Why don’t magazine companies make it easier to renew your subscription?
December 15, 2007 – 2:19 pm
It seems like the minute you subscribe to a magazine they start sending you renewal forms.
The time to renew my Inc. and Fast Company subscriptions finally rolled around.
I’ll walk through the renewal process for Inc. below, but the process is the same for Fast Company, as the parent company for both publications is Mansueto Ventures.
I admit that I’m not an expert on user experience, but I’m sure the issues I encountered are not unique.
1) There is no renewal URL in the direct mail piece, not to mention even a URL for the website in the body copy. There is a URL with the address of the magazine, but I didn’t see that right away. If you want to track renewals from the direct mail piece, just provide a separate URL that redirects the user to the form. That way you can track the renewals from the direct mail piece, yet not have to develop multiple renewal forms.
2) As with most people these days, I hate to write checks and mail forms in to some random data processing center. Online forms with a credit card number? No problem as long as they are secure (which isn’t always the case) and are a link from the main site.
When I visited the main website and selected the renewal link, but there is no where to enter my account number or lookup my account number. The renewal form link takes me to a page that looks just like the new subscriber page with a free trial issue. There are a few different problems with this, including the requirement for me to type in my full contact information, which they have already.
3) The offer on the renewal page is 12 issues for $9.97. The offer on my direct mail piece as well as renewing through the online customer service form? $11.97.
4) There is no option to renew for 2 years online, which is my preference. The direct mail piece does provide this option, but, once again, I don’t want to send in the direct mail piece. Since Inc., according to their terms, provides a full refund on all unmailed issues, even if I decide to cancel later, it would still be worth it to me to not have to mess with renewal forms for an additional year.
5) The customer service form, which allows you to lookup your account information by providing your email address is nice, but there should be additional lookup options since email addresses, just like everything else, change over time.
6) When I renewed my subscription, they missed out on a key data collection time. Why not provide some more optional questions for the user? I appreciate the simplicity of only having to enter my credit card information, but I think that is a missed opportunity. Even if there was a link to survey, I’m sure some people take engage.
7) This is closely related to #6, but why wouldn’t they utilize the chance to get the user to opt in to email notifications or other magazine related content? The user is already saying they are interested in continuing to hear from you and willing to pay for it.
8) No confirmation. The confirmation message after renewing was simply “Thank you for your renewal of Inc.”
No renewal confirmation number, order number, confirmation email. Nothing.
9) When I visited my account status page, it still had the previous expiration date of my subscription, as well as text that stated “you have no other orders associated with this account” besides the original subscription place a few years ago.
I have to acknowledge them for providing Hackersafe and VeriSign secured seals, which, as research has shown, can have a significant impact on conversion rates (contact me if you want more details on conversions).
I’m sure there are reasons for all of the disconnect between the direct mail piece, the online renewal form and the customer service form, but I’m open for somebody to provide this insight.
For now, I’ll just go ahead and renew online and hope that someone addresses these issues before next renewal season rolls around. This was by no means a thorough review of the process, just some of the items I encountered during the renewal process, which, in theory, only took a few minutes.
Anyone else have a similar experience with their subscriptions?
Technorati Tags: Fast Company, Inc., magazine, renewal, customer service, user experience
One Response to “Why don’t magazine companies make it easier to renew your subscription?”
The system, at least for Fast Company, does allow you to search by name and address, as I found out when renewing my Fast Company subscription because I guess they didn’t have my email address on file.
But, when I got to the renewal page, my email address was listed.
Another annoyance for not providing a receipt was that if you did want to expense it as a company expense, you are out of luck.
On one positive note, the Fast Company website did provide the best renewal price online through the customer service form: only $7 for 12 issues, which was an 86% discount off the cover price.
By Dustin Jacobsen on Dec 15, 2007