Fans filled Mexico City's iconic Azteca Stadium Thursday afternoon to watch Mexico and South Africa battle it out in the first match of the FIFA Men’s World Cup. The match kicked off a nearly six-week soccer tournament that millions of fans around the world will watch from afar.
They’ll be using a variety of streaming platforms and news outlets to follow along, from Fox One to the Athletic. These companies are expecting an influx in sign ups. Even retailers are trying to capitalize with World Cup promotions.
Fubo’s marketing team “expects an uplift in trials,” CFO John Janedis said on a May earnings call. Fox Corporation expects “the World Cup on FOX to be a positive for FOX One … with strong consumption across both our news and sports offerings,” CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on an earnings call last month.
Brands can turn customers’ one-time purchases or short-term subscriptions into long-term relationships, experts say. The key is a mix of providing flexibility, demonstrating value and personalizing fans' experience.
Consumers want flexibility in their subscriptions, Rachel Sheriff, chief customer officer at Recurly, told CX Dive.
“Folks are almost managing portfolios of subscriptions,” Sheriff said. “You've got your streaming subscriptions, you've got your gym and health subscriptions, your financial subscriptions, maybe your skincare, whatever it is. Because there's so many now, there's a lot more movement in and out.”
It’s for this reason more than three-quarters of consumers say the ability to pause, swap or meter subscriptions is very or extremely important, according to a Chargebee survey.
Notably, this type of flexibility can actually keep customers loyal: 38% of consumers prefer pausing a subscription over canceling, Recurly found.
Some brands are responding to that desire for flexibility by offering “microsubscriptions,” which allow folks to subscribe to a season, specific sport, or sporting events like the World Cup, Sheriff said.
“We know that those consumers and those subscribers, they may only subscribe for that for a period of time, but we're seeing a lot of our customers get repeat subscriptions from customers that maybe pause or cancel, and then they come back,” Sheriff said.
Many consumers come back. Recurly’s data shows that 1 in 4 signups are actually old customers of a merchant. That means “that cancellation isn't forever,” Sheriff said.
Demonstrating and communicating value
To get consumers to come back though, it’s key to create a positive experience during the window of time that they subscribe.
“You have to deliver an experience that really stands out, and I think that that's why you see streaming networks providing so many different types of packages,” Sheriff said.
Brands also have to ramp up in preparation for a spike in volume to avoid unwanted friction. No one likes a buffering screen during their team’s match, failed payments, or having difficulty switching from a package with ads to an ad-free one.
“We work with a lot of large streamers who host big streaming events, and we have to make sure that we are ready to be able to ramp into a spike in volume and a spike in kind of pressure on the platform,” Sheriff said.
Jon Picoult, founder of Watermark Consulting, says streaming services can convert World Cup-triggered temporary subscriptions into longer-term customers through the four Cs: content, continuity, communication and curation.
Any efforts to convert customers to long-term subscribers will fall flat if they don’t see the value in it. In other words, the content has to be relevant, and businesses should be sharing relevant stories, shows or interviews during and after the World Cup.
“Keeping trial subscribers is a lot about maintaining momentum — piquing their interest in the platform even when the World Cup winds down,” Picoult said in an email. “That could take the form of launching a new sports-related docuseries just as the World Cup ends, or simply highlighting late summer or early fall sports programming that will be available for subscribers to view like NFL pre-season, NCAA college football, European soccer, MLS, Formula 1, NFL, etc.”
That could take the form of a recap of highlights from the World Cup or reminding customers of the VIP interviews they have access to on a brand’s platform, Sheriff said.
“I think you need to stay engaged from a value standpoint, and so number one, reminding the customer of how great it felt to watch that one game or that one moment, and how flawless the execution of that one game was on that platform,” Sheriff said.
Customization or personalization is also important. If the business has data on what a customer is interested in, it’s important to tailor that to them.
Customers may have come to the platform for the World Cup, but they may be unaware of what else it has to offer.
“Of all the impediments to retaining new subscribers, that knowledge gap is one that’s well within the streaming service’s control,” Picoult said.
