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.

Happy Friday! We’re ready for the weekend, but before we go, we’ve got five great features for you: Apple may be planning a subscription service, Microsoft is buying BrightByte’s DataSense service, PlayStation’s subscription success helps it surpass competitors, Xbox Game Pass and EA Access, Google has been asked to review its ad blocking policies due to anti-competitive concerns, and everyone’s favorite – top subscription jobs!

While the federal government was taking a break, the subscription industry continued on, serving businesses and consumers alike. In this week’s Five on Friday, we share highlights, including the launch of the Clutch Subscription Platform for the automotive industry, tips to help subscription companies up their commerce game, Google’s $57 million fine for GDPR violations, how to know if your company is ready for an IPO, and payment technology startup Stripe raises $100 Million.

How do you figure out what’s effective? Testing, endless testing, having a good research methodology (such as not testing multiple things in one email), and monitoring and recording results carefully.

If you’re tired of hearing the political rhetoric of the federal government shutdown, we’ve got some interesting subscription updates to distract you. In this week’s edition of Five on Friday, California car dealers are filing a petition against Care by Volvo, we take a look at the future of Amazon Prime, App Annie shares the State of Mobile for 2019, Twipe looks at readers’ willingness to pay for news, and BBC and ITV’s BritBox are planning more original content, now that BritBox has reached 500,000 subscribers.

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.

Last week, San Francisco-based food delivery startup Postmates Inc. filed confidentially for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, reports the Wall Street Journal. Postmates has not specified a time frame to complete the IPO, nor the size or price range they are targeting. Postmates confirmed the filing in a brief February 7 statement. Postmates said the IPO will begin after the SEC has completed its standard review.

T-Mobile believes there is a place for it in the streaming video market. In fact, they hope to compete with the likes of Amazon Channels who offers a buffet of streaming subscription channels accessible from a single dashboard. T-Mobile announced its plans during a February 7 earnings call to report its fourth quarter and 2018 financials.

Tableau’s subscription transition continues to be successful for the data analytics company, according to the company’s February 5 earnings report for the fourth quarter and full year 2018. Tableau reports total annual recurring revenue of $840.9 million, a 41 percent increase year-over-year. More than half of that – $443.2 million – was subscription annual recurring revenue, a 127 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2017 – quite an impressive growth rate!

Starting March 1, Spotify users under the free service tier will not be able to listen for free if they use ad blockers, reports CNET. The streaming music service is taking a hard line against users who aren’t willing to give a little of their time to see ads in exchange for free music. To stop this imbalance, Spotify is updating its terms of service to clarify its position on ad blockers and similar tools and to let users know they can shut down the accounts of violators.

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.

Anyone (successful) in the world of subscriptions understands the many unique details we need to stay on top of in order to grow and scale our businesses. For subscription businesses, a key detail is the promise of recurring value, that we must achieve is every part of our subscriber's experience with our brand. In other words, it requires delivering a delightful subscription experience.

Car makers are churning out cars at a record pace -- up 4.7% in December. To move this excess inventory, car makers are pushing Americans towards higher debt and riskier loans. They are also looking into more creative ways to use inventory, including car subscription services. More and more auto companies are rolling these out.

More than 70 million Americans are now podcast listeners, and 23% of them say they would definitely pay for ad-free premium episodes. Those numbers are forecast to rise, and premium delivery methods are evolving to increase ease of use and variety of offerings. The subscription podcast market seems poised for growth.

Who doesn’t love a good training session? Our on-demand webinars are the go-to resource. Here are the most popular in 2018.

Did you know that the average meal-kit duration is 4 weeks or less for 65% of subscribers? We cover this, and a whole lot more, in our latest Subscription Insider STATPACK examining the trends of the online meal kit delivery service industry worldwide (with a special focus on the United States). We examine market trends including revenue, key players, market share, and how the meal-kits segment fits into the overall subscription industry. We look at two leading players in this market: Blue Apron and HelloFresh. We also explore consumer behavior. This is an editable 70-page PowerPoint deck with 30 charts.

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.