Shake Gently – advertising technology blog

It’s magazine renewal time

Last year I had a post about how painful it was to renew my Fast Company and Inc Magazines, so I thought I would provide an update.

I’ve been getting direct mail and emails about renewing for a while, but just hadn’t had a chance to do it. So, today was the day.

In addition to Fast Company and Inc, I had to renew a paid subscription to imbibe and Entrepreneur and several free technology magazines (Wireless Week, eWeek, etc).

Renewing free technology magazines is always a bit painful because you have to fill out so many questions (like your role and responsibilities, what budgets you have for buying new products, etc).

I’m fine with spending a few minutes to fill out some forms to get free content. Most of the renewal requests clearly outline the renewal URLs (and paper versions) and make it pretty painless. It would be easier if they let you review your existing profile and just make any changes vs. filling out a new subscription form every time, but it’s free, so you just kind of deal with it.

First up for paid subscription renewals was imbibe. Imbibe is a magazine about liquid culture. As they say on their site “From wine, spirits and beer to coffee, tea and everything in between, Imbibe celebrates the world in a glass.”

The renewal process for imbibe was easy: went to the site, entered in my subscription ID, reviewed my account info and paid – all in a couple of minutes. If you didn’t have the direct mail piece, renewing was clearing outlined on the website.

Next up was Fast Company.

The direct mail renewal piece from Fast Company did not have a web URL in it and it wasn’t straightforward on the web site. But, the URL for Fast Company is easy enough to figure out and I made my way to the site.

The first step was to track down the renewal page. Although not as straight forward as it could be, I got to the renewal form from the Manage Subscriptions link and looked up my account from my email address. From there, my account was found and I renewed for 1 more year (2 year still isn’t an option).

So, Fast Company has made a slight improvement to their renewal process, but not much. They still need to work through their renewal channel conflict, which could be easily accomplished by providing a separate URL for renewals in the direct mail piece vs. online.

Next up: Entrepreneur

The process to renew Entrepreneur was basically the same as Fast Company. Go to the main website, click on the Manage Subscriptions link and go from there. It was slightly different, because the manage subscriptions link to me to a subscribe page, and from there I had to click on the renew link. But, when I clicked on the renew link, I got a “This site is under construction” message with an email address and phone number to contact them.

All links besides subscribing (including subscriber services, gift subscriptions, paying for subscriptions, etc) all went to the same “under construction” page. Fail. This was very annoying and I had to call customer service. I was on hold for only about 5 minutes before I was able to process my renewal and then another 3 to process my order, which wasn’t horrible. Since you can subscribe online, I’m not sure what the problems were with renewing.

Next up was Inc. magazine. Although my subscription wasn’t going to expire until April, I went ahead and renewed it now while I was renewing everything else.

There was a renewal link on the home page; so far so good. But, when I clicked on it, it took me to a form to fill out all of my address information (no account look up). There was a link to the online customer service center, so I went that route and looked up my account by email address. From there I could see when my subscription expired, renew and manage other general customer service related issues.

The system found my account by email address and I clicked on renew and the renewal followed the same process as Fast Company (only having to enter a credit card number).

What I still don’t understand is why the larger magazines make the renewal process so hard.

Imbibe, which has the smallest subscriber base, had the best process for renewal and made it easy to renew through the direct mail piece, on the web or by phone.

Inc and Fast Company share the same renewal website (buysub.com), so they should be able to standardize the process across magazines with an account look up for all renewals. They also need to provide a confirmation page and email receipt and business expense purposes.

In summary, I can’t say there has been any improvements in the magazine renewal process and there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Technorati Tags: Fast Company, Inc, Imbibe, magazine, renewal, ecommerce