Make the Most of the Summer Slowdown: 5 Ways to Optimise Your Streaming Service
While summer doesn’t bring everything to a halt, it often creates just enough breathing room to focus on improvements that tend to get sidelined during busier periods. For streaming operators, it’s a valuable window to refine your platform, boost subscriber engagement, and prepare for the busier autumn and winter months when streaming activity typically climbs.
In this blog, we’re sharing a few practical, quick-win optimisations you can implement now – no heavy development required. Here are five areas to focus on this season, all easily managed through the Magine Pro Console:
1. Tackle Involuntary Churn with Payment Recovery Tools
Churn doesn’t always happen by choice. Failed payments from expired cards or missed renewals can silently erode your subscriber base, especially over the summer months, when people are travelling or distracted.
Magine Pro’s built-in dunning tools automatically trigger payment reminders and retry cycles. Operators can also send card expiry notifications to prompt users before issues arise, helping reduce revenue leakage without lifting a finger.
Want to know where your biggest retention gaps might be? Our Retention Checklist is a quick self-assessment to help you identify opportunities and benchmark against best practices used by Magine Pro customers.
2. Refresh Your Content Discovery Experience
If your homepage feels static or generic, viewers are more likely to lose interest. Seasonal curation and regularly updated rows help keep the service feeling fresh and relevant, even if your actual content library hasn’t changed.
In the Magine Pro Console, you can:
- Create custom content rows
- Curate by theme, genre, artist, or mood
- Set up time-based promotions (e.g. “Summer Picks,” “Holiday Favourites”)
It’s an easy way to make your platform more dynamic, and every update goes live instantly across all devices.
3. Experiment with Promo Codes and Offers
Need to boost signups or re-engage lapsed users? Summer is a great time to test promotional offers and measure what works before peak season returns.
The Console makes it simple to create and manage promo campaigns that:
- Apply discounts as a percentage or fixed amount
- Target specific countries or user types (e.g. new users only)
- Use viral (shared) or unique (one-time-use) codes
- Define duration, validity dates, and even bypass checkout entirely
Whether you’re running a seasonal campaign or an affiliate partnership, you can tailor your offers without touching any code.
4. Audit and Enhance Metadata for Better Searchability
Your metadata does more than just describe content, it powers discoverability and improves the viewing experience, especially on Smart TVs where users often browse by visuals and search queries.
This is an ideal time to:
- Fill in missing fields like title, synopsis, cast, and genre
- Update or add translations for multilingual audiences
- Optimise artwork (poster and 16:9 formats recommended)
- Use custom tags (if configured) to reflect seasonal themes or content types
All of this can be done in the Media & Metadata section of the Console, with changes published to your service in real time.
Better metadata = better engagement. It’s one of the simplest ways to increase time watched and reduce bounce rates.
5. Prepare for What’s Next
Even small operational changes made now can help you scale more effectively in the months ahead. Whether you’re planning a new content drop, entering a new market, or refreshing your onboarding flow.
Now’s a good time to:
- Review your user journey across devices
Especially on Smart TVs, where features like QR code sign-in can reduce friction and improve the user experience. - Enable anonymous viewing
Let viewers explore your content before signing up. It’s a proven way to increase engagement and drive conversions, especially for AVOD or hybrid services. - Build passive conversion funnels
Combine tools like anonymous viewing, time-limited promo codes, and targeted offers to nudge users toward becoming subscribers, all running quietly in the background once set up.
These small steps now mean less scrambling later, and a stronger foundation heading into the year’s busiest months.
Use Summer Strategically – Without Slowing Down
You don’t need to hit pause to make progress. By using this time to fine-tune your platform, you’ll be better positioned to retain subscribers, deliver stronger experiences, and scale smartly into autumn and beyond.
If you’re not yet on Magine Pro, or want to see the Console in action, we’d love to show you. Book a demo or contact the team to learn more.
