Once upon a time, the Internet happened. For a few years, you used it to gather information (news feeds and topical sites), then to have group discussions (the Great Age of Blogs), then Amazon exploded and now we all use it to buy stuff. If you’re on the wrong side of 50, you buy stuff from time to time and it shows up at your door in a day or two. If you’re on the low side of 35, you buy stuff from Amazon like three times a day. If you’re out of town for two days, there are five packages waiting for you on your doorstep.
A less obvious change is the delivery of services of all kinds via the Internet, and the popular model for accessing this is the recurring subscription. You don’t just buy a thing, you sign up for it and get billed every month or sometimes in bigger chunks annually. I’m sure every person reading this has the fairly regular experience of looking at the monthly bank statement, seeing this or that odd charge, then realizing, “Oh yeah, that’s that online thing I signed up for a year ago and forgot to cancel.” Or you look at your online bank statement and see not two dozen purchases but ten purchases and fifteen recurring monthly charges.
Everyone wants to lock in repeat customers. Businesses want recurring monthly charges. Media sites want monthly subscription fees (even CNN charges for most stories now). Charities want recurring monthly donations. The “free trial” is the bait. Once we’re hooked, most of us are just too darn lazy to cancel before the free trial period turns into the recurring monthly charge. And it just keeps hitting the bank every month until we get so irritated we take five minutes to go cancel that $10 or $20 monthly fee.
This whole discussion came to mind as I debate whether to sign up for the Hulu livestream three-day “free trial” in order to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live! tonight. As you are no doubt aware, Kimmel is returning to ABC tonight after the spineless corporate cowards at Disney/ABC took Kimmel off the air last week for (in general) criticizing Trump and (in particular) noting that Trump and his crew of sycophants we call the federal government are using the Charlie Kirk murder to target political enemies (anyone who doesn’t support Trump and his various unethical schemes). What Kimmel said was obviously true. Trump and his horde of MAGA followers reacted, as mobs are wont to do, as if Kimmel said something else. Some misread Kimmel opportunistically and some misread him because they are too lazy to actually understand what Kimmel said.
The biggest fools, of course, are the aforementioned spineless corporate cowards at Disney, who first angered half the country for suspending Kimmel’s show, which prompted a wave of subscription cancellations for Disney, ESPN, Hulu, and ABC — which then caused them to rethink their stupid move. They then decided to bargain with Kimmel and get his show back on the air, which will likely anger the other half of the country. In the space of a week, senior management has pissed off just about every subscriber they have. This will no doubt become a business school case study on how not to run a media company. In an era where the recurring online subscription charge is the single most important key to media success, they have alienated just about every single subscriber in the space of one week. How foolish.
So here’s the Mo app. What in LDS practice corresponds to the recurring monthly subscription charge, the repeat customer? Here are a few quick suggestions: (1) Weekly church attendance. That’s an in-kind payment (two or three hours of your time), not a monetary payment. The Church prizes weekly attendance very highly. Weekly sacrament meeting attendance is a key metric over time. (2) Monthly tithing payments. How many gazillion times have you heard the counsel to pay tithing first out of that monthly paycheck? I’m sure there are ways that you as a paying member can automate that process to make it a recurring monthly charge, but the Church hasn’t yet found a way to force that recurring charge on most members. Unless I missed something? They certainly encourage online payment of tithing now, but it’s still needs the payee to initiate the payment each month.
Covid was a major shock to the system, as the weekly church attendance algorithm was disrupted. What was the overall result? Did five or ten or twenty percent of the previous weekly attenders become once in a while attenders? Just like you might have cancelled your monthly gym membership payment and just decided to fork out $10 for the occasional daily pass, some members decided to ditch the weekly attendance model when the Covid disruption changed their perspective. “I’ll just go to the gym once in a while, when I really need a workout” is a lot like “I’ll just go to church once in a while when I really need a spiritual boost.”
I suspect economic hard times rather than Covid might affect the monthly tithing payment algorithm. The Church works hard to keep any meaningful financial info from the membership so it’s hard to know what’s going on. I suspect that some members who were previously “pay every month” people have become “pay when I can afford it” people or even “wait, what are they doing with the money?” people.
It’s ironic that for all the preaching about commandments and talks about doctrine and books about history, being a member in good standing boils down to these two items: attend church every week and pay tithing every month. That’s the LDS version of the recurring monthly subscription model. All the rest is just noise.
What’s the bottom line here? Just a few suggestive comparisons, I guess. If you actually look hard at your bank statement you might ID a couple of unwanted charges and cancel the services — and find you don’t miss them at all in later months. Some people cancel the LDS recurring charges (weekly attendance and monthly tithing) and find they don’t miss it at all. Of course, many or most LDS just stick with the plan and it works for them. I really wonder what the Covid loss rate was. Two percent? Five percent? Ten percent? What percentage of weekly attenders fell off the weekly plan and never got back on it? I’ve heard a fair number of reliable reports of ward consolidations (two wards merged or three wards consolidated into two, etc.).
In terms of management, I suppose there is a lesson to learn from the Disney/ABC debacle: Don’t piss off the loyal subscribers and spur them to take the time and effort to cancel their subscription! The LDS parallel would be: Don’t alienate the loyal weekly attenders and monthly tithepayers. But it seems like LDS senior management often takes the loyal members for granted. There sure is a lot more management and institutional attention paid to getting lapsed customers back on the weekly plan (reactivation) and recruiting new customers to the weekly plan (conversion of new members). My sense is there is comparatively little return for all the time, money, and member energy poured into that reactivation and recruitment effort. Maybe the Church would be better off spending more time and effort keeping fully active LDS happy. Two-hour church was a good move. There are other good moves they could make if they wanted to. Instead, they keep trying to bring more people in the front door while they are slowly losing more and more loyal members who are sneaking out the back door.
So what do you think?
- Are you going to watch the return of Jimmy Kimmel tonight? How?
- Are you sick of being pestered for a subscription commitment every time you visit a site or read a news story?
- Have you cancelled a recurring monthly charge or two lately? It’s surprising how nice it feels.
- Are you still on the LDS weekly plan? If not, what spurred you to cancel your subscription?
- Do you think LDS senior leadership should spend less time puzzling over how to reactivate the “less actives” still on the rolls and more time about how to keep the loyal members happy?
- Do you think LDS senior leadership should spend less time puzzling over how to attract new converts and more time on how to keep the loyal members happy?
Wheat & Tares 
On LDS leadership and new converts and loyal members. I’d say that from a numbers standpoint, the LDS leadership has been quite effective, especially given the fact that religious attendance overall has been in decline over the past few decades. The church method has long been to squeeze loyal members because they are, well, loyal, and highly unlikely to bail for being asked to do too much. If a man has five young kids, a well-paying job, and pays what appears to be 10% gross on that well-paying job, make him bishop. Heck, make him stake president. He has shown that he has the ability to command a high salary, having the financial ability to weather a divorce worst case scenario and weather whatever social fallout could occur from him leaving the church, and he chooses to pay big to the church. He has above average number of children, another sign of commitment to church teachings. He’s committed. He is unlikely to complain openly the many demands of being a bishop or stake president. He is likely to derive a sense of purpose from the hard work and fall in line.
Having been a member on the fringes for more than a decade, I always get great treatment at church. I know fully well that that good treatment would end were I to become more active and more engaged. Expectations would begin to mount and then if I pulled back or set boundaries, even just a little, I would risk disappointing many of the people around me. On the fringes I will remain. I’ll stay subscription lite.
Following Brad’s point, I’ve learned you can often get a good deal on streaming services by canceling a few months before Black Friday (like now!!) and then taking advantage of nice cheap deals rolled out that day, but only for non-current customers. The Church could offer a similar thing: Join now and pay $X in tithing upfront and we’ll grant you a five-year temple recommend with no checkup interviews during those years!
Not watching Kimmel but will read about it if he says anything important. I imagine that part of getting him back on the air was an agreement to tone it down as the company wants to stay on the good side of King Donny.
No subscriptions except phone bill, electric, water, necessary stuff. Yes it is frustrating that 80% of news articles are behind a paywall. But I am not subscribing because I am not going to start. I read the independent, “please donate so we can stay in business” kind of stuff and donate as I wish. We even canceled TV as we just were not watching it. It was kind of funny, but as snowbirds we had stuff to take back and forth to connect our cable. After one migration, my husband didn’t even connect it up, then after 3 months we both realized we didn’t miss it. My husband can get certain stuff from his phone connection, so he watches conference and I don’t know what all else because he watches from his IPad. I once in a while buy stuff from the game I play to keep them in business, but will not buy any game of movie or music stuff that takes a subscription. So, we are subscription free.
Kimmel is trash – not even remotely funny. His vaunted “return” is already crumbling….which I celebrate.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I made a few edits to make the post more readable.
Brad D, exactly my point. Often those on the fringes get treated better than those who come every week and support every service project.
Ziff, you’re onto something. I recall phoning to cancel a gas card, and they just wouldn’t let me. First they cancelled the late charge. Then they cut my interest rate. Okay, I’ll keep it. Same thing with Internet we were getting through DSL. Halved my rate for a year to keep me. “Be willing to walk away” is a great bargaining strategy.
Anna, you’ve got the right strategy but it’s so hard to pull off. One can pass on 90% of the offers and prompts, yet still end up with a dozen subscriptions and services.
lefthand, let’s wait until he returns to see what happens. I’ll bet his ratings are initially very high (apart from the MAGA affiliate chains that are refusing to carry the show) but that might not last. As for the affiliates, they may get blowback from their own viewers. Also, ABC may choose to not renew or simply terminate contracts with MAGA affiliates and seek to establish relationships with other stations. Affiliate chains have less power than they think they have.
Brad D,
My bishop is a medical doctor. He could have his own private practice and make a lot more money than does right now. Instead he works at a state run clinic treating mostly poor Hispanic families. He’s fluent in Spanish–not only did he serve a mission in Mexico he also married a girl from Mexico. So he has a mixed race family–and his children and grandchildren are all beautiful and in the process of building and living good lives. As an example of one of the many good things he and his wife are constantly doing–they paid for half of my daughter’s mission. They are true Christians–and that more than anything else is what qualifies them to serve in the Kingdom.
Among other factors, the “software as a service” business model that emerged in the last 20 years has shown the corporate world that subscription business are really great for maintaining a stable revenue base. So now every company that used to sell you something is trying to find a way to rent it to you instead. It’s annoying, but also I admit that sometimes the value proposition is real. I resisted paid music streaming for a long time because I owned a huge collection of recordings, but I eventually took the plunge and now I have access to a virtually infinite amount of music, and it’s hard to give up the convenience.
As far as being hit up for subscriptions on news web sites, yes, it’s super annoying to me, but I think it’s necessary and it’s the future of the media business. I pay for subscriptions for a couple of things I care about, and I have made peace with not necessarily being able to read the article behind every interesting headline that my phone promotes to me. That’s how things were before the internet, anyway. Giving everyone free access to everything was a brief financially unsustainable anomaly that will not come back, and that’s probably for the best.
I think the best analogy to subscription in the LDS church is the temple recommend. Whatever access to the temple means to members, whether they actually love going regularly, or it’s the sense of status or being right with God, it’s clearly a motivator to a lot of members to keep checking the boxes even when they might be struggling to do so. It’s also apparent to me from many anecdotal stories that the moment of deciding a person doesn’t mind not having a recommend is the precipitating event for a lot of reevaluation of their other practices. I’m not sure the effects of this are good. If the religious practices that are required for access to the temple are truly beneficial in their own right, the church ought to be helping members find value in doing them for their own sake and not merely as “payment” for “subscription” access to the temple, which clearly seems to be the main motivation for many.
To your question about keeping loyal members happy: why not make church an uplifting and enjoyable experience? Not only would that make members happy, but it might be attractive to prospects as well. Talk about something other than recruitment, I mean missionary work, and the temple. Stop rehashing conference talks. Reintroduce the concept of community to build the congregation. Acknowledge and apologize for past (and current) doctrines/practices/”temporary” commandments. Maybe I’m being silly, but how about focusing on Christ and how his teachings can help people in life.
I can remember having the thought, on many occasions, “Wow, I’m glad I didn’t bring a visitor today!” After decades of attendance, it was a rare event when I went home uplifted. Most weeks it was “that was a waste of time” and far too many weeks I went home hurt or angry. When I speak with my occasionally attending sister and ask how church was, too often the response is “it wasn’t that bad today.” That says a lot. I have other family members who still attend, but don’t enjoy it. One day they might question why they keep going when they get nothing out of it, but that is their journey.
Jack, that’s great to hear. I love hearing about great bishops who live truly Christian lives and lead by example.