I am a mostly-everything-online kinda guy and do most of my consumption of media on the Internet (also, it helps me save a few bucks which I can better use). However, I had real subscription to The Economist (still have it) and Fortune Magazine.

Now, my subscription of Fortune expired last month and I didn’t know about it! Yeah, they never informed me that my subscription was about to end!

Well, to be honest, I did indeed get a few soft offers from them and had a direct-letter from them asking me to add years to my subscription. However, never once did any of their communication with me informed me that my subscription was about to expire.

Even though all of Time Warner’s Business Magazines are now available free at Money.com but the fun of reading a hard-copy magazine while travelling is just different! And, I would have most probably renewed if they had reminded me or given me a good offer.

Lesson learnt — If you want your paid-subscribers to renew or take action by a specific date then don’t forget to remind them of that date! In fact, I would recommend that you plaster this information somewhere they can see every time they use your service from the first day of their subscription itself.

Remind them that just x days are left till their subscription expires. Just as those x days come to an end, make those notices bigger and more noticeable.

But don’t do what Fortune did to me — don’t forget about me! It is helpful if you remember it like this — You want subscribers, they don’t want you.