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.

Last year the publishing industry was abuzz with the news that the Winnipeg Free Press was experimenting with a Read Now Pay Later micropayment platform, where readers pay $0.27 (Canadian) per article they have read. Dana Neuts explores how well the first seven months of the strategy has gone.

At just three years old, Readly has experienced rapid growth and is defining success in the digital magazine publishing space. Now offering nearly 1,100 magazines and more than 17,000 issues in 49 countries, learn more about Readly in this exclusive INSIDER Case Study.

In this week’s Five on Friday, ABC explores why more businesses are adopting the business model, The Guardian sets an ambitious goal to reach 2 million subscribers by 2022, PC Mag takes a look at the factors consumers consider when choosing a streaming video on demand service, CBS proceeds cautiously as it slowly rolls out CBS All Access internationally, and Hubspot shares top tips for creating SEO-friendly landing pages from Hubspot.

Subscription Show 2019 is an unparalleled experience for anyone working in a subscription and membership business. Why should you attend? Here are 10 reasons for you, and your colleagues, to attend

Happy Friday! We hope you had a productive week. As we head into April, we bring you the latest subscription news. In this week’s Five on Friday, Apple plans to shut down its Texture app, two months after launching Apple News+; MoviePass rival Sinemia introduces new plan and cancels 3 percent of accounts due to fraud; Netflix’s price hikes are just around the corner; Spotify tests Premium Duo, a streaming music subscription plan for couples; and LinkedIn shares top subscription jobs you’ll want to check out.

We are almost at the end of the first quarter, and it has been a big one in the world of subscriptions with launches, acquisitions and takeover bids. In this week’s edition of Five on Friday, we’ll cover related subscription and membership topics, including micropayments as an alternative to subscriptions, profitability tips for 2019, the growing popularity of streaming video versus cable subscriptions, whether associations should offer subscription packages, and the email metrics your subscription company should be watching.

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.

The Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) concept has been around forever. What’s changed recently is increasingly easy access to a wide variety of input datasets (a/k/a/ “signals”) that work to increase the precision of these scores. CLV scores are increasingly used by companies to determine how they will interact with their customers. Russell Perkins explains.

Yesterday Luminary launched a new podcast app using the freemium model, giving podcast fans two options to choose from. Luminary’s ad-supported, free tier features hundreds of thousands of shows and personalized recommendations. The premium tier is ad free and offers uninterrupted listening to Luminary’s library of podcasts including over 40 Luminary Originals. The premium version is available for $7.99 a month following a one-month free trial for U.S. subscribers. The Luminary app is also available in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. The free app is available in the App Store and in the Google Play store.

Last week, Microsoft confirmed the rumors about its gaming subscriptions are true. The company has been working on an ‘ultimate’ gaming subscription that will combine Xbox Game Pass with Xbox Live Gold. The combined subscription will be called Game Pass Ultimate and be available for $14.99 a month. So far, Xbox has invited a limited number of Xbox Insiders to test the subscription before it launches on a bigger scale later this year in existing Game Pass markets.

“SiriusXM. No car required.” That’s the newest offer from satellite radio provider SiriusXM. Subscribers can now experience SiriusXM outside the car with the company’s new ‘Essential Streaming’ plan with over 300 channels on their phone, at home or online. Features include commercial-free music, news, talk, entertainment, sports coverage and analysis, 24/7 comedy channels, thousands of on-demand shows and concerts, the ability to skip songs and online Xtra channels. The initial promotion is $1 for three months, then $8 a month.

In this week’s subscription headlines, Gizmodo says the new Apple News+ app is a disaster, Hulu buys back AT&T’s minority stake for a cool $1.43 billion, and Tinder surpasses Netflix for the first time, making it the top-grossing, non-game app in the first quarter. Also this week, CNET gives us the 411 on the highly-anticipated Disney+ streaming service due out later this year, the latest version of Roku offers big improvements to its search functionality, and Audi changes its subscription program, lowering the entry point.

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.

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.

Online dating is the ultimate subscription. If you are involved or thinking of getting involved in the business of online dating, this Subscription Inside STATPACK is for you.

We present the latest trends and facts about online dating in the United States, including: The market outlook for online dating users and revenue, Demographic profiles of online dating users, A review of the most popular dating apps and online services, Usage of dating apps and online services, Common attitudes and beliefs regarding…

“Smart Homes”, “Connected Cars”, “Smart Metering”, even “Smart Luggage” are all examples of Internet of Things (IoT) subscriptions.

In this Subscription Insider STATPACK, we explore the trends, facts and forecasts about the Internet of Things (IoT) in the United States including information on:

The overall North American and U.S. IoT market sizing trends, Different submarkets including Enterprise IoT, Passive Devices, Metering, Cards, Homes and more, Mobile connections/users related to IoT, The number of connected devices and “things”, and, Adoption rate trends. Download this editable STATPACK for your market and product research, presentations and more.

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.

Many subscription sites are using some lighthearted copy that borders on passive-aggression. Is this an effective tactic? What do you think?

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.