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.

If you are tired of hearing about hearings, trials and college admissions, then this Five on Friday is for you. In this week’s edition, Mark Zuckerberg lays out his privacy-focused vision for Facebook, Digital Music News reveals SiriusXM’s plan for its $3.5 billion acquisition – Pandora, France wants to tax tech giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook, Food Navigator USA talks about the challenges of selling meal kits in stores versus subscription box distribution, and Shopify shares five apps you should be using to grow your Instagram following.

In this week’s edition of Five on Friday, Brian Bergstein of the Boston Globe explores the idea of offering tax credits to save local news, recorded music revenue in the U.S. continues growing, Digital Context Next looks at The New York Times’ program to offer free subscriptions to students, Sensor Tower shares the top 10 grossing SVOD subscription apps in 2018, and LinkedIn posts some great subscription jobs that are worth a look.

Happy March! It is hard to believe that March is already here. We hope that means spring is just around the corner. While we wait to see if the groundhog was right, Variety explains why they believe subscriptions are the future of gaming, Broadcast Now tells us why Netflix is the SVOD to beat, The Spoon explores the future of third-party food delivery (hint: subscriptions), digital advertising is bigger than TV and print advertising, and Recode breaks down Apple’s rationale in asking news publishers for half their Apple News revenue – it wants to save journalism.

In this week’s Five on Friday, Business2Community shares best practices for customer retention during the SaaS renewal process, App Annie reveals how dating apps are a billion dollar business, HubSpot offers ideas for reducing customer support friction, Folio explores how magazines are exploring paywalls as an ongoing revenue source, and Conde Nast Traveler discusses whether WiFi subscriptions are worth it – all in this week’s edition of Five on Friday.

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.

Happy Friday…and Happy Spring! We made it through the week and through the winter! In this week’s subscription headlines, Amazon Prime Video Direct plans to cut royalties for not-so-engaging content, Vice Media seeks $200 million in funding to become profitable, and Facebook’s data deals are under investigation. Also this week, Gimlet Media plans to unionize, AT&T jacks up pricing for DirectTV Now, and HTC’s Viveport Infinity VR subscription will launch on April 2, no fooling.

Last week, Tribune Media Company (NYSE: TRCO) got the okay from stockholders to proceed with a merger with Nexstar Media Group. The companies had entered an agreement in December for Nexstar to acquire Tribune Media for $46.50 per share, for an approximate value of $6.4 billion, including the assumption of Tribune Media’s outstanding debt. According to a Tribune Media news release, this represents a 15.5 percent premium on the stock’s value as of November 30, 2018.

MoviePass parent company Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc. admitted in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week that they erroneously reported subscription revenue in their third quarter of 2018, for the period ended September 30, 2018. MoviePass reported $5.9 million in revenue from suspended subscriptions from subscribers who had not yet re-upped, as well as $700,000 in subscription revenue that Costco refunded to subscribers who had terminated their MoviePass movie subscriptions.

Streaming music service Spotify has filed an antitrust claim against Apple with the European Commission, reports CNBC. Spotify, which launched in 2006 and is based in Sweden, claims the so-called Apple tax of 30 percent is unfair and deprives consumers of choice. It also gives Apple an unfair competitive advantage, not just over Spotify but over other streaming and subscriptions services consumers access via the App Store. Services must either mark up their fees by 30 percent to recoup the loss or eat the 30 percent fee that Apple takes off the top.

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.

Rent is a really expensive monthly subscription to not being homeless.” So say the folks on social media ... and the data backs them up. Moreover, a growing number of housing-as-a-service startups are seeing it that way too.

In the wider universe of “influencer marketing,” video bloggers who share the experience of opening a subscription box are offering those services a powerful publicity assist. More than half of Americans have seen at least one vlogger video ever, and 30% watch at least one a week. In another survey, 32% of Americans say they depend on video sites such as YouTube to find out about new products. With the huge popularity of influencers who are using video to “unbox” products, that’s an amazing opportunity for companies that sell boxes by subscription.

Globally, brands have increased their Influencer Marketing budgets by 39%. And, no wonder. The impact of influencers on global consumer purchasing is growing, with 20% to 30% of their respective audiences/followers purchasing a product. Have you ever thought of using Influencers? Do you have the confidence that an Influencer program could yield the right ROI for your subscription business?

In this STATPACK focused on Influencer Marketing trends, you will learn how companies are leveraging Influencers, why they are using them, how they compensate and how effective they are, including:
Spending and budgeting trends of Influencer Marketing.
Strategies and tactics trends of Influencer Marketing.
Instagram Influencer Marketing trends.
YouTube and video Influencer Marketing trends.
Fashion, cosmetic & luxury Influencer Marketing trends.
Consumer perception trends of Influencer Marketing.
This STATPACK is 91 pages, editable, with 39 updated and detailed charts with reference information for your research and citations. Check out the detailed table of contents below.

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.

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.