L'Équipe: retaining subscribers converted through a promotional offer

Offering discounted subscriptions is valuable for allowing readers to try your premium product and engage with all content. But whilst this tactic supports acquisition, it can often work against retention goals and cause high churn rates when the price eventually increases.

This was the situation for L'Équipe, the emblematic French sports newspaper with a daily digital readership of 2.5 million, and over 200,000 subscribers to its paid digital offer. Inevitably the team took advantage of the momentum of the Paris Olympics to launch a monthly subscription offer at €2.24 for 36 months in the 1000 day run up to the Games. But a super discount also means potential super churn.

So what could the L'Équipe team do to limit the damage at the end of the discount period? The Poool team arrived with a few ideas to orchestrate a churn-prevention strategy, that marketers at L'Équipe have now made their own.

The goal: Set up on-site user journeys that will maximize retention rates for those promotional offer subscribers.

Step 1, retro planning

Step 1: Break down the project into phases and create a backward timeline of tasks to complete before the planned price change.

Step 2, define the engagement actions needed to reduce churn

For instance, the team at L'Equipe found that subscribers who download their mobile app, are subscribed to certain newsletters, or read a certain type of long-form content are more loyal than others.

So retention modules were built around this:

Previews of future releases to continuously prove the value of subscription

This Netflix-style strategy has led to 9% more clicks on-site, and according to a study conducted by the publisher, subscribers report consuming more content thanks to this feature.

Romain Lhote, CMO, also shared at The Audiencers' Festival Paris that this is reflected in their newsletters, with 12% increase in email opens.

Invite readers to join the WhatsApp channel

The goal here is to bring journalists and readers closer together, developing a sense of community, and belonging to the brand. Their WhatsApp channel for instance has so far gathered 195K followers (+6.3 CTR).

Warn churned subscribers that they soon won't have access to a premium article, highlighting the value they too for granted

Combined with messages from the editorial team via a pop-up, making use of the relationship built between the Editor-in-chief and the subscriber.

Message from the editor in chief L'Équipe

Putting this all together

These examples have been materialized in a time matrix that defines which actions are activated throughout the lifecycle. Including for churned subscribers, during their grace period, and to promote re-subscription.

In yellow, retention post-cancellation whilst the user still has access to content. In red, the re-subscription campaign that spreads across 30 days post- the end-of-access date.

The results

Initial tests on these retention widgets proved that, for those who didn't see any retention widget, retention rate (after 2 months) was at 63%, whilst those who did see a retention widget retained at 84%.

Overall, after months of experimenting and developing this strategy during the promotional period, 75% of those who subscribed to this highly reduced offer are still active today (the end of November 2024).

‘Poool has enabled us to improve the engagement of our members and subscribers by providing an easy-to-use, turnkey solution. As a result, we were able to deliver dozens of successful use cases in just a few months.’
- Romain Lhote, CMO @ L'Équipe

Interested in optimizing your retention rates, just like L'Équipe? Get in touch with me at madeleine@poool.fr.