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.

Subscription companies are starting 2020 strong with acquisitions, ad sales and inquiries into ad blocking companies. We’ll explore those topics in this week’s edition of Five on Friday: CBS All Access continues to do well with low subscription churn and higher ad sales; travel trends show that subscriptions and memberships are a solid strategy; Meredith will acquire crowdsourced recommendation platform SwearBy; The New York Times reports preliminary results for 2019; and Sen. Ron Wyden wants an investigation into the ad-blocking industry to see if Big Tech is buying them off.

We are just 10 days into the New Year, and the international headlines are grabbing everyone’s attention. Check out today’s Five on Friday for a pleasant distraction. In this week’s edition, the Boardroom Salon for Men has made unlimited haircuts possible with a barber shop membership in select markets; Zuora discusses its thoughts on how subscriptions might be the future of banking; Apple’s App Store made more than $50 billion last year, but can it keep up the pace; Forbes thinks the 2020s are finally the right time for ebooks; and LinkedIn shares top subscription jobs.

One of the things we enjoy most about the subscription industry is that it is always evolving. We love watching the trends, the course corrections and the innovation that come with the industry as it matures too. That’s why this week we are focusing on our subscription predictions for 2020: streaming video on demand, newspaper and magazine publishing, vehicle subscriptions, subscription boxes and regulations that affect subscription companies (e.g., privacy laws, business practices, etc.).

Looking back at 2019, we covered hundreds of subscription launches, mergers, subscription closures, financial triumphs and disasters, and much more. In this week’s Five on Friday, we’re going to take a look at the top five subscription stories of the year. Disney+ lands the mouse some serious cheddar, Apple tries to strike gold with subscriptions…but doesn’t find it, MoviePass finally fizzles out, broke and embarrassed, the government goes after subscription scams, and the GateHouse/Gannett merger creates a newspaper powerhouse that will be hard to compete with in the next decade.

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 week, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced that the State of Minnesota had reached a settlement with Comcast/Xfinity to the tune of $1.14 million. The settlement was reached over Comcast’s business practices which included adding services and equipment customers had not asked for, for overcharging customers and failing to follow through on promotional promises. Customers who had Comcast service between December 21, 2012 and the present who fit into any three of those categories may be eligible for a refund.

Digital sports media startup The Athletic has raised $50 million in its Series D funding round, bringing the total raised to date to $139.5 million since its 2016 launch, reports Axios. The funding round was led by Bedrock Capital with participation from Emerson Collective, Powerhouse Capital, Matthew McConaughey, Plus Capital, Founders Fund, Evolution Media and Y Combinator. The Athletic told Axios it would use the money to expand overseas. The company is currently valued at approximately $500 million.

Despite dire predictions that Netflix would falter following the launch of Disney+, the company finished 2019 strong. Netflix grew fourth quarter revenue 31% year-over-year, and it brought in more than $20 billion in revenue for the full year. The company reported operating income of $2.6 billion, a 62% increase year-over-year. During Q4, Netflix also grew its international paid memberships to over 100 million. Other highlights for the fourth quarter and full year 2019 include the following:

Last week, nonprofit technology company Mozilla announced it would lay off 70 employees because the company failed to reach its goals with new subscription products, reports TechCrunch. Mitchell Baker, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO, shared the news with employees in an internal memo. The company had hoped to increase revenue through subscription and non-search-related products. Doing so has taken longer than anticipated, so the company is estimating 2020 revenue more conservatively. In addition, Baker said the company has “agreed to a principle of living within our means” and not spending more than they take in. The laid off employees will receive “generous exit packages and outplacement support.”

Only 1% of start-ups effectively grow into a medium- or large-sized business. If your company is not prepared to scale from start-up to beyond, your business will not achieve its true potential. In this on-demand video, Kathy Greenler Sexton, CEO of Subscription Insider and Raj Sabhlok, President of Zoho discuss key issues, trends and tactics for successfully scaling your subscription business.

Acquisition is just the beginning of the customer’s relationship with your brand. And while the quality of acquisition is very important, monetization and retention are so much more important for healthy growth. Each stage that follows acquisition — activation, up-sell and cross-sell, upgrades, renewals, and retention — represents a distinct moment that impacts revenue. Learn where on your subscriber's journey you are losing revenue and what to do about it in this on-demand webinar.

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.

With a five-year compound annual growth rate of 53 percent, community solar energy is already generating over a gigawatt of energy in the United States. Within 10 years, that should surpass 80 gigawatts. Most of that will be part of a new subscription business.

The banking industry is in the very early stages of exploring subscription offerings. However, there are both start-up firms and huge players making moves into this space. Odds are that the future successful offerings will cater to younger demographics, on fully mobile platforms, offering a wide range of substantial added value to make the subscription price compelling compared to current common free checking plans.

Interest in subscription boxes online is flattening, and the most recent data shows that traffic to subscription box sites is way down. There is still a lot of money in the industry, and a plateau is not a bubble, but a shakeout is coming. These three trends point to strategies that smart companies will use to survive.

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.

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.