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.

This week, the big subscription news is DoorDash’s acquisition of competitor Caviar and the mega merger between GateHouse Media and Gannett valued at $1.4 billion. In addition, we look at the value of gaming subscriptions, report the latest news on Mixcloud changes, share lessons learned by Facebook through their local journalism project, offer Forbes’ input on why paywalls aren’t always the answer for newspapers, and look at how unsubscribing is changing.

For the last several years, ad blocking has been a hot topic and a growing problem. In this week’s Five on Friday, eMarketer explains that ad blocking isn’t going away, but its growth is slowing down. Also this week, data privacy is having a big impact on digital advertisers, BMW will charge an annual fee for drivers to use Apple CarPlay, and Home Chef is seeing success with its in-store meal kits versus its subscription service. Last but not least is everyone's favorite Five on Friday feature - top subscription jobs!

When you’ve had your fill of national politics or are done binge-watching your favorite show on Netflix, we’ve got some interesting features in this week’s Five on Friday, including millennial news consumption, a global browser rollout and streaming music revenue estimates. The Knight Foundation looks at the news behaviors and beliefs of young adults, Google Chrome rolls out its latest version globally, a new study shows that subscription service buyers buy more than expected, textbook publisher Pearson is pushing students toward digital books, and Digital Music News shares streaming music revenue estimates for the year.

This week’s Five on Friday is packed full of news updates, predictions, new initiatives and tips for growing your subscription business. We share what some experts are saying about Disney +’s potential for success, Business Insider takes a look at why Roku is having such a great year, Etsy’s plans to grow its free shipping program to compete with Amazon and Walmart, we examine why offering discounts to unhappy customers can actually work against you, and Business2Community explains how subscription billing adds value to your business.

The new California privacy law (CCPA) will bring with it a need to get far more sophisticated about your data collection practices. The risk in ignoring this law is real.

There is a private right of action for any security breach, and consequently, it is time to address your company’s data security procedures. In addition, the CA Attorney General will have the right to take action for any violation of the statute. The law is effective on January 1, 2020, and although the AG has agreed not to enforce the law for six months, that will not stop class action attorneys from acting sooner if there is a security breach. In this privacy how-to, we cover: Does the statute applies to you?, CCPA is being amended, should you wait to comply?, and, Will you need to revise your online privacy policy to comply with CCPA?

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.

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.

Last Tuesday, a group of textbook authors filed a new lawsuit against Cengage in the Southern District of New York, reports Publishers Weekly. Authors Douglas Bernstein, Elaine Ingulli, Terry Halbert, Edward Roy, Louis Penner and Ross Parke are seeking class action status in Bernstein et al v. Cengage Learning, Inc. They allege the publisher is not paying them according to their contracts, but instead, is choosing how to pay royalties and from what pool of money. The group of authors is asking the court for damages and restitution for unpaid royalties for Cengage’s digital product

In this week’s subscription news, Microsoft takes away perpetual licensing for Office 2019 for home use, Bloomingdale’s launches a subscription rental service, and MoviePass has been accused of changing the passwords of power subscribers to limit usage. Also, this week, the Pacific Standard lost its financial backing, HBO Max sets a goal of 50 million subscribers in five years, and The Boston Globe’s union is planning a walkout due to contentious negotiations.

Loot Crate is out of loot. The popular subscription box service, who sells subscription boxes to gamers, nerds and pop culture fans, has agreed to be acquired by Loot Crate Acquisition LLC. Loot Crate will voluntarily file for chapter 11 bankruptcy in Wilmington, Delaware this week. The sale and subsequent reorganization will go through bankruptcy court. Bankruptcy code requires that other companies be allowed to submit competing bids for the company’s assets. Loot Crate hopes for the sale to be completed in 45 days.

Last week, CBS reported total revenue of $3.81 billion for the second quarter, a 10% increase over Q2 2018’s revenue of $3.47 billion. The company saw growth across all revenue streams, including 13% growth in affiliate and subscription fees, 12% growth in content licensing and distribution revenue, and 7% growth in advertising revenue. The company’s direct-to-consumer OTT services, CBS All Access and Showtime, contributed to the revenue growth in the affiliate and subscription fee category. CBS has a goal of 25 million direct-to-consumer subscribers by 2022.

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.

Marketing a smaller business is unique. From budgets to what actually works and doesn’t work for acquiring subscriptions to your processes and tools for getting your marketing done. In this Subscription Insider STATPACK, we look at marketing trends specifically focused on small businesses.

More gamers are playing -- and paying -- for video games than ever. Gaming has even surpassed paid TV among millennials. In this golden age of gaming, the offerings are vast and many companies are trying out payment plans and options, especially subscription. The winning business model has yet to be determined.

By the end of 2018, Amazon Prime counted 101 Million members. With monthly and annual plans, Amazon Prime members qualify for expedited shipping, enjoy media streaming and other exclusive digital services plus members-only shopping offers on Amazon Prime Day.

Why does Amazon offer so much to its Prime Subscribers? It’s simple, the average spend of an Amazon Prime member versus a non-Prime member is 133% higher!

This Subscription Insider STATPACK is focused on Amazon Prime trends. This 102 page, editable PowerPoint STATPACK includes trend information on Revenue, Prime Users, Product Reach including e-commerce and streaming-entertainment, Usage, Shopping behavior, Prime Day, and more.

It no longer makes sense to buy hardware as computers and servers, each one requiring an OS install, maintenance updates, and component upgrades. Instead, let a service handle all that for you, as you subscribe to computing access over the Internet.

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.