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.

Happy Valentine’s Day! In this week’s edition of Five on Friday, we share highlights from Blockthrough/PageFair’s 2020 adblocking report to see how adblocking is moving to mobile, YouTube’s advertising revenue hits a staggering $15 billion in 2019, Content Marketing Institute schools us on what we need to know about vanity metrics, Canada warns brands and influencers to follow the rules, and Flipboard launches a subscription video service.

Happy February, Five on Friday fans! In this week’s edition, The New York Times raises its prices for digital subscriptions for the first time since putting up its paywall in 2011, the FTC is blocking Edgewell’s acquisition of Harry’s, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune hangs onto its print subscribers while growing its digital subscriber base, AdExchanger explains why it thinks publishers’ ad and marketing teams need to work together, and LinkedIn shares top subscription jobs.

We are just days away from the Super Bowl, and many of us have our minds on the big game and, if we’re honest, the Super Bowl ads, including the sad demise of Mr. Peanut. Before you settle in for the weekend, check out what’s happening in the subscription world. Sensor Tower reports that subscription apps in the U.S. grew 21% last year to $4.6 billion, Comcast predicts cord cutting will accelerate in 2020 and cable TV prices will go up, and Amazon Music now has 55 million subscribers. Also, Social Media Today shares three ways to grow your social media audience, and the NAB Show will compare 50+ streaming platforms and devices in April.

It is hard to believe that we are four weeks into the new year already. We hope your year is off to a great start! As we look ahead to 2020, others are looking at 2019 results and planning for the coming year. In this week’s edition of Five on Friday, The Guardian and Digiday report that publishers are losing digital ad revenue because of blacklisted content, Amazon Prime grows to 112 million U.S. members, the governor of Kansas proposes taxation of digital streaming services, Americans spent more than $25B in home entertainment last year, and 2Checkout shares eCommerce trends to watch for in 2020. As an added bonus, House of Kaizen shares a new subscription job opportunity. Have a great week!

Whether you are scrolling through your best friend’s baby photos or looking for travel or fashion ideas, Instagram’s visual storytelling platform has become a wonderful marketing tool for subscription businesses. Subscription boxes like FabFitFun post photos of upcoming giveaways to Instagram, while Netflix posts clips from new releases like season 3 of “Stranger Things,” and Salesforce posts pix of an event featuring kids pitching ideas on how to improve the world.

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.

Last week, The California Times, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune and several community papers, made voluntary buyout offers to staff with two or more years of service, reports CNN. Billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the newspapers in June 2018 from Tribune Publishing (previously called Tronc), returning the newspapers to local ownership. Employees were notified of the voluntary buyout offers via email.

This week’s subscription headlines cover everything from annual learning subscriptions by Coursera and potentially deceptive business practices by Rihanna’s lingerie line to testing subscription bundles and offering free content to nonsubscribers. In addition, Birchbox lays off workers (could this be a trend?); Luminary is expanding globally, which could create podcasting wars; and Downing Street wants BBC to switch to a subscription model.

Forget furniture rentals of the past with their heavy chrome and faux leather features. Feather, a new type of subscription furniture rental service with a modern sense of style, has just raised $30 million to fuel its expansion, reports Interior Design. The Series B funding round was led by Cobalt Capital and included participation from previous investors including Spark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Bain Capital Ventures, Y Combinator, SV Angel, PJC, Fuel Capital and others. This brings the total equity funding raised to date to $46 million.

Nissan is the latest automaker to take the subscription model for a test drive. Yesterday, Nissan announced it is launching, Nissan Switch, a new car subscription service in the greater Houston area. After paying a $495 activation fee, drivers can subscribe to Nissan Switch for $699 to $899 a month, plus $100 per day for up to seven days if driving the Nissan GT-R. As an added bonus, drivers can change vehicles in their tier as often as daily! Similar to other auto subscriptions, Nissan Switch’s monthly subscription fee includes insurance, maintenance, roadside assistance, cleaning, taxes and more. Subscribers can sign up to drive a variety of models of Nissans without a long-term commitment. There is, however, a $200 pause fee for subscribers to put their subscriptions on hold.

It’s no secret software developers and hardware companies are moving toward subscription billing models. Why? Because it improves the customer experience, increases revenue consistency and predictability, drives higher customer retention, and more! In this on-demand webinar, we will help you understand the essentials for transitioning your enterprise software to a recurring licensing model to help you prepare your business for recurring licensing success.

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.

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.