Business Strategy

Last week The Telegraph, owned by Telegraph Media Group, announced that it is dropping its metered paywall in favor of a digital, premium subscription service called Telegraph Premium. Much of The Telegraph's content will now be free, including breaking news, sports, entertainment, social, media, travel, lifestyle and culture news, but a significant number of daily stories will be reserved for premium subscribers. The goal is to more deeply engage and connect with readers while tripling its subscriber base by 2017.

Smart home hub provider Wink outraged customers last week when it unexpectedly announced a switch to the subscription model.

KidPass, a children's activity subscription service, launched last week in New York City, says The Wall Street Journal. The startup was founded by three New York-based technology executives to provide families with access to children's activities like sports, music classes, camps, and museums via subscription. The company is backed by leading tech investors of Gilt Groupe, Warby Parker, ZocDoc, Artsy and SailThru.

The Four Basic Secrets to Leveraging Your Numbers will outline a few fundamental secrets to building a reporting infrastructure that you can really leverage. There are four in all: Have a clear, actionable purpose behind every metric;To think like a marketer, obsess about drivers -- not total numbers;Benchmark your marketing drivers in these three ways; and,Align marketing, finance and operations metrics at the outset.

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.

Just because you are not first to market with the rankings for your industry, there may still be a solid opportunity for you. Russell Perkins, our Subscription Insider Guide to Data Strategy, outlines the opportunities that exist for launching ratings and rankings for your market.

As far as subscription box companies go, CubeForme is as unique as they get. The company, co-founded by childhood friends Nick Nguyen and Kyle Phan, sends subscribers a monthly box that features items created by a 3D printer. We have featured CubeForme before, and now Dana Neuts has checked in on their progress.

Last week, marketing, sales and services platform HubSpot, Inc. (NYSE: HUBS) reported strong financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2018. Among the highlights were total revenue of $131.8 million, a 35 percent increase year-over-year, and subscription revenue of $125.5 million, also a 35 percent increase year-over-year. Total customers grew by 40 percent to 52,505, but total average subscription revenue per customer dropped 4 percent to $9,959 in the third quarter.

Piano shares subscription benchmarks, YouTube viewership grows, and NewsGuild urges Tribune shareholders to reject Alden's offer.

Last week Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory sent staff an internal memo saying the news organization needed to reinvent itself to stop "irreversible revenue declines." Journalism professor Dan Kennedy reproduced the memo on his Media Nation website. Most recently, the Boston Globe has focused its efforts on STAT, a new health and life sciences news site launched in 2015. It also reluctantly released Crux, a Catholic news outlet launched in 2014, because it wasn't financially viable. Crux has since been taken over by the Knights of Columbus.