It looks like this can even be used for subscription renewal, or as a cheap gift. The deal someone posted on eBay below is gone, but below is someone somehow offering the whole year subscription for just $12. Hope that helps! The ECONOMIST Magazine Print Subscription 1 YR NEW / RENEW!
Hi Andrew,We’re really sorry that you were disappointed with your subscription, and we would like to investigate this further with the team you signed up with, so that we can use this as a learning opportunity and ensure that we communicate clearly to any subscribers the terms of their subscription. As you’re aware, once the trial period of 12 issues for £12 is over there is a quarterly charge as detailed in our terms and conditions.So that we can look into it, we need a few details from you, such as your Customer Reference Number (CRN) and email address. If you could send these to us at [email protected] we’ll be certain to look into this as a matter of priority.We hope to hear from you.Kind regards,Customer Service TeamThe Economist. As of now, I received only 1 printed copy out of the 6 I was supposed to receive.I signaled this problem every time to the customer service, but all they did was to extend my subscription period, blaming the postal service to have lost the copy that they correctly despatched. This of course did not solve anything. I will unsubscribeEDIT (3rd of August). Needless to say, after 7 missing deliveries (and equal reports) the problem has not yet been solved.
I officially asked for a refund. I strongly advise against subscription to anyone living in Germany. I ran into the same issue as many of the other reviewers here did. Only after getting a notification on my phone from my bank that I was getting charged for The Economist did I realize that unsubscribing from Economist.com apparently does not actually unsubscribe you from the service. Upon calling their customer service, I was notified that this was actually going to be my third renewal despite my having believed that I had canceled my subscription within the first twelve weeks of the promotion I had signed up for. Although I enjoyed reading The Economist, this sort of business practice makes me feel as though I've been scammed or something. Definitely will not patronize this service again.
Can't get through by phone. Just a series of invasive marketing questions for special offers. You are eventually cut off for not entering answers. May need to contact my credit card company for assistance.Update: Changing from 1 to 3 stars. While the phone numbers provided no satisfaction, I did reply to my initial order confirmation email from The Economist, with the message to cancel my subscription per the information in “the attached confirmation below.” This seemed to work and I received a very professional response acknowledging my request and confirming the cancellation. Will monitor my credit card statement to see if this worked. I did this as my own guess at a solution.
I believe in giving credit where credit is due, but took off a star because this option was not offered and the phone numbers on the web were an exercise in frustration. I’ll update again, if necessary, but hopefully this is the end of it. Appalling cancellation policy.
BEWARE - Appalling customer service in their subscription service. I cancelled my subscription in writing and received an automated reply saying they would respond within 48 hours. They didn't and 5 days later took £53 from my bank account.
I wrote again and received no response and when I called I was told that they would take 10 working days to 'process' my payment and refund it to me. They should never have taken it out in the first place and why are they then allowed to hold onto my money for at least two weeks? AVOID THE ECONOMIST AT ALL COSTS.
Absolutely horrible and predatory subscription practices. Signed up for the 12 week trial, after which they had been charging me every so often without any notice to me.
When I logged into my account during this period, there was no indication anywhere that I had an active account. In fact, even now, when I login, there is no indication that I had an active subscription for the time period they had been charging me.Then they renewed me randomly at the end of that period, which is when I noticed a bank charge and immediately called them. The agent I spoke to was generally understanding but the supervisor was incredibly ruled. Basically yelled at me for not reading their fine print to realize that the subscription would auto-renew, even though my point was that nowhere in my account was a clear indication made that the subscription had auto-renewed.What they're doing is borderline fraud.
It's one thing to have an auto-renewal policy on subscriptions but is another to completely mask that from their customers and make no indication of it before, during, or after the subscription period. And for the supervisor at the call center to frame that as my fault for not reading the fine print is ludicrous and goes against any notion of how to treat customers.
The Economist has tightened its paywall so readers have access to five articles a month — rather than three a week — in order to nudge more registered users over into subscribing.At the end of January, the subscription publisher changed its metered access after six months of testing. Reader research found that on average people either read five articles before subscribing or they sign up right away. And a high content threshold would allow potential subscribers to slip through the net and never hit the paywall.
“This approach has enabled us to do both: be a little more efficient on the subscription conversion while ensuring key placements like leaderboards still receive equal exposure,” said Marina Haydn, managing director of global circulation.The Economist has been pretty generous with content, erring on the side of and sharing through social platforms to drive people back to subscribe, believing its journalism is its best asset. It has 1.6 million digital and print subscribers, of these, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Over the last five years, and the goal is to keep this growing, said Haydn. Acquiring more subscribers is one part of the puzzle, and it’s also putting more effort on retention — as — and raising the subscription price.“We’re very much on a growth trajectory, the focus is more on value over volume,” said Haydn, adding that it’s not setting itself public lofty goals, publishers like.
“We have had a strong acquisitions focus. Retention is the biggest strategic priority for us. To be ambitious you need to improve, we want to improve retention on our first-year customers. Retention of those who are with us for one year is very strong.”The move comes as the overall tenor of the industry shifts against advertising and toward direct audience revenue. Publishers of all sizes and stripes are rolling out subscriptions and membership programs to augment weakened ad businesses. The Economist, however, has always charged for digital content. The move to tighten its paywall is a sign that it is centering its strategy even more so on direct audience revenue.
The Economist is directing more energy toward the 12-week period directly after people subscribe to get them into the habit of using its products daily. Subscribers get a welcome email signed by the editor-in-chief, product details and step by step guides to setting up the app and its newsletter portfolio.
Each week onward, they’re emailed with various reminders on getting to grips with its products.In March, the publisher will increase its subscription prices by 20 percent — the first time in three years — after research found readers perceive The Economist at a higher quality than the price they’re paying for it. The Economist has a long-running introductory offer of 12 issues for £12 ($15.90) before the price goes up to £179 ($237.21) a year. This year the publisher will balance resources like budget and manpower so 30 percent is on acquiring subscribers and 70 percent on retaining them. According to Haydn, globally 45 people work on driving acquisition. In 2018, the publisher spent over £28 million ($37.11 million) in six months on marketing its full price subscriptions, according to its. Some of this will shift to spending on retention, improving customer experience and operations, but it will keep a healthy acquisition budget.
Around 105 people work on retention, customer experience and digital products.While it’s the headline stories that drive subscriptions, it’s when people dig deeper into other topics The Economist covers, like culture, that leads to more regular engagement and keeps churn stable, said Haydn. Products like apps, podcasts and newsletters can highlight these topic areas. The Economist and a The Intelligence, which it has integrated into the app. Podcast engagement has been good, but it’s too soon to share details, she added.“The Economist’s challenge is it is a mature digital product,” said Douglas McCabe, CEO at Enders Analysis. “They have impressively avoided diluting their product or changing their approach in order to try and reach further people, which is an easy trap to fall into. Its quality is its advantage, and its large existing subscriber base is the highly visible evidence of its value.”The publisher wouldn’t divulge its churn rate.
According to Piano, which helps publishers with paywalls, churn rate among publishers is depending on subscription offers or heavy marketing pushes.Like many subscription publishers, ongoing political sagas like Trump and Brexit have led to an extended period of growth that lasted into early 2018, but that’s been slowing.“There has been a change in consumer behavior and a numbing of those groups of people who needed to be particularly well-informed. It feels as if some have chosen to go a little bit numb right now,” said Haydn. “That does mean that market is a bit more challenging than it was. It’s not a downward trajectory but less of a boom than there has been.”.
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