Want more customers? Reach out more often

The Goal

Due to a recent price increase the Sioux City Journal, located in Sioux City, Iowa (41,000; 42,000) was experiencing an increase in stop volume. As such, their objective was to reduce non-pay stops from 40 to 20 a day.

The Story

A six step program focused primarily on subscribers whose subscription was 7 days from running out and, again 4 days prior to the end of the grace period. 

1. Contacted all the customers, regardless of the start code, the day their paper started. 

2. Contacted all customers who had not renewed 7 days prior to their funds running out. 

3. Made a reminder call 17 days into grace period. 

4. Called the customer 31 days into grace offering a premium to pay by phone. 

5. Called the customer 35 days into grace and informed them they were 10 days from the end of their grace period. 

6. Made last phone call to attempt to collect payment by phone 41 days into grace.

“One obstacle that we had to overcome was that we were forced to eliminate step 5 because the module in our circulation system that tracked 35 days into grace did not function as required to successfully implement the step,” said Operations Director Mark Lewis.

The success of the promotion was determined by the tracking of non-pay stops.

The program resulted in reducing non-pay stops to 19.5 per day.

The Moral of the Story

Delivering very frequent reminders for customers to renew their subscription is one way to reduce non-pay stops without adding a lot of overhead.