Hey, everyone. Thanks, so much, for joining, and thanks to repair me for the invitation to moderate this session.
My name is Jack Marshall. I'm the co founder and editor in chief at toolkits dot com. For those of you who aren't familiar with toolkits, we're a business media company providing insight analysis and community or professionals working in and around subscription businesses and products.
We've got some amazing panelists for this session, on how to drive subscriber growth and loyalty. I'll be really looking forward to digging in over the next, forty minutes or so, to learn what's working, what's not, And I think one thing that's always really interesting is, sort of understanding how subscription businesses are sort of evolving and adapting as sort of the the landscape continues to to shift sort of around and beneath us.
So let's start, just by doing some quick introductions, and then we can kinda dive in so just give us a quick overview of, your role, your background and the subscription business or products you're you're currently working on and then we can dig in. So Michael, maybe I can start up with you. No, great. Thanks, Jack.
And thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here and blow everyone out there. Mike Rivera, I am currently actually day eight into a new role. I am SVP of consumer revenue at Condee Nas, helping with subscriptions.
But most recently, and probably a lot of the experience I'll draw from was I was chief subscription officer at the Washington Post, for two years prior there.
And then, you know, prior to coming over to the publishing world, I was in the video world both from a distribute distribution standpoint at SlinkTV in term out class, and then, you know, a whole bunch in early career that is gonna bore everyone, and they'll wanna do it. So, like I said, very excited to be here.
Hey, Megan.
Awesome. It's great to be here and talk with everybody. My name is Megan Cross. I'm director of loyalty at Cinemark, we're the third largest theater in the US with over three hundred theaters in forty two different states.
My background is everything. I started originally as a graphic designer and got my feet wet and CRM and email marketing before making the move over to loyalty. I think all of those things have really helped to have a really creative solution to a lot of the problems that we weren't into.
Excited to kinda talk with everyone and see What everyone else is doing?
I said. Hi. Hi, everyone. Seth Harris. I'm the vice president of direct to consumer at CMBC, that business encompasses CMBC Pro, which is our foundational and flagship premium subscription product. And then as of January twenty twenty two, we launched the investing club with Jim Kramer. Both products are targeted at retail and of course, we have everyone's from managing directors of X Bank to FA as wealth managers, all across the financial spectrum.
I've been in media for a long time. I've been in the CDC almost nine years now. And, I worked in various partnerships and business development type role as well as planning and audience growth.
I was telling this group before in preparation that, this is, like, my third life here at CNBC and some subscriptions. It's by far, my favorite one. I think what we do in building businesses and how we could see the great content that we produce day in and day out driving transactions in real time, special by not everyone in media gets to see.
Okay. So let's dive straight in. Obviously, I love talking about and thinking about, so that the challenges facing subscription businesses. So I thought that would be a good place to start. And obviously, you know, with the year sort of drawing to a close.
I'm curious, you know, what were some of your kind of biggest challenges around subscriptions in twenty twenty three. And I'm thinking kinda, you know, when you look back in twenty four or twenty five, you know, twenty three will be the year that or the year that you were, you know, struggling to overcome Y or z. You know, what do you think will will kind of stick out at you, looking back? Megan, maybe we can stop the Yeah.
I mean, I think, really, the last several years have been a challenge for our industry coming out of the pandemic. We're very much still kind of in a recovery mode. And since all of our growth for subscriptions really tied to how many people are coming to movies, our subscription growth obviously is directly tied to that. So even though we've had a really strong summer with things like Barbie and Oppenheimer, still kind of looking to get creative on how we can offset some of the challenges that we see ahead.
So for the past year, that's really looked at what does this new normal look like? How can we add some new offerings or customizations for people to make this more exciting and fit the type of lifestyle and movie going that they want to do.
Seth, any any thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, two thousand twenty three is interesting for us.
Like, we had There's subscription headwinds for everyone. Right? So looking at our two businesses, investing club, it was, like, we're new at this. So we sort of resurrected, the directing consumer business in q four twenty nineteen.
So it was just myself and a few others poking around and just trying different things with no goals and no real idea what we were doing. So we had exponential growth. We had COVID, people going home, one retail investing was hot. Right?
There's just a movie out now, cinemark, dumb money, right, which sort of, you know, chronicles a bit of one portion of that.
And then you have people wanting to access CM UC where maybe they were watching their offices beforehand. So for us, it was we were starting to work on it before that.
COVID, slowed, if you will. But then once that occurred, the business really took off. So this year, what we variance was one. We had the one year anniversary of the investing club with Jim Kramer.
So to put it in perspective, we launched the product. We had a goal for a year. We accomplished goal in twenty four hours. Right?
So we had many, many, many new subscribers, but then you also have this big retention anniversary.
So we spent q four of last year figuring out how to prepare best for that retention anniversary. So we did things that we never did before. We launched an actual in person event. We did sweepstakes, for merchandise and access to the event.
We launched things like pre renewals. We launched things like upgrades. So it was a technological development thing that we had to do to make sure that we were, maintaining our retention goals and targets. So that was new and special for us.
And then from the macro factors in pro, you have inflation, you have people being more mindful of what they're spending, And now our audience and our customers are, maybe more well off than some other brands. They're still very sensitive around price. And what they're spending on. So for us also in the markets, like, the market was less frothy.
Why would you want to invest in stocks when you can go get five percent in the CB or some other sort of, investment vehicle. So for us, it was also thinking about the content and how we position ourselves for these this market. So, like, one of the things that we did was we launched income investing coverage. So we covered places where you could make money.
But we really doubled down, thought about the subscriber experience to ensure that we are continuing to add new features, to bring in new people, but also to keep the ones that that we had. So the so two thousand twenty three, some macro things were some things that were very specific to our business that maybe others did not have to deal with.
Yeah. And Michael, how about for you? I mean, you know, it's obviously interesting you know, Megan, you're talking a bit more about sort of the the physical content consumption side. Michael, you come from, as you said, the background most recently with sort of the Washington Post. Obviously, very different dynamics there, particularly as it relates to, you know, the pandemic and election cycles.
So, yeah, what was sort of your your experience over the past twelve months or so? Yeah. I would I would build off Seth. I mean, with a little bit of a hangover, after still, like, having such a newsy couple of years, having people at home with an enormous amount of disposable income to invest in a variety of subsub subscription products.
I mean, I think kind of, I'm doing a threesome problem. So that's why I'm getting a lot of gray hair. But, you know, first is the customer, and I think, like, now with disposable incomes becoming smaller and so many different options on the subscription, you really gotta work your tail off in order to prove your value every single day. I know I know we'll get into sort of, like, leading indicators of retention, but, like, we have kept, a very keen eye on, days in the month for existing customers.
So as prospective customers, to really try to get a good handle on how to, you know, are we continuing to provide that value?
Additionally, I would say, you know, the this our new subscription, I think, is well established.
What I mean, the teams spend a lot of time doing is how do we grow? And I think it's really on two dimensions of of, like, how do we evolve the product no one, yes, like, newsletters and some of that stuff. And that and that's great. But I think, like, we were thinking, you know, to maybe the customer who is less interested and excited with news or doesn't wanna sort of do that full commitment? Like, how do we meet that person where they are, but still do so in a recurring manner? And additionally, I'd say just on a different front is how do we, you know, the people who work power users, how do we continue to provide them features that are beneficial that they are gonna continue to be excited about product. It might attract new people, but then can we potentially, garner more LPD out of those individuals?
And then, you know, lastly, I I would just say, you know, you sort of want unlimited resources. There are so many things and so many opportunities. I think, like, we all probably see, and it's really easy to put it down on a piece of paper, to then have, like, the support to go do it internally and then the resources you know, no one ever nobody ever gets all the things that they want. So just being there was a list in prioritization on in doing so that, really on an enterprise basis is hard.
And it's really hard to do. And so, I would say those are the three things, you know, two maybe external one internal, but, but all really fun challenges to be able to approach every single day.
So you you you talked some sort of the the metrics piece there. I mean, one thing we've covered a lot of the toolkits over the past year or so has been, At least on sort of the publisher and content side, sort of a shift in mentality as subscription businesses and subscriber bases sort of begin to mature. Away from just raw subscriber growth, you know, highly attractive introductory offers, you know, volume at all cost and sort of really a shift towards, okay, how do we maximize revenue? How do we grow average revenue per user? You know, lifetime value?
So I'm always curious, you know, what are sort of the KPIs and metrics, that you guys, are kind of placing at the top of your list of priorities And, I guess, how is that evolving? How has that changed over the past couple of years or so?
Megan, any any thoughts on that? Alright. Yeah. I mean, I think we've always had a really strong focus on looking beyond just the revenue that the actual subscription brings in, but really looking at the frequency adjustments and purchasing behavior that those members have. So we've done a lot of digging into what that incremental value is, and that's ultimately what we've established.
CPA goals and and things like that around so that we can avoid that growth at all costs and at the cost of profitability, specifically.
A lot of that has kind of led us to using some propensity models around acquisition tactics so that we're getting kind of the right offers to the right people at the right time in their journeys, to make the most impact and avoid kind of I guess a little bit of a overabundance of offers out in the system where it just kinda gets lost in all of the shuffle.
And we're also kind of trying to look at our free loyalty programs in a similar way just because they're not subscribers doesn't mean that they might not be later. So taking another look at them a little bit more closely to see how can we bring them into the fold with some new creative options and and features and programs.
Yeah. We we've, similar to what Megan was saying. Like, we we've done this stuff this year that we never really did before. Primarily in in price testing and then aligning it to metrics with things like LTV.
So as to, like, renew at this relatively, right, only a few years in where we'd be like, North star numbers, what's your active paid subscriber, and then conversion rate, and use exposures, and unique exposures, and all that fun, like, front end stuff, if you will. But then we started thinking this year about driving that incremental value, how we think about using to do that in price as a lever. So we never really did that before just to put in perspective. We never really did email acquisition until, like, late twenty twenty.
Which is a big step forward for us. And when we first did a price test, we did like a four way split test. We were testing multiple things at the same time. We were just trying to if the free trial worked or didn't.
But this year, we did a series of sprint focused specific price tests around everything from increasing the monthly price and at different price points, decreasing the the annual price and taking away the trial. And we started to learn from that and really look at the volume, but then also figuring out what the LTV would be. Nite, it's gonna take time to really learn that. Right?
Because if you sign someone up for an annual, and now you're looking at your LTV, we have, you know, some time to find out what that is. We were trying to start with the hypothesis, like, versus will we get more subscribers by lowering the price? Well, yeah, probably. But the real is, hypothesis, if we lower the price at this price point, we think we will increase LTV, ARPU, or overall revenue opportunity over the life three to five years by this much, and that's how we were looking at it, which is quite different than what we did in the past.
And those are a lot of different things that were even just came out of a meeting before. It was like, how do we do that same level of work but more, even more analytical and more critical thinking for next year, because it's always about maximizing that lifetime value now that we have a real business versus you're just optimizing for getting new people through the through the front door.
Yeah. I would own. Yeah.
Same sort of thing. I mean, I I've sort of talked about it previously in, like, enterprise value. So you're doing volume of subscribers, also times LTV.
You know, I I think that's If it's cut and clear, that's nice.
You know, there's times I think, like, you know, enterprise values may be nebulous for a lot of people, especially the CFO at times.
When, you know, you realize value over three, four, five years. And, you know, you're sort of managing to, hey, how was twenty twenty three gonna end? And, like, what can we tell board or, you know, our our shareholders. So a little bit of a nuance there, that sort of, you know, potentially will, just pollute that that decision making a little I, you know, I've, thought about, with cross functional partners too.
Just a lot of the leading indicators that are gonna go into enterprise value. And, Seth, I mean, spot on with all the pricing stuff. But we've, spent a lot of time in, in around, you know, other dimensions that we might be able to pull, inclusive of the advertising revenue that that we made. And, like, the two big ones expressed there were no one direct relationships.
And so, you know, our people coming, directing to us or a, you know, are we using a platform or some sort of, you know, aggregator in order to to get that traffic? Because, you know, with our propensity models, that's always lower It's lower, traffic likely likely to convert. The other is really the the database.
And that's I really trying to arm the enterprise to be more effective in, you know, the conversion and retention and all that, but also to arm our advertising partners. To have more data to be able to sell different audiences, create their own audiences, and ultimately garner, IRCPM, that we roll into, a lot of the, LTV calculations that I've done in the past.
Oh, that's interesting. So you are moving towards sort of more of a a blended model where you look at sort of monetizing the user a bit more holistically whether that's through subscription or or other channel? Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, a lot of times, like, the know, the best customers for advertising are also the best customers for subscription.
I think, you know, a lot of times, the the relationship can seem oppositional, but reality. It's a self reinforcing thing. I think that'd be probably one of my biggest learnings from coming from video is, just the concept of of addressable where know, going from linear TV to then, you know, TD over the internet, all of a sudden, you've had, you know, so so many more targeting capabilities than you could before if a brand wanted a very specific type of person, well, now you can sort of build this database, or or this profile of individuals and then go find a bunch of these individuals who are also in your customer base or in your registered user base or whatever.
And all of a sudden, that becomes a lot more powerful.
So, so I think that's definitely been an unlock. Again, like, I would say very nascent, easy to easy to talk about much harder to do. And it but it, I think again, that it's at least that maybe first step in moving that relationship from, you know, more oppositional to, hey, we're doing this together, and we can actually be, you know, much more. There's more leverage in the model if if these two things work together really well.
Yeah. I think, especially for publishers, you know, the the streaming example is a good one, because again, to your point, I think publishers have often seen sort advertising and substitution models as inherently oppositional, often that revenue sort of ladd us up to different parts of the business or has done historically So, yeah, it's it's always in interesting for me sort of looking at the stream platforms and just saying, you know, you can adopt the same mindset.
You know, I think saying it is easier than doing it, but, I don't know, sometimes publishers seem to make it more difficult than it needs to be. That's my perspective. But, to come back to something you touched on there, Michael, how do you sort of well, actually, Seth as well, you mentioned this with pricing, but How do you approach those discussions internally with stakeholders, whether it's the CFO or sort of other internal teams?
Around sort of lifetime value, because it is a very different way of looking at the world and looking at business. So I imagine it's difficult to sort of, you know, walk into a planning meeting you know, we're gonna kick off a dollar this year, to, you know, potentially make two or three, three years down the line.
I would hope that, you know, CFOs are are sort of getting a bit more of a nuance understanding around subscriptions now, but, you know, everyone has short term sort of challenges that are dealing with in revenue needs. So I'm just curious, you know, how do those discussions go inside?
Yeah. I mean, I'll there's some out seth and feel free, to to build.
I so, I mean, I think the two critical parts at least in my experience thus far have been, so what's the introductory offer? And then, you know, what is kind of like the more, like, where are you gonna step someone up to? I'll tell you, in twenty twenty one at the post, we did a price increase. It was our first ever that bodes a lot. I I believe it brought a lot of, just, room for experimentation on the front end.
Because all of a sudden, you know, you know, hold volume fixed, we were making more money from our existing base. And so we're ultimately growing revenue, also more profitable because there's very little you needed to do, in order, you know, from a variable or fixed cost endpoint in order to ultimately increase the rate on people. So that was great. And, I mean, like, that's not new.
Our our print business was doing that for a long time. And, you know, various part people doing that there. And so, definitely something we stole from them. So what is your thing thing on the, on the front end Especially, like, you know, I I I think there's a lot of, discussion at least in my industry around, like, are you going too low on the introductory?
Because, like, are they ever gonna really step up or be real stores. I mean, we've done an enormous amount of testing in and around that, holding out control control groups. And I think, like, what at least gives me confidence is, you know, kind of multiple tests that we've run that we've seen, you know, one, by running promotional pricing, you know, below what we typically offer in terms of an introductory, we are, it is providing incremental subs sub subscribers. So people we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
And I think, like, until we ran that test ourselves, you can read about it, but until we did it ourselves, have learned it ourselves and set our customers behave this way, There was always just kind of that pushback.
The second is I think when you see the, the survival curve of the various customers, the the people who are on the promo rate, they retained better in year one than any of our normal customers. And I think, like, that was very eye opening for a lot of people too because the expectation was they're gonna come in, they're gonna read an article. And it was basically gonna be like a micro payment, and we just didn't see that. And again, Sometimes I think you have to learn it yourself. Like, you might know it or read about it or see someone else doing it, but when you're able to see that's how the data ultimately shakes out, in your own organization, I think that's, immensely helpful.
Yeah. I I I, like, we're we're lucky in that we're fairly new at this.
So we have wide license or agency to sort of go and figure these things out. And we haven't done many of these tests or any of these tests before. So it's exactly what Michael said. Like, you don't know until you try it. So you just kinda kinda rip the band aid off.
So everyone's been supportive from the c c cFO of NBC News Group to the president of CNBC with just trying these things out. And it's all about, like, learning. Like, let's look at the data and see what it show. It show.
So, what we're trying to do is just it's a simple more or less question. Right? Like, we don't do the deep understand Michael, is that a previously. It's much different business.
Like, we don't do deep intro pricing. There's no, like, sign up for CBC Pro for a dollar and we'll and we'll charge you, you know, five dollars a month or thirty dollars a month next go around. So we don't really have those mechanics, but for us, it's like Are you making more dollars or less dollars? Right?
And that's not even an LTV question. It's like, if we bring in more gross cash or less cash subscriber number aside. And we're looking at it, in increments. Right?
You launch a test. You look at it. One week, getting two weeks and three weeks and four weeks in. Let's keep running it through the summer.
I mean, we're also just like in the news business, but if there's a market if there's a market activity, or froth in the market, you have to account for that. What's that driving? We try and also find all the different use cases. So big interview with Bob Eiger behind the wall.
Like, what did that do for us? That's very specific down to the URL or, you know, Dow went down, you know, a thousand points, which hasn't really happened in that movement in a single day. But, like, what would our what did our offer do and what did the AB test do during that period. So I think it makes the discussion easier.
But at the end of the day, it's about, are you making more dollars or less dollars, and it shouldn't be much more complicated than that. Yes. I love it. I mean, like, I feel like I've gone down this, like, terrible rabbit hole of all these sophisticated questions, and then your question is, like, spot on.
It just, like, answer that question and you'll know if you're doing okay or not. So Right.
Yeah. And I know in our business, it's we've had a lot of conversation specifically around pricing, like, how how far down to a micro level do you get? Does each theater have its own price. Is it by city or DMA?
Is it by state or region? And we kinda did a lot of research using some external vendors who actually specialize in a lot of the newspapers as well since they have such customized price points to see what do we get from that to set point? Is it worth all of that extra effort and obligation to go down to that level? So we did a lot of that before we did our recent price adjustments, in in previous months.
And really did a we were planning to do a small rollout testing, like, thirty percent of our areas, see how that went. Ultimately felt so confident in the research that we had and what what everything was looking like that we were able to roll it out to a much larger group. But to I think both both gentleman's point still kind of held out that control group where there were areas where we didn't make that change. So now we can really see, okay, Here's the cancellation rates.
Here's the impact on acquisition. Here's what these customers are now doing at these higher price points. We've proven that that worthwhile now. It makes it a very easy conversation with our leadership, to make the final adjustments going forward.
One other thing I'm always curious around pricing is, I guess, the way that it reflects on the product or the organization, So, you know, maybe again, this is more new centric, but I do wonder if publishers that sort of devalued they're offering by trading the market to expect, you know, basically for introductory offers that last six months to a year.
I I feel like we're seeing some publishers, you know, maybe on sort of the smaller side coming to market and taking a bit more of kind of the the streaming model where, no, this is the price everybody pays it. Know, maybe there's a cyber Monday deal. But by and large, you know, this is the prize.
I just wonder, and Megan, maybe you can sort of speak to this.
What do you think the benefits are of having that more kind of fixed price model?
Or well, again, you know, I I hear arguments on both side of sides of this. I see data on both sides. So I'm just curious how you kinda think about it. I think it kinda depends on the maturity of your program. If it's early on and you're trying to get that quick growth and and word-of-mouth going, things like a one month free trial, which was our kind of go to before the pandemic.
Really make a lot of sense. You're gonna more growth and a lot more interest that way. But ultimately, what we've kind of shifted to is percentage off trials, longer term trials, so rather than just giving everything away upfront and hoping that they stay, I'd much rather use that budget to ensure that someone's staying for longer and actually getting their teeth into the program, understanding it, becoming an evangelist and bringing their friends. And, that's ultimately been, a lot better for us long term. So, yeah, you do kinda sacrifice a little bit of that short term gain, but you ultimately have a much higher quality of subscriber by taking that approach.
Hey, Jack. I'd only build.
I I've wrestled with this for a while now. I've just, like, price signaling in media.
And I think it's I think it's really hard like, especially I think maybe Netflix ruined it for everyone where you can get so much content and so much of the best content, and they also, like, could offer the best price where the whole model just kind of explodes in your head.
So so that's been, I think, really hard to to deal with. I think, like, like, Megan was saying, we looked at the customer behavior and, you know, in some of these intra offers, like, when people behave, you know, quote unquote better, and they stay longer or they read more or whatever it might be.
That's sort of like one of those reinforcing, dynamics.
That suggests, hey, maybe we're onto something here. It it's hard though. And I think it's hard definitely from an interpersonal level, especially so much work goes into the quality general general generalism that I've been involved with now.
And, I I, you know, I think there's a very human element there, like, you know, are you properly charging? And and that's far that's really hard to to deal with, like, the data be damned.
I will say, you know, just beginning building one more on on Megan's, point. The other case, like, what we've seen pricing being, really influential is on that cancel card or when people are trying to leave, and really trying to use data in order to to predict, you know, hey, what would say this person, what's the rate? Like, how how much, can we, can we charge and still keep this individual, or do we even wanna keep this individual That's been an interesting puzzle. And, again, like, I go back to SESDynamic. Like, we've done a lot of work. We've done a lot of testing. I think, like, and I've heard from a few other folks too that just might be, like, give them the damn inter offer, and that's, like, you know, do that and then move on.
But it's it's, it's it's a very fascinating question that, that, has been, I don't know if it's, like, enjoyable or, it just sort of, like, terrorizes you, but it's it's at least been a very interesting question.
It's very easy to optimize yourself to death and Good point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as you say, you know, if you just follow the data, you eventually end up doing some pretty weird stuff.
In my experiences, you know, whether that's emailed or whatever it might be. But no. It's interesting, you know, I guess, obviously, there are some sort of content and product specific dynamics at play, you know, I think not to talk about news too much, but I think that's an interesting one because Abbit is so essential, I think realistically to some degree because for some people, it's a bit like, you know, it's eating their veggies, basically. You know, it's not necessarily the first thing they wanna do, you know, the first thing they wanna do is go to the movie theater or, you know, sim similarly with CNBC, you know, it's a lot more I guess utility driven, you know, people come with intent. There's a specific problem they're trying to solve.
So that's where I find it really interesting as well. Where and I guess that's an area where you can't necessarily just kind of pick up a a pricing model or approach from something like streaming and apply it to news because the nature of the product and I guess, you know, the problem to be solved and sort of the value proposition is just so different. But, I still see, I guess, people trying to just kind of apply one to the other But, so just moving to, retention, obviously, sort of a a broad topic But, I mean, what what's something that you guys have implemented, I guess, in the past year that, has has really the needle. And maybe, you know, what's something that kinda surprised you? Like, what's a what's a test you ran that, you know, return the opposite result or a hypothesis you had that turned out not to be true. I love those.
Yeah. I mean, for for us with the investing club, the Jim Kramer, specifically, like, the the number one thing that people want and find value in is are they getting educated as a self directed retail investor? To make the right decisions. And and Jim's product, is much different than what it is in mad money, which is probably how most people and interact with Jim, which is the the daily show on on CMBC.
So for that, we know what's important to our drivers or our members as we call them, and it was about providing additional access to Jim, and more education specifically within the content. So things that we rolled out in the past year was like we had a daily morning meeting, which is a live, video that Jim does with Jeff Mark his chief research analyst.
But it was how do we add an additional touch point into that? Because you get them in the morning. He's on TV throughout the day, and then other than any trade alerts or content that comes out written content, there was no way to interact. So we actually launched a audio product which we actually talk about hacking things together. We did through Skype, and then it was published essentially as a video file.
And that was an aft way to get them to interact with the audience members in the afternoon.
And look, it's not the fanciest thing. It's not a proper podcast as one might think about it. It's not even a video, but the fact that they're talking to you and telling you what you need to know heading into the last hour of the trading day, which is most important.
Pay dividends for us. So for us, it was really about thinking about the content specifically. Now for pro, we don't have the results yet.
But primarily it was a content product. Right? You got the live stream. You have, retail investor articles, pics, calls, etcetera.
And then you also have, protoss, such as like monthly live discussions and a variety of of content future sets. But for us, it was about adding actual tools So that it wasn't such a dead end experience for that subscriber where they're reading a story, they get an investing idea, and then they're going off for their brokerage. So we're thinking about how we bring new tools to them. To drive that retention primarily.
So, like, stock screener tool, we built our own and launched it. Another thing that we're doing is what's the most most important thing to a subscriber to their own personal portfolio.
So we're working on a major project now while they'll be able to integrate their portfolios into the product. So if it lives in Vanguard, or TD or Schwab, they'll be able to have the content and all the great things that we do. And how that served up alongside their portfolio.
So for us, it's about creating a richer subscriber experience.
Starting with the content as always. That's what we do day in day day in and day out, and then following it all the way through the tools and the experience, which is about habit and day parting and giving them what they need and when they need it. So we'll see next year how that pays off.
That you worry that, like, the platforms, like, fidelity and and the like are gonna copy what you guys are trying to do?
No. I mean, look, they do things better than we do. Like, they're gonna have tools that enable you to make a trade, and we're partners with them in many ways.
But where we differentiate ourselves is the access, the curation, the reporting, whereas they are just getting a feed. Right? And you can have various tools. So I think it's about getting some of the tools that they have and bringing it into our experience, and they have screeners and all of that.
But, no, copying what we do. No. Now I was actually on the floor of the stock exchange the other day, and and Schwab is out there. They have their own setup and they're doing their own, live video.
Right? But why doesn't everyone do live video? Or why do they start it? And then stop it because it's really, really hard, and it's really, really expensive.
But we do look at what they do, and they do a great job of it, and their partners in various ways in some of our content lives in the in the platforms.
Yeah. It's really interesting with that. I mean, it's it's one of those things. It always makes sense on paper.
You know, everyone be a media company, but it I don't know. In my experience, it comes back to, like, what's in your DNA fundamentally. Right? And I sure hope it's not gonna be as excited about streaming video as it is, you know, obviously it's it's cool business.
That's what I was finding just as well. Megan, anything on on kind of that that little one? Yeah. So back at the end of twenty twenty one, we launched a couple of programs, a, we launched annual, which is obviously nothing new to the subscription space. But I think the surprising turn of events we had when we launched that, we expected most of the people to join an annual option would be existing members who were used to everything and wanted to kind of walk in for that discount. But we were really pleasantly surprised to see a huge chunk of our annual members come from brand new sign ups who had never been part of the program for. So kind of tell you start thinking on how we would market that, how we would use that as a tool in our arsenal to kind of acquire new members.
And then right at the same time, we launched an earned tier called platinum, which really encourages a much more frequent moviegoing experience. People can earn this. It's not bought in. But you have to be a paid subscription member in order to participate in the program.
So if you're coming a lot, it makes sense to be a member, but people don't always do the math and figure that out on their own. So this is an extra way for us to tell them you're coming, you know, twenty times throughout the year. That's way more than most people do. A, this program is gonna help you save money.
And, b, you can also keep coming a few extra times and earn this extra tier for some extra benefit.
And again, the surprising thing that we had when we first launched that was the amount of just organic, social engagement and word-of-mouth, that we got people who were exciting to share their progress and celebrating when they've hit this threshold, and really just became a whole campaign that we weren't expecting to happen at the end of that year. That we're now kind of utilizing strategically throughout the coming years, to generate more focus on the program.
So I just wanted to switch gears to talk a bit about sort of the cancellation landscape.
This is something. I talk about a lot and people talk to me, a lot about, but, nobody seems to be at least publicly sort of expressing too much concern, and that's just sort of a general regular regulatory landscape around sort of cancellation practice generally. So, obviously, in the US, you know, the FTC you know, if it's been pretty vocal about its intent to kinda crack down on on practices generally and, you know, that'll kinda click to cancel ruling specifically.
Similar legislation in the UK.
I'm curious, you know, how much of a threat do you think that is to subscription businesses? And then I guess the flip side of that coin is, you know, is it actually an opportunity? We conducted some research recently saying, you know, a lot of consumers would be more open to taking out new subscriptions if they were confident that they could cancel them pretty easily. So, you know, I think, obviously, it's it's early days, but I'm wondering if you know, this is gonna cause huge sort of churn events for a lot of companies. I'm sure it will, but, you know, looking medium long term, is there an opportunity to sort of don't know. Just fostered closer sort of trust with with audiences, and is that ultimately gonna be, sort of a good thing in medium long term?
I mean, ultimately, it doesn't do your company any good to have a whole lot of customers who are stuck with you. I mean, you want someone to be happy with the offerings that you have actively using it excited about it. Which I think is how we built our program from the from the beginning. Most of our competitors, have some kind of commitment terms.
You have to sign up for a certain number of months. Or if you cancel, you can't rejoin in a certain number of months, whereas we took that really strong, flexible, no commitment Cancel anytime, rejoin anytime, make it easy. We do obviously, I think, as either Seth or Michael pointed out, during the cancellation flow, we have extra options for different ability types depending on price and stability and things like that. But we never wanna make it difficult to leave, just because it's only gonna make it that much harder to get so back in the long term.
And I think also adding options like pausing and that kind of stuff also gives them the flexibility to use your membership the way that they want to, and not force you to have to win them back. A pause will automatically kind of reactivate them once that period is over. And avoid that whole hassle of reactivation and win back later on.
Said any any thoughts on that. Is that something you're talking about? Yeah. I mean, look, we we distribute our products, save for a few countries in the case of investing club for local regulation purposes, but, like, we distribute it globally.
Right? So you can buy CMEC Pro and most countries around the world. So as long as they're not a sanctioned country or territory from the United States, it's a whole other subscription challenge that I face, with our legal team, but, like, Yeah. I mean, so we're doubling, keep a close eye on it.
We're very close to legal. I think you posed a question of, like, how do you provide that cancellation choice or make it make it easier to be a customer if you just start there, how do you apply that? So I don't have any, like, specific tactics that that you can do right now. Like, you never wanna lose a customer.
You never really kinda, like, conventional wisdom would say, you never wanna make it easy to not be my customer. Right? But maybe if you look at flip it on his head, you say, how do you make it as easy as possible to to be our customer, and maybe you do that through through through pricing. Right?
Like, you you have a certain price. If you stay longer, you have benefits, loyalty programs, I'm just thinking about the actual, like, loyalty program mechanics of it. Isn't something that at least content subscription publishers necessarily have. Maybe that's a way to go about it.
Like, if you stick with us, you get something. Right? It's always the New Yorker Topag example. Right?
Like, it's a very simple one. Like, maybe we just started there and you said, Well, what's our New Yorker tote bag? And it doesn't need to be a piece of merch. Maybe you get to attend an event.
Maybe if you stuck with us for a long time subscriber, you get to come to the annual ICC event in New York City and get your picture with Jim and and shake his hand and get your tequila bottle signed, which she does regularly.
Maybe it's things like that. So you raise a really good question. It's something that everyone should be thinking about. But I think it's the question of how do you make it easier to be our customer subscriber, member, whatever word we want to attach to all of them. What it is, which is a customer.
Jack, I'd I'd just add.
Whatever I've seen cancel anytime on a checkout page or a ad, I mean, response is always better not including it. I mean, and I've seen upwards of, you know, like, twenty five percent.
You know, just in terms of your opportunity, I certainly maybe air on the side. Like, trying to get in a customer's way is never gonna end well for you. And it may not be in the short term.
But I, you know, I think what's been really interesting. I've seen it several times now is, those former customers are usually your best prospect pool.
And, yes, they might need a break, or, you know, you might not be delivering the value that they need at that case in point or something might be happening in life, but You know, guess what? You can email them. So now all of a sudden you're in a zero CAC situation, and that's good.
Or they're gonna automatically rejoin. Maybe it's a seasonal use pattern. So I I think, like, to your point is, like, trying to understand, you know, maybe on a more cohort basis, why people are coming and going and Are there better ways to segment those cohorts?
You know, we used to at the post, we used to do a, a post cancel cancel flow, and you would we would ask for a reason. And, you know, a lot of times, there was price. And so we would, you know, those people would get maybe a more aggressive offer than someone you chose for a a different reason. And so just like some of those little things you can you can do, that that help.
Also think at least, you know, from an acquisition standpoint, if you can convince your CFO or COO, whatever it might be that, you know, hey, we do have this someone does unsubscribe, you know, what? They are gonna come back or at least a healthy portion are. And we wanna start to build some of that Ltd into that, you know, upfront acquisition cost. Then all of a sudden then allows you to do more things on the on the front end, which I think, again, could be really exciting, just in terms of either new channels or more aggressive offer, whatever it might be.
Yeah. That's really interesting. I mean, I think, you know, realistically a portion of subscribers are gonna dip in and dip out. You know, I think everyone can relate to that behavior. So I guess then it becomes, yeah, how do you maintain that relationship during those periods when they may not be a paying subscriber that keep them kind of in the fold And then I guess, you know, says to your point, you know, there's sort of potentially kind of loyalty opportunities there as well to help bridge those gaps you know, whether it is sort of the gamification loyalty point model, but, I don't know. Maybe there's been something there just to kind of keep people as as close to you as possible, even if they may not be, you know, kinda compensate you with with dollars and cents.
We are running out of time here that just quickly kinda looking ahead.
I mean, I think sort of the the cancellation legislation one is a big thing on my radar at least, but I'm kinda looking ahead to next year, you know, what are some, kinda key areas that are top of mind for you guys, what areas of initiatives do you expect you'll be investing in?
You know, what's kind of the next six, twelve months to type?
Firm. Oh, go ahead. No. Please use first. Because I think the echo on a little bit of what we were just talking about, we're really looking to understand our annual prices and behaviors so that we can optimize that a little bit better for long term.
So answering questions, like, is it better to have that count upfront, or is it something that kicks in over longer periods of time? Maybe you get a bigger discount, the longer you're signed up for our annual program. Or on the flip side, is it even necessary to discount redoals? I know that's something that has a lot of sensitivity around leadership of, we don't wanna just give something away if we don't need to.
So looking to to answer those questions, test out some theories and see exactly how best to approach them. And we're also really looking at some customized member experiences from add on options to gamifying certain behaviors like badges and things like that, just to help drive those incremental behaviors in ways that don't really cost us a whole lot of money on our end.
Yeah. So for us, more strategic lens now it's about we've spent the last several years building out the capabilities of running, growing, and operating a subscription business. So, like, we're in a place now where we have the core business focusing on retail investors.
Can we go out to market and build tiers to that that are for other specific use cases around the world. So it's a lot launching new products there off of the core of what we've done. So we just recently launched an all access bundle. So we actually bundled both products together and you could buy it at somewhat of a discounted price, but not actively marketing it.
So, like, that's one higher way, higher, start revenue way. The other is, like, can you tier it differently? The last piece of it is can you actually launch new products that are different than what we do now? So I call them, like, d to c ish.
So can you look at b, like, like, Jaiwa, your business, like, like you're a steward of audience. Right? So it can be a stewards of audience for specific types of people and use cases in the investor or money world. And I think it's about building products using our great talent, our great access, our great content.
All the people are in the CNBC network, and developing products for not retail investors, but other types of people across the money spectrum think that's really exciting. I think you have to test your way into it. So can you start with just a newsletter? Can you just actually ask people if they would pay for it and can you interview them to understand, like, what's their gaps right now.
And I think it's about comes back to the capabilities that were built. So you can do a lot of different things, but you have to go back to the testing and learning over time. That's what we're focused on for next year.
I I would just say, I mean, you know, you guys hit it. I got really nothing more to add. The one thing I am interested in is really, what role can generative AI play in sort of building new features of the product Seth was talking about, and really make it, sort of taking expertise and, like, making it into a utility feature to make this subscription that more valuable. I don't know what that looks like, but, I, like, have some random thoughts, but me, like, working very closely with our editorial teams to to make it and to add, you know, that habitual, or the utility that that you can use on a more daily basis versus, like, once in a, you know, longer time.
That's what I'm really interested and excited about in the next twelve months.
Great. Okay. Well, we'll wrap it up there. Unfortunately, that is all the time we have, but, thanks again to recurring.
This is This has been a great discussion and plenty of food for thought, and I've made loads of notes. So I'm gonna be jotting those down after this session, but Michael Megan, Seth. Thanks, thanks so much for joining. Thank you.
Thank you.
