Subscription ecommerce: planning a Manchester–Leeds test

What to take away

Treat Manchester and Leeds as candidate test markets, not as a pre-ranked choice for subscription ecommerce acquisition.
Use your own audience and cost data to choose where to spend; the illustrative figures below do not establish a city winner.
Separate local media and fulfilment questions from nationally priced paid social; measure any city differences rather than assume them.
No published source gives city CPMs. Collect comparable rate cards from named publishers, radio groups and out-of-home operators.
Judge the test on one numberday-60 contribution margin per subscriber.

Set a decision rule before allocating spend

For a digital offer, use measured CAC and contribution margin to decide where the next pound goes. For a physical box, include quoted delivery, returns and fulfilment costs. Keep London as a control only if it fits the test design.

Use the agency brief to compare creative proposals for both cities. Treat the audience and delivery entries in the table below as hypotheses to validate with local research, comparable provider quotes and actual orders; do not assume Manchester has cheaper creative or Leeds lower fulfilment costs.

Which city gets the next pound

Manchester

Role in your test: Media and price test bed
Audience skew: Students, graduates, media and tech
Delivery economics: Moderate

Leeds

Role in your test: Fulfilment and retention test bed
Audience skew: Families, commuters, logistics
Delivery economics: Lower

London

Role in your test: Control and scale benchmark
Audience skew: Broad, higher income
Delivery economics: Highest

Manchester vs Leeds vs London

Manchester

Profile: Ecommerce and media cluster
Media cost: Lower
Strength: Acquisition testing
Weakness: Thin existing base

Leeds

Profile: Ecommerce and fulfilment hub
Media cost: Lower
Strength: Logistics and returns
Weakness: Thin existing base

London

Profile: Deepest subscriber pool
Media cost: Highest
Strength: Benchmark scale
Weakness: Expensive to learn

What ONS data says about Manchester and Leeds

ONS releases give you an auditable baseline, not city subscription data. Name the exact releases in your test plan.

Retail Sales Index reference tables, published monthly, with value, volume and online shares by sector.
Family spending in the UK, annual, from the Living Costs and Food Survey, showing household spending by category and region.
Regional gross disposable household income, annual and lagging by about two years, exposes income differences across the two regions.
ONS inflation and price indices for price sensitivity checks before any price test.

Use the regional series to frame questions about spending, income and prices; they are not a substitute for city-level subscription data.

Local media rates: what to ask for

IAB UK research tracks UK digital adspend nationally, and it does not publish city CPMs. Rate cards are the only dependable answer.

Ask named sellers directly: Reach plc for the Manchester Evening News, National World for the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post, Bauer Media for Hits Radio, and Global for Capital and Heart. For out-of-home, approach JCDecaux and Clear Channel UK.

Worked example, illustrative placeholders only: press at £6 CPM, radio at £4 CPM. A £5,000 press buy delivers roughly 833,000 impressions; the same on radio delivers about 1.25 million.

Paid social is priced nationally, so do not assume a Manchester–Leeds difference from national pricing alone. Compare like-for-like local press, radio and out-of-home quotes, and measure production costs in each city. Fix the split before launch: subscription commerce channel strategy sets the budget and stopping rule in advance.

Designing a two-city test with a shared control

Write the test questiondoes a lower-priced plan lift trial-to-paid in Manchester and Leeds compared with London?
Split each city into cells matched on age, income and prior subscription behaviour.
Hold London as the control while you vary price or creative in the north.
Run at least eight weeks for initial trial-to-paid and early-churn results; measure renewals only once the relevant billing period has elapsed.
Record CAC, trial-to-paid and retention at day 30 and day 60 per cell.
Apply the decision rule at the top of this pagescale, or change the offer.

Our subscription commerce demand signals checklist covers which local signals predict paid conversion.

Six steps to a two-city test

Define the test question
Pick matched cells by age and income
Set London as the control
Run a full billing cycle, eight weeks
Measure CAC, trial-to-paid, day 30 and 60
Decide scale or stop

Example: sizing the test before you spend

Assume a 40 per cent baseline trial-to-paid rate, 95 per cent confidence and 80 per cent power. Detecting a 10 point lift needs about 384 trials per arm, so plan 400. A 5 point lift needs roughly 1,500 per arm, which will not read in eight weeks.

Keep creative identical across cities in wave one, change one variable at a time, and confirm your payment provider supports trials that convert.

Rules do not differ by city: ad claims fall under the CAP Code enforced by the ASA, and consent needs a lawful basis under UK GDPR and PECR.

Reading CAC, trial-to-paid and day-60 retention

Use blended CAC by city, not paid media CAC. Include creative production, local media and incentives. The placeholders below show the arithmetic; replace them with your own cohort data.

Reading CAC and retention

Metric (illustrative placeholders)	Manchester	Leeds	London control
CAC	£38	£44	£61
Trial-to-paid	46%	52%	55%
Day-60 retention	61%	67%	68%
Day-60 contribution margin per subscriber	£19	£24	£14

The figures in the table are placeholders, not observed city results. Replace them with city-specific cohort data; compare conversion and retention as well as blended CAC before deciding where the margin line sends the next pound. See subscription churn guidance.

For related price-test method, see Birmingham price sensitivity tests.

Common questions

Which city is cheaper for subscription customer acquisition?

To find out which city is cheaper, request comparable quotes from the local sellers listed above, then compare blended CAC and contribution margin. City CPMs are not published in the sources described here, and paid-social pricing alone does not establish a city gap. Blended CAC decides.

Do the same rules apply in Manchester and Leeds?

Yes. Consumer contract and cancellation rights, the CAP Code, UK GDPR and PECR apply equally. Only the audience differs, so one compliant flow serves both.

How long should the two-city test run?

Run the test for at least eight weeks to assess trial-to-paid and day-30/day-60 results. Measure renewal performance only after the relevant billing period has elapsed; extend the test if your minimum detectable effect needs more trials per arm than the budget buys.