Byron Bay fM

Data Audit and Insight Generation for Subscriber Retention

We worked on a fascinating project with Bay FM in order to understand their subscriber base to improve revenues and the retention of subscribers into the future. It required an understanding of their data assets, followed by a thorough cleaning of the available data and a full insights report so the team could take action immediately.

Key stakeholder at Bay FM, Nick Mercer - “They were able to access all the subscriber data for the last 10 years and provide insights not seen by the station Management Committee. The work was carried out fast and accurately. Plus they added in a few additional pieces of work that we had not briefed but were incredibly useful. I would have no hesitation in recommending White Box Analytics.”

The Problem

Bay FM were experiencing a decline in revenues as a result of lower subscription and member numbers at the station, possibly due to COVID-19. They needed to uncover insights about the characteristics of their customer base, as well as the target market for their service in order to re-engage subscribers and generate more income for the station.

Despite having knowledge of what they needed, Bay FM were unsure of how to approach their data and analyse it in a meaningful way, so outsourced the help of White Box Analytics to resolve these problems.

The solution

Diagnosing the data & creating a Single Customer View

The first part of the solution was to locate and understand the available data. Liaising with their team, we located 4 key sources of data, with views of the entries relating to subscriber and member details.

Utilising Snowflake, our SQL powered data warehousing platform, we cleaned, manipulated and found common joins for member and subscriber data to combine these sources. This process, which in the data analytics world is known as ETL (extract, transform, and load) is essential for creating the foundations needed to properly analyse the available data.

Finally, removing duplicates and dealing with missing data records, we were able to generate a Single Customer View, ready for insight generation in one of our preferred visualisation tools, Tableau.

Insights

Question - “What does the subscriber base look like?”

Insight - This visualisation shows us the importance of individual memberships in terms of volume, and revenue generating ability. These memberships make up 46% of the total subscriptions, and 45% of revenues (not shown visually). Interestingly, 11% are business subscriptions and these represent 21% of the latest revenue. This is almost double in proportion size e.g. an over-index. This means they are much more valuable.

Question - “Where do our subscribers come from?”

64% of subscribers live in these key suburbs:

Byron Bay 23.7%
Mullumbimby 14.6%
Suffolk Park 7.3%
Ocean Shores 7.1%
Bangalow 5.2%
Brunswick Heads 3.9%

Question - “How long does it take for our members to re-subscribe?”

Insight - Over 50% of subscribers re-subscribe within the year mark. Following the 1 year mark, there is slow-down in days between subscriptions, meaning it is vital to prompt re-subscriptions at this point to avoid the sporadic nature of subscribers when they get over this date and haven’t signed up again.

Question - how many subscriptions does the average person have?

Insight -

Over half of people only have one subscription (55%).

However, a decent proportion have multiple, and a segment of loyal subscribers is also apparent (10%) with 5+ subscriptions.

Bay FM could capitalise through their marketing efforts at this point in time to retain more subscribers.

Question - are there any key trends in the subscriber and member data worth noting?

Subscriber and Member Volume by year

Insight -

Subscriber numbers peaked in 2011, with a steady decline in the years following. 2020 was a concerning year when compared to previous ones.

KEY MONTH TRENDS

Insight -

Knowing that August is such a critical month for subscriptions, the impact of covid is clear with a ~95% decrease in subscribers numbers in 2020. The peaky nature of August subscriptions suggests months prior should be targeted for communication efforts, and lessons can likely be learned by replicating the strategies of August in different months of the year to smooth subscription average subscriber numbers.

Recency, Frequency & Monetary (RFM)

Insight -

The idea around a RFM is to provide guidance on your highest spenders, your highest returning customers and a viewpoint on when people last purchased.

The Recency part at the bottom shows that only a small fraction are currently active. This is by far the most crucial part to tackle first.

We can then break down customers (subscribers) between your best and worst in a matrix. We cannot disclose the exact figures because of client confidentiality, but the findings show that the large majority of subscribers sit right in the middle of loyal customers and valueless ones. These subscribers have only 1 subscription and spend a relatively small amount of money on the joining fee.

Ideally, Bay FM can develop strategies to push this large, low-paying majority towards the characteristics that make up their ‘loyal’ customer group who spend the most and have a significantly high number of subscriptions!

The lapsed group and RFM overlay provides the team where their efforts could be most effectively allocated to reactive their most valuable subscribers/members.

Final Considerations

This insight report pack is being utilised and referred to by the BayFM team on a daily basis. The confidential nature of the findings means White Box cannot disclose the full details, but we hope that these key charts demonstrate the clarity the insights generated can bring to any businesses strategic vision. At White Box, we refer to these insights as beautiful truths; truths about a businesses operation that drive creative visions and operational and strategic excellence from the top-down and bottom-up.

Insights reporting is a staple in White Box Analytics’ solution suite.

If you’d like to uncover hidden gems of information about your business, why not consider talking to us today about what our team of experts can produce for you and your team!?

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