You’re the Chair of the PPA Subscription & Membership Steering Group, could you tell us about the purpose and remit of the group?

This group brings together senior consumer and B2B subscription/membership professionals to champion the biggest opportunities for the sector. We drive forward the things that matter whilst supporting each other with common industry challenges, sharing ideas and innovations, success stories, as well as providing feedback to the PPA on related regulatory issues.

What are the current areas of focus?

We cover everything! We have five core focus areas at present:

• Acquisitions – new subscriber acquisition, new reader revenue streams, and diversified revenue streams.
  
  
• Retention – all things retention, from customer experience and subscriber/member engagement to reducing churn and price increase strategies.
  
  
• Enablers – largely around technology and data as enablers for us to successfully manage our subscriber and membership bases. Both are crucial to our success.
  
  
• Fulfilment (bureaus) – focused on ways of working with our external suppliers who provide fulfilment and customer services. These are crucial customer-facing partnerships, inherently complex but hugely important.
  
  
• Industry insights – we are at the heart of understanding subscriber/member behaviour -benchmarking and customer research are vital therefore this is a hot topic for the group in 2025.
  

Why is it valuable for the industry to collaborate via networks like this?

Our jobs are hard! And you don’t know what you don’t know.  Everyone is watching what everyone else is doing but what is right for one business may not be right for another.  It is so very easy to become isolated, watch, and copy. Having access to peers means you can ask those burning questions at source, it enables rich fun discussions, as well as advice and shared knowledge.

What are some of the achievements of the group?

This past year there has been a lot of focus on subscription contract regulation. The PPA Subscription & Membership Steering Group and the PPA’s Public Affairs team have been heavily involved in feeding back to the government – ensuring that the industry gets a fair deal.

We are also dedicated to learning opportunities, last year we ran a series of subscription marketing courses, in partnership with Atlas. Each course was curated with B2B and B2C subscription teams in mind and designed to develop skills, build confidence, and unleash the potential of those working day-to-day with recurring revenues. Modules covered everything from personalisation and first-party data to audience development and customer targeting.

What do you think is front of mind for Subscription & Membership professionals at the moment?

For some time we have seen paid digital conversion decline and the cost per acquisition increase. Now we need to think differently about the digital marketing tactics we use and elevate our creativity to start building our intent pools to enable future conversion. 

And AI is of course a hot topic. We’re keen to understand what this means for subscription/membership management and marketing. We don’t have the answers yet, but we will be exploring this topic further in 2025

What should we look out for next?

Subscriber/member engagement is critical for recurring revenue businesses. Some of the group have significant legacy print businesses which can make digital engagement tricky, but it is a key focus for 2025 as our industry continues to evolve. 

Another area of interest is customer insights, not just the who, what, and where – but the why, it’s how we use things like sentiment analysis to shape our marketing strategy for example.

How can people get involved?

If you’d like to enquire about joining the group please email the PPA’s Membership Manager, David.bostock@ppa.co.uk

Members of the Subscription & Membership Steering Group include: