with more prominent CTA, and most importantly, some had the entire email linked to confirm, especially their header image (which we did not as it was a static image)
My message to this committee was that there was not one common best practice around these emails for us to go on, except 81% of them sent more than one email and that most of them changed messaging in each email. Essentially, we had some work to do on improving our first COI email, and we would need to test things like links, buttons, number of words, messaging (especially urgency), and a few other things. Given the long-term revenue at stake, I said this wasn’t a short-term thing to solve, so we needed to be prescriptive and meticulous in our approach.
The room was quiet for about 15 seconds as people let the numbers sink in. I could tell they realized they were not part of the solution but part of the problem. The first person to speak was my director, who said, “What are the next steps, Oliver?” I answered with, “Great question. At the next meeting, I will have a plan to share; in the meantime, please keep the suggestions coming, but let me do my thing.”
Between that meeting and the next, I received only three more suggestions, and they came only from my Director and my colleague who helped me run the email program.
Until next time, where I will tell you what the plan was………….
***CORE insight from Andrew Kordek @emailnucleus***
It’s funny how everyone has an opinion on what should be done in an email program because they are either marketers or have an email address. Oliver did the right thing on what seemingly could be an easy problem to fix, but it isn’t. He took the time to research to see what others are doing and likely has a plan to test several elements in a COI email. The real question is, will people have the patience to have a longer-term test performed, or will they want this done quickly? There are many things to consider, especially since this is the first touch and interaction with the brand, and they can either do it fast or right. Here are four things to remember:
Show up with data and research before deciding anything related to your program.
Have patience, and ask others to have patience, especially if it’s revenue-driven.
Be confident in your approach and show others that you are the expert.
Resist the urge to do it the easy way. You own the program; sometimes, the best way is the hard way.
