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, CJR explores the state of social media in 2019; Forbes shares sports entertainment trends, including subscription opportunities; Hulu hits 25 million subscribers, a 47 percent increase; Comcast launches a subscription to help people protect their smart home devices from attacks; and DC Comics joins Comixology’s unlimited subscription service.

Readers love our trends reports! And why not, they are thoughtful, detailed, and chock full of information on market trends, analysis and more. Here are 11 of our most-read Trend Reports from 2018.

To help get your new year off to a good start, we’ve got some great information about subscriptions, payments and ad fraud for you. In this week’s Five on Friday, PaymentsJournal explores ways publishers can overcome objections to paying for media with micropayments, Pixalate shares its estimates about the potential for over-the-top TV ad fraud new year, Business2Community shares 2019 content marketing trends, Computerworld looks at what Microsoft could be looking at for Windows 10 subscriptions, and Your Story explains how focusing on subscribers, not products, will make for a better business model.

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.

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.

In its first quarter financials, Franklin Covey Co. (NYSE: FC) reports a strong start to its fiscal year 2019 for the period ended November 30, 2018. Highlights include net sales of $53.8 million, an increase of $5.9 million or 12 percent; gross profit of $36.8 million, an increase of $3.9 million or 12 percent; and cash flows from operations of $8.1 million, a $5.8 million or 248 percent increase year-over-year. The organizational improvement firm attributes its successful quarter to its transition to a subscription-based model in its Enterprise Division.

Last week, Piano Software, Inc., a content monetization platform for digital media companies, announced it has raised $22 million in Series B funding. The funding round was led by Updata Partners, an investment firm that provides growth capital to software and software-enabled companies. The infusion of capital will be used to support Piano’s growth, specifically in research and development and client services and to expand into new markets. It may also be used for acquisitions, said Piano in a January 10 blog post.

IMDb is the latest entertainment company to offer free streaming video. Last week, the Amazon-owned IMDb announced the launch of Freedive, its free, ad-supported streaming video on demand channel, available to viewers in the U.S. Freedive takes IMDB beyond its existing content of short-form video, movie trailers and celebrity interviews to include top-rated movies like Awakenings, Donnie Brasco, Single White Female and The Illusionist; TV series including Fringe, The Bachelor, Heroes and Dallas; and IMDb originals including Casting Calls, IMDB at the Emmys and IMDb at San Diego Comic-Con. Though IMDb is owned by Amazon, a Prime membership is not required to watch Freedive.

In this week’s subscription headlines, we’ve got everything from A to Z, including Amazon, Apple, Susan Zirinsky and Mark Zuckerberg. CBS has named Susan Zirinsky as its next president, the first woman to lead the division. Also, Samsung signs a deal with Apple to bring iTunes-purchased content to its Smart TVs; Kroger and Microsoft partner on retail-as-a-service platform; and media experts are calling for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to resign amid controversy.

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.

In this on-demand member briefing, we look at the latest changes in subscription commerce revenue recognition and taxation. Learn what you need to do, today, to determine if these changes affect your business and the most important things you need focus on if they do.

Subscriber retention is a cornerstone of successful subscription commerce. However, credit card declines and failed payments can lead to churn and lost revenue. In this on-demand webinar, we will take an in-depth look at the latest subscription industry benchmarks based on a sample set of 1,200 subscription businesses. Understand what is working in payment decline management and get your all your subscriber retention questions answered.

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.

This Subscription Insider STATPACK provides statistical information about trends in marketing technology and its implementation. Understand adoption trends, platforms, M&A activity, budgets & spending, salaries & positions related to marketing technology, use and effectiveness, and even the use of AI within platforms.

Subscription Insider STATPACKS are charts and data that you can use for your market and budget planning, creating your business plan or even competitive analysis. Download this is editable 84-page PowerPoint deck with 37 charts with three embedded Excel charts.

In the third quarter of 2018, over a million subscribers cut the cord and ended their subscriptions to pay TV. How did cable TV providers fail their subscribers so remarkably, and what are they doing to stem the losses?

Will Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) growth flatten out by 2020? Will Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) grow? Our data says, yes. Stay on top of market trends with our Subscription Insider STATPACK focused on digital video in the United States, including revenue and user and projections through 2022. It is 40 pages, editable, with 16 detailed 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.