Three More Days of Free Sirius XM
Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI) has made a marketing move that makes terrific sense. They are using their content to try to win back subscribers, as well as offering up a free trial of sorts at the same time. This promotion is better than previous ones, it is much more than a simple request that you come back at a cheap price. What the company has done is to let former subscribers know that they can tune in for a free week of satellite radio, and used the NCAA College Basketball Tournament as the hook.
If someone has cancelled a subscription, they did it for a reason. They may love the product, but do not see enough value in it to be a full price subscriber. They company regularly markets to this group of people with an offer of 6 months of service for $25. If cost was a concern, the consumer may be convinced that less than $5 per month is reasonable. If that is not quite enough incentive though, it never hurts to expose listeners to all of that great content once again.
That is exactly what Sirius XM is doing. They recently sent out a promotion informing cancelled subscribers that their radio was going to be activated and on between March 13th and March 18th. They also let consumers know in the same e-mail that they have full coverage of the NCAA Tournament. That is some compelling content that may be enough to actually get some people to at least tune in. Once that happens, they may rediscover the wealth of content offered by satellite radio and once again join the millions who already know the best radio on radio comes from Sirius XM.
If you are a former subscriber, go ahead and turn on your radio this weekend. Experience Sirius XM yet again, $25 for 6 months is a great deal!
Spence,
Thanks for the article. I think you could do Sirius investors a favor to talk more about Sirius’s “investment” in marketing, maybe in an SA article. Recently we’ve seen several Seeking Alpha writers that talk about how little marketing Sirius does and that they are not investing in growth, but that’s how they should spend their cash, more marketing, etc., etc.
What most of these writers don’t seem to understand is the Sirius business model and how that lends itself to much more effective marketing than could ever be hoped for from a company that has to put up billboards or spend millions to advertise heavily on TV.
Sirius knows who owns its recievers in new cars, and is making efforts to learn who owns them in used cars. That affords Sirius the ability to market directly to those people that most likely and most easily become a paying subscriber or a return subscriber. Now some of that cost may get binned a little differently than marketing under the “retention” or customer service line in the income statement, but marketing directly, offering discounts, which will get binned to lower ARPU, to those that own receivers is the most effective way for a company like Sirius to reach its potential customer base. Too many SA writers don’t seem to get it.