Shaping the future of Stack’s magazine club

I love surveys – over the years they’ve been instrumental in mapping the path that Stack has taken. But actually writing a survey and getting people to respond to it is a bit like going to the dentist – there’s kind of never a good time to do it, and if you’re not careful, the years can slip by without you noticing.

It’s not a coincidence that the last time we surveyed our subscribers was 2020. Like almost everybody else in the world, we found ourselves sitting at home without much to do, so we took advantage of the situation and asked our followers what they thought about Stack.

It was really useful, but five years is a long time, and the world is very different now to the one we inhabited in the early days of the pandemic, so a couple of months ago we decided that it was time to grasp the thorn and put together an updated survey. And now, we finally have some results to show for it. (Because if it takes a lot of effort to make sure you’re asking the right questions, it takes way more to go through the responses and extract something meaningful from them.)

First of all, I can report that our subscribers like Stack. That’s not a surprise – if you pay to be part of our magazine club, it’s because you like what we do. And if you take the time to tell us about it in a survey, you probably really like what we do. So I’m aware that surveys tend to throw up extremes of sentiment, but still, it was very lovely to see the specific ways that people think about their Stack subscriptions. For example, we asked respondents how they feel when their Stack envelope arrives each month, and while lots of people used words like “excited”, “inspired”, and “happy”, there were some particularly revealing responses:

“Excited!! Feels like getting a long letter from a very cool friend.”

“I LOVE IT!! Every month it’s so exciting, I read it right away then pass on the mag to friends & students so we can talk about it. The surprise is fantastic & I love the little letters that come with them.”

“Excited and curious, like a little present from myself :)”

“Stack is my favourite subscription I have ever had, of all my subscriptions, including the hot chocolate one. I am fucking *delighted* every time it drops through my letterbox and I usually drop whatever I’m doing, tear it open and get reading. It has introduced me to so many great magazines I love, and I’ve purchased individual copies of many of them after receiving them via Stacked. My Stacked subscription has broadened my horizons and I am an ardent fan.”

“It blows my mind every month. A fire hose of new ideas and ways to express them.”

“Excited! Love receiving a surprise package and love getting a tangible design object, so different and fresh from everything being digital right now”

“Excited, alive, curious, engaged. I get so freaking excited. I feel connected to the world. My brain shifts into artist mode.”

“It’s my favourite moment of each month ngl”

There are loads of comments like these, all of them pointing to the subscription being more than just a way of receiving magazines. They paint a picture of the magazine club as a way of revealing and sharing ideas; of fostering community; and enabling a new way of seeing the world.

And the same sentiment is backed up by the numbers too. Every time we’ve surveyed our subscribers we’ve asked them why they choose to be part of our club, and every time the top response has been related to the surprise of receiving a different magazine each month. In 2020 we asked, “Why did you subscribe to Stack?” and the top answers given were, “The surprise each month”, “The quality of the magazines”, and “To receive Stack’s curated selection”. We kept the question exactly the same for this latest survey, and as you can see below, the responses of surprise, quality and curation seem to be even more important to people now than they were five years ago.

I think that’s a positive signal, suggesting that we’re doing a good job of giving people what they want from us. And it tallies well with the open responses, showing that our subscribers see Stack as more than just a way of receiving magazines.

Less positively, the number of people who say that they subscribe to Stack because it’s hard for them to find magazines where they live has jumped significantly, from 28% in 2020 to 40% now. I can’t think of a major change in the last five years, like a big chain of magazine shops closing, so I think it’s probably representative of a general difficulty in getting hold of independent magazines, with specialist shops and kiosks closing, and newsagents choosing not to stock magazines. It’s not a major reason for people subscribing to Stack, but I think it’s important that we’re playing our part in helping more people to discover more of the great magazines that are out there.

The one result that always surprises me is value for money – on average it costs our subscribers less to receive magazines from us than it would if they were buying in the shops, particularly if they live in the UK. But in 2020 only 26% of subscribers listed value as important, and this year it’s even fewer, at 19%. Value is important to us, and elsewhere in the survey we asked about it specifically, with 97% of people saying they think Stack offers good value for money. So it seems that while our subscribers do consider the service to be well priced, it’s not a major reason for them choosing to be in our club, which again supports the idea of Stack being about more than just an easy way of receiving magazines.

But of course we didn’t only want to hear about the things that people like. A survey is the perfect opportunity to find out what else we could be doing, and the results were surprising. Our subscribers tend to like print and physical things, but when we asked people what they’d like to change about Stack, we saw lots of requests for more digital resources and magazine content beyond the printed page.

That might be a reflection of who was answering the question – it was in a part of the survey open to all our followers, not just our print subscribers, so it might reflect the fact that there are lots of people who follow us via the newsletter, podcast and socials, but who don’t receive a magazine from us every month.

There were too many responses for these answers to have only come from non-subscribers, though: 71% of respondents were currently Stack subscribers, and 11% had subscribed in the past, so that only leaves 18% who could be in the ‘never print’ group. So I think that’s a clear signal that our various different types of followers want us to invest more in digital ways of exploring and sharing independent magazines.

The requests and suggestions were pretty wide-ranging: we had people who wanted a searchable, digital archive of all the magazines we’ve ever sent out; an expansion of the letters we send with the magazines; more community discussions and events; and a beefed up newsletter that helps readers to discover even more great magazines.

This enthusiasm for more digital tools was probably the most surprising result to come out of the survey, and it’s also the thing I’m most excited about. We’ve started work on figuring out what’s feasible and what we could add to our magazine club that’s not currently provided elsewhere. Some changes are going to be easy to implement (watch out for QR codes coming to our letters from next month) while others are going to take longer, and probably won’t appear for a few months.

I’m looking forward to getting stuck into those changes, and I really appreciate all the thoughtful responses from everyone who took the time to complete the survey. Of course this is just a small snapshot of what we learned, and I hope you’ll see these insights and others informing the changes that we make over the coming weeks and months.