Dhar Mann, CEO of LiveGlam, will be presenting at Subscription Show 2019 leading an informative session in our ‘Subscriber Acquisition’ track on ‘Referrals, Affiliates And Influencers: How We Grew From $600 To $20m In 3 Years’. Subscription Show 2019 is the conference to be at to stay on top of the latest trends impacting your recurring-revenue business and connect with the people and companies that can help both you and your business grow. Get the preview of Dhar's session here.

Like many legacy publishers, the 160-year-old McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI), the owner of 31 media companies in 28 U.S. markets, is doing a major transformation, moving aggressively over the last several years to become a digital-first company. Instead of fighting a changing tide, McClatchy is making sweeping, long-term changes that are beneficial to the company but also to its readers.

In the summer of 2012, Liz Cadman knew she had a problem. She was addicted to subscription boxes, and she wanted more. She couldn't find the information she wanted online, however, to make smart buying decisions, so she started a blog to talk about subscription boxes. The blog grew into My Subscription Addiction, a full-fledged website dedicated to the discussion of subscription boxes. In four years, the site has exploded in popularity, and she has added additional features including swaps, a discussion forum and more. Learn how My Subscription Addiction started and grew into what it is today.

How can you combine a wholesale book business and a passion for children's literacy to get more books in the hands of kids? With the subscription box model. That's how founder Eric Shmuely made his dream become a reality -- by creating a subscription book service for children.

We hope you’ll find something interesting in this week’s Five on Friday to keep you going until the end of your workday: Facebook offers new subscription tools for publishers through Instant Articles; the House Judiciary Committee has launched an investigation into big tech for possible antitrust violations; streaming video on demand services are expected to grow by 119 million in 2019; Wired tries a new tactic to let advertisers unlock access for readers; and Foursquare tells us to skip generic messages and develop a more personal relationship with customers instead.

Tina Adolfson, Data Innovation Lead at Survey.com, will be presenting at Subscription Show 2019 leading an interesting session in our ‘Subscription Product Strategy’ track on ‘How to Get Recurring Value Out of Your Data’. Subscription Show 2019 is the conference attend to stay on top of the latest trends impacting your recurring-revenue business and connect with the people and companies that can help both you and your business grow. Get the preview of Tina's session here.

Dhar Mann, CEO of LiveGlam, will be presenting at Subscription Show 2019 leading an informative session in our ‘Subscriber Acquisition’ track on ‘Referrals, Affiliates And Influencers: How We Grew From $600 To $20m In 3 Years’. Subscription Show 2019 is the conference to be at to stay on top of the latest trends impacting your recurring-revenue business and connect with the people and companies that can help both you and your business grow. Get the preview of Dhar's session here.

At Subscription Show 2019, we'll show you the latest on subscription-centric strategy, recurring payments, acquisition, retention, analytics and subscription technology. Get the industry connections you need, and actional information you can put into action, to grow your recurring revenue, membership or subscription business. Get the list of why you should attend here.

How-to manage lapsed subscribers, how-to manage subscription customer service, how-to manage payments: these are just some of the how-to topics we covered in 2018. Here are the six most-read how-to articles from 2018.

Does your CFO always say no to your budget requests?  Learn what your CFO needs to hear so you can secure budget for your Subscriber Retention Initiatives.   In this on-demand seminar, get inside the mind of a CFO, understand how they prioritize expenditures and learn how to convince them to loosen the purse strings for your engagement and retention programs.

As those of you looking at your budgets for 2019 you should factor in the cost of documenting your data collection policies and reviewing your current business models in the context of what you may need to do to comply with the new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). CCPA goes into effect in 2020 but its sweeping nature will require companies to use this lead time to effect changes in order to achieve compliance. 

How much would you pay for a list of leads who are demonstrably interested in your subscription service, are proven subscription purchasers, and are familiar with your subscription brand? Hint: You already own that list. Through careful testing, it is possible to craft effective, targeted messaging that can bring lapsed subscribers back into the fold.

Retail giant Walmart is upping its grocery game with two new offerings: an unlimited grocery delivery subscription service for $98 a year, or $12.95 a month, and InHome store-to-refrigerator personal delivery. Walmart has not officially announced or confirmed its unlimited grocery delivery service yet. However, TechCrunch reports that Delivery Unlimited allows Walmart grocery customers to pay an annual or monthly fee instead of a per-order grocery delivery fee, following a 15-day free trial period. Customers will order their groceries online or through the Walmart app and choose a timeframe for grocery delivery.

In this week’s subscription news, Microsoft’s Game Pass Ultimate brings together its Xbox subscriptions for a discount, magazine mogul Meredith quietly cuts 60 employees, and Mercedes-Benz expands its luxury vehicle subscription service. Also this week, Microsoft and Oracle cross-connect their cloud products, Apple reveals its plans for iTunes and new Macs, and GateHouse Media plans to consolidate 50 Massachusetts publications into 18.

Slack’s fiscal year 2020 is off to a good start. For its first fiscal quarter of 2020 for the period ended April 30, 2019, global collaboration hub Slack reported total revenue of $134.8 million, a 67% increase year-over-year. The company ended the quarter with more than 95,000 paying subscribers, including 645 who generate more than $100,000 in annual recurring revenue, an 84% increase year-over-year. Launched publicly in 2014, the Slack collaboration tool has more than 10 million daily active users, in over 600,000 organizations in over 150 countries. Slack’s net dollar retention rate was 138%.

Google’s cloud-based gaming service, Stadia, is available for pre-order now with an exclusive Founder’s Edition. Because the platform is based in the cloud, gamers do not need to purchase a console to use Stadia, just a controller which connects to the game via Wi-Fi. Stadia users will be able to play games in 4K on their smart TVs or on laptops, desktops, and Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a phones without having to download games. They can play what they want, when they want, by purchasing their favorite games including Destiny 2: The Collection, Football Manager 2020, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Baldur’s Gate III, Mortal Kombat 11 and Final Fantasy XV.

Learn subscription-specific payment trends that will eat into your profitability in 2019. The team at PLC, leading experts in "card-not-present recurring payments", will outline the key trends your business will need to stay on top of and the strategies you will need to implement in order to minimize their impact.

What you will learn:

Subscription payment trend data and impact on your profits from 2018. Understand how those trends translate moving forward in 2019. Tactics and best-practices subscription your business should employ to mitigate the negative impact on your profitability from these trends.

Marketing automation across many organizations is often filled with buzzwords, poor understanding of its full capabilities, and false expectations. As such, many subscription organizations are struggling with how to effectively choose, implement, and leverage the power of the marketing automation systems that they have invested in.

In this on-demand webinar, we discuss misconceptions, specific technology platforms, explode some truth bombs holding your company back, and provide you with a blueprint for choosing the correct marketing automation solution for your subscription company.

Does your CFO always say no to your budget requests?  Learn what your CFO needs to hear so you can secure budget for your Subscriber Retention Initiatives.   In this on-demand seminar, get inside the mind of a CFO, understand how they prioritize expenditures and learn how to convince them to loosen the purse strings for your engagement and retention programs.

How do you minimize the financial impact of subscriber complaints, refund requests, and chargebacks while keeping your subscribers happy? In this briefing, we will answer that question and also explore:

What is Friendly Fraud? How Do Chargebacks Impact Your Subscription Business? What Is Best Practice For Managing? What are the New Rules for Managing? With a recurring revenue business (especially with card-not-present transactions for monthly and annual subscriptions) getting complaints, refund requests, and chargeback is part of what you need to manage.

The most successful subscription companies -- like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft -- not only offer customers compelling reasons to remain subscribers, but they also make those subscribers happy to be locked in.

Although 69% of marketers say that conversions are their top priority, the fact is that a typical good conversion rate only hovers around 3%. That means putting a lot of work into making those conversions. Here are some ideas for getting it right.

In this Subscription Insider STATPACK, we look at Digital Advertising trends, including:

Understanding how ad spend and budgets are changing; Examining the revenue of all the digital advertising platforms and publishers; Looking at digital advertising effectiveness compared of “traditional” advertising, what the most effective digital marketing techniques are, Ad ROI by medium, purchasing impact, and more; Understanding consumer perception of digital advertising by ad type, the leading types of ads, the reasons people block ads, consumer attitudes toward different ads, how different age groups view the relevance of online advertising; and, much more. This STATPACK is 96 pages and fully editable for your use in your marketing, business development, and business planning.

Three established companies in this category -- Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJ’s -- sell more than $160 billion in economy-size goods while regularly dominating the customer satisfaction rankings. How do they do that? With recurring revenue from loyal subscribers who are also devoted fans.

Not all failed recurring payments can be “saved” with an Account Updater update. Failed payments can be for a variety of reasons from cancelled cards, cards opted-out of Account Updater services, or declined transactions due to credit limit issues. In this sample, we show three very different approaches to notifying subscribers about a declined payment and requesting updated payment information. (Plus, a bonus at the end, Subscription Insider’s own notice!) 

Are you receiving more alerts notifying you of expiring cards? We have and frankly, it’s no surprise with the increase in the volume of payment cards that been reissued. Without that updated payment information, subscribers and members will not get renewed successfully. In this sample, we show you real examples of payment card update notices from three separate companies, with three very different approaches to getting their subscribers to update their payment information. Plus, a bonus, Subscription Insider’s own notice!

ABC Mouse Early Learning Academy is an award-winning, subscription-based site/mobile app that uses email promotions to acquire subscribers. In this Sample, we walk through their promotional email campaign and offers. Are they sending too many promotions? Are they effective? You be the judge.

You may not be a sports fan, per se, but everyone plays games, whether it's chess, checkers or Thursday nights down at the local bridge club. We took a look at three sports-themed businesses offering subscriptions to see how well (or not) they are converting visitors into subscribers.

Understanding the difference between your most valuable customers and those that will not renew, is like separating out the wheat seeds from all the wheat chaff at harvest time. It will take the right tools and tactics to maximize renewal rates. Subscription Insider's Retention Workbook (Excel) will help you track the retention performance by key drivers in your business, turning your data into both a summary and a detailed retention report that you can use to manage your retention.

Does your subscription management or billing platform connect you to Account Updater — a service offered by Visa, MasterCard, Discover and more recently, American Express — that provides updated payment card information to help merchants manage involuntary churn issues? With this directory of 25 subscription management and billing platforms that support account updater services, you'll be able to create a short list of vendor contenders for your subscription business based on applicable industry experience, existing customers, payment gateways and processors supported, as well as pricing.

This extremely detailed subscription & membership financial model was developed as a tool for would-be subscription businesses who either are planning a new launch or an acquisition. It may also be useful for current publishers who are doing a minimum of marketing and who want to see how their cash flow might change if they ramp up marketing and/or ancillary product offers. Its purpose is educational and inspirational rather than strictly predictive . Everyone's business is slightly different, so it was impossible for us to create an easy-to-use model that would work with enormous accuracy for all. However, if you've not modelled this type of business extensively before, you'll learn a great deal from it!

Effective monitoring of subscriber retention is the result of understanding retention opportunities and trends, tracking attrition patterns, developing a tracking methodology, and applying those metrics in order to manage your retention business more effectively. Use this excel workbook to track and manage your subscribers and members.