FTC ‘Click-to-Cancel’ ruling prompts website, subscription changes

Katelyn Mary Skaggs

Jan 1, 2025

Can your newspaper subscribers cancel their subscription with just a click? If you can’t answer yes, that needs to change.

The Federal Trade Commission has announced its “Click-to-Cancel” rule in October, which applies to any subscription or membership service that allows people to sign up and cancel with just a click. In basic terms, if you can click to sign up, you should be able to click and cancel.

If they can sign up online and have to call or email to cancel, this is no longer acceptable.

While I would be shocked if any newspaper was not allowing subscribers to cancel, this rule is more aimed at big companies that auto-bill fees and make consumers jump through hoops to end a service.

This moment is a good wake– up call to look at how readers sign up and cancel our newspapers. While you can work to be in compliance with the new rule, maybe it’s time to change how people subscribe.

The paper I work for, Leader Publications, is a free weekly paper, so while people do not have to pay to receive it, I still want to work and make the process easy and straightforward for our readers.

This rule change was a bit of a wake–up call for us because we had no way for readers to cancel their paper with just a click. We have a sign-up system online, but there was no way to cancel online.

We now have both a “Send me the Leader” sign up and a “Stop Sending the Leader” Google Form.

THE SIGN-UP PROCESS

I highly suggest we all take a moment and look at our sign-up process for new and renewing subscribers.

How easy and quick is the process? How many avenues do you have for people to sign up? How long is it between signing up and when they get a newspaper?

Could we take a step up or speed up the process at any point?

We have a button or at least one sign–up link on every single page of our website. We want to make the sign-up process as easy as possible. We run a requester ad in the paper monthly and occasionally run Facebook ads.

Since we are a free newspaper, we do not have to run a payment; this makes it even easier for our readers. I know this is not the case for all newspapers.

One step we did add to our sign-up process, which has paid off big time, is asking readers if they would like to subscribe to our daily email newsletter. This has increased our number of email subscribers by thousands.

Having email data from your subscribers can be powerful. In the past, we collected names, addresses and phone numbers. When someone's three-year subscription was ending, we often hoped they renewed before that date, or we would send them a letter.

Since we started collecting email addresses, we decided to do a mass email on subscribers who were nearing their expiration date.

We emailed 635 of our subscribers using Constant Contact, a platform we already use; 277 of them opened the email, and 128 clicked and renewed the paper. This is a 67.7% open rate, and a 31.5% click–through rate, which is well over the national average of 2% click– through rate on a marketing email.

This was a huge home run for us. We save staff time from addressing 635 letters and postage.
It turns out that people did not mind clicking to renew. This sped up the process for our readers instead of us mailing them a letter and waiting for the returned filled– out information.

Let’s all take a moment in the new year to make sure we follow the new FTC rule and see how to improve our subscription process. If we can make small changes to improve the experience for our readers, that can pay off big time in the long run.

Katelyn Mary Skaggs is the digital marketing manager for Leader Publications, a group of four papers in Festus, Missouri. Skaggs, a Southeast Missouri State University graduate, joined their ranks in January 2019 as a reporter. Email katelynmaryskaggs@leaderpublications.biz