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Auto-renew by default can cost you subscribers in the long run

Oct 9
3 min read

Updated: Oct 11

Public-domain art plate: Redouté — Red Lily, Les Liliacées (1802-1816)
Red Lily, a plate by Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Les Liliacées (1802-1816).

Many readers saw the words "renews automatically" and did not sign up at all.


The study. Researchers ran a randomized field experiment with 1,389,869 readers of a large European daily newspaper. Some readers saw trial offers that renewed automatically, and others saw trial offers that stopped automatically.


The finding. The auto-renew default cut trial sign-ups by 35%. Auto-renew kept more people as payers in the first months. But after 20 months, the auto-renew offers had 23% fewer subscribers in total.

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