I had a subscription to The Economist for two years that recently expired. I got several reminders about this, but was too busy to renew it and forgot about it. All of a sudden, the issues stopped coming and I thought, “oh well, let’s just leave it at that, I’ll survive without it and if I want to read it, I’ll just buy it in the store”.
After a month or so, a letter came in, that mentioned the following:
Your subscription to The Economist expired several weeks ago and we don’t want to lose you.
Such a good start of this letter! They had already won me back. It sounds really honest, they’re not trying to sell me anything here they can’t give me. They know they provide value, so they don’t go and shout it out aloud in the first part of the letter. The letter then continues…
For a small outlay, and a substantial saving on the cover price price - you can continue to benefit from analysis and opinion on the latest international issues.
Again, spot on (except for the error in the sentence–unless my English is totally screwed up, there’s one mention of the word price too much). They do not exaggerate the value of their offering, in fact they do not even include any such thing as ‘great’, ‘good’ or ‘fantastic’. This is how I like it. Next sentence…
Whether you read the whole newspaper every week, or just those articles of specific interest to you, The Economist gives you invaluable insight across a wide array of topics, from business and politics to the ARts and science.
Okay, they’re getting more confident and are gradually building things up. Now their offering is characterized as being invaluable. The one who wrote this letter clearly knows he’s got enough credit to get away with this. On we go…
A one-year subscription will save you 63% on the cover price. Renewing for longer will save you even more. The enclosed renewal form shows just how much.
What struck me here was that they’re mentioning the smallest saving you can get. Are you renewing for two or even three years, you’re saving a lot more, yet they do not mention how much specifically, they just mention the smallest saving. Interesting…
And you’ll continue to get every Economist article back to March 1997 on www.economist.com. Plus our in-depth country and industry special reports, to help make the world’s workings that bit clearer.
Making the world’s working that bit clearer. Not crystal clear or entirely clear, but just that bit clearer.
The letter ends with the following:
If you change your mind at any time, you can simply cancel your subscription and get a full refund on the remaining issues.
To renew now, please visit www.economist.com/renew/emea, call our hotline on +44 (0)114 220 2404 or complete and return your form in the envelope provided.
Renewing now will bring you the big picture for as little as EUR 1.67 a week.
I think this is an excellent letter. I’m wondering if this letter is specifically designed for Europe, or the Netherlands, or if they’re using this letter all over the world. I can’t help but think there are people at the Economist thinking about the culture in a specific region and designing different letters for different regions.
In any case, if you’d like to sell me something, please do it in a respectful manner and read the above letter to increase your chances of success!
p.s. do I need to tell you that I filled out the renewal form? I do still have to post it though and that’s where it went wrong last time, so we’ll see if The Economist will continue to have me as a customer after all.
Dear Mr Arendsen,
I stumbled across your blog whilst travelling in the Netherlands last week. I’m responsible for growing our circulation in Europe and was very interested to read your feedback to our reminder letter. I’ve circulated your response to our team.
We’re correcting that repeated word - thanks for pointing it out!
To answer your question, we do have very different letters around the world, designed to reflect cultural differences.
Please may I ask what went wrong with your previous subscription? I would like to solve that for you.
Kind regards,
Michael Brunt
Marketing Services Director
Dear Mr Brunt, Michael,
nothing went wrong on your side with my subscription, I just forgot to send in the renewal form the first time. I have sent it in this time, but haven’t received anything yet. It might be because I tried renewing via a bank authorization. I don’t know if this works for you. Normally I would have used a credit card, only if it if weren’t temporarily blocked.
Thanks for you explanation, I think it’s great to see that a magazine such as the Economist (or any company for that matter) takes care of the cultural differences across the globe and even talks about this in public and reacts to blog entries such as the above. It shows a great deal of professionalism IMO and dedication to both your customers and to your (the Economist’s) success.
About the typo, I just re-read this blog entry and I just it’s a matter of the pot calling the cattle black; I’m about to correct at least 10 typos in my entry myself.
I hope you had a good time in The Netherlands.
cheers,
Alef
Sir,
I want to enew the subscription (expiring on 8th March 2008) for three years.
Gerd W.
Customer reference number: xyz
[customer details taken down for privacy reasons]
Dear Mr. Wiesner,
this site is a blog and not associated to the Economist in any way. Commenting here will not get you any closer to a renewal I would say.
I’ll delete your personal details shortly, as they are of no interest to the general public I guess.
regards,
Alef
Certainly recognize the well targeted letter and message. I have been a subscriber to the economist for many years and undoubtedly will continue.
What annoys me wrt subscription renewals is that the economist send you the nice letters, but renewal via that letter is MORE EXPENSIVE than as a new subscriber online; i.e. the most loyal customers are somehow ‘punished’ by having to pay more. (btw surfing via google will find even better offers).
So every time I’m up for renewal I jsut register as a new user (or in my wifes name on same address); this ends up saving me a lot of money, and I even get a welcome gift (USB stick, world in figures, etc).
Niels
I am in love with my Economist subscription; but here in the US, dealing with their subscription department is less then pleasant.
For the last several years, whenever it is renewal time, they always promise to include the World in Review special for the coming year, and every single year I never receive it until it is time to renew my subscription again for the next year (ie, I have just received my 2007 World in Review, which is about as dated as is possible, considering that 2007 is now over). Also, last year they promised me a t-shirt; not something I am particularly interested in, but again, they never bothered actually sending it to me.
The main attraction however would have to be when I initially purchased my subscription. I mailed the magazine a check for the total price of the subscription, and after about a month with no magazines coming, they sent me a bill collection notice telling me I owed them money. I telephoned to tell them that I had already paid by check, and they informed me that they never received it.
I recognize that these things happen, so I provided a credit card number. Then, roughly a month later (after they had billed my credit card) they cashed my check. I then had to recover $98 dollars from them (as they had billed me twice), which took about 9 weeks, and endless emails including credit card statements and photo copies of deposited checks.
I can say without hesitation that the Economist is the best English language news magazine, but has the worst subscription department (at least here in the US) of any magazine I have ever contended with.
At the moment, I am trying to renew via the internet (because they never sent me a renewal card, and my subscription stopped arriving), but every time I put my credit card info in, I receive a ’server temporarily unavailable’ error.
into the breach.
Hi Toby,
that certainly does not sound all that good. I’ve sent this on to Michael Brunt (he was one of the other commenters on this entry). Let’s see if there’s something they take away from all this.
Alef
The wonders of surfing the Internet… tonight I end up here, at the page of someone who clearly loves the Economist as much as I do. What I want to know, and can’t seem to find out, is why there was no Year in Review for 2008…
I have been a subscriber of The Economist for more than a decade now, there are a couple of things that I cannot understand though:
1. As already mentioned, why is renewing more expensive than new subscription?
2. Why does the subscription become more expensive as we move from US (ref value 100) to Europe (200) to Japan (400)?
Maybe Michael Brunt or others from the magazine notice this and have a response for it.
In the past, I’ve forwarded comments to Michael and his team and they’ve always given a response (at least, as far as I know). I’m sure Michael will visit this blog again and see the additional comments.
In the meantime I think it’s quite interesting that a little blog entry can generate a lot of comments on a particular subject.
Like every year that I am making gift subscriptions, the section processing the request messes up the surprise - 2008 was therefore my last year presenting the Economist: I have received a reminder to renew a gift subsription to a friend in the beginning of the year. However, the Economist now refuses to send it to me - although I am not to dependent on such a 256mb device, I see it as a matter of principle since the reminding letters the Economist
has sent me to renew the gift subscriptions included such a gift for the
presenter. I am more than disappointed with the handling of the whole
matter and since the Economist was not only not in a position to handle
the gift subscription in a timely and professional manner this year (In
2006 this has spoiled a christmas surprise, this year it took weeks for
the delivery to be processed due apparently misplaced orders and lack of
communication on the Economist’s side, resulting in a a botched birthday surprise),
This conduct of business of the Economist’s
subsription service and also the unit handling book orders stands in
stark contrast to the professionalism of the magazine.
We also are trying to renew our subscrition , but in our case the internet only served us the ‘new subscrition’ version even though I googled for the renewal\emea version, and that’s how we found this blog, which is much more fun then the economist. And, believe me, the letter we receive from them in Portugal is exactly te same as in Holland. But, having read all this comments and tips, we are absolutely going to subscribe again(maybe the Toby way), because , apart from the quality of the magazine we finally had a good laugh ! thank you all……
Sir, My subscription started 27th May 2006. The expiry date was indicated as 19th May 2007. Then it became 17 May 2008. It seems to be getting shorter as time goes on. Since I was going to be absent for 5 weeks in April, I asked for a suspension of my subscription. Now I want to renew on-line but the system does not accept. Please tell me how to proceed. Shall I send a check as I did in the past? (Customer Reference Number : 00924430) Thanks in advance.
I live in Venezuela, and just received several renewal notices (very late because mails are currently terrible and getting worse!)…Henceforth I will be mailing my renewal–this week with a friend who will be travelling to the USA– for 2 years plus ADD-AUTO RENEWAL, thus Total amount $205 less $20 (for auto renewal offer), and to be charged o my AMRICAN EXPRESS CARD # 1234.1234.1234.1234.. expiration date dd/mm …I will ALSO try to phone you at 1 314 453 7091, to corroborate…
Also if you send me your FAX I could forward this info to you as well. THANKS
Please acknwledge receip ASAP
Carlos Eduardo Hellmund
[edit] credit card details taken down for privacy reasons
I would like to re-new my son`s subscription.
I sent in my renewal weeks ago and now I get the “Last Issue” notice.
Well I tried to renew on the www.economist.com/renew but did not find it any easier or cheaper than if I was a new subscription.
Another dysfunctional chore of life.