Before we head into the Easter weekend, we have some great Five on Friday features for you to check out. PSFK tells us how beverage brands like Ugly Drinks are using subscriptions to attract customers, The American Genius explores whether the convenience of subscriptions is making consumers complacent, Forbes explains why $1.5 billion startup Asana ditched internal emails, Apple Music overtakes Spotify in terms of paid U.S. subscribers, and Shopify shares five ways to grow your email list.

Convenience and Curation: Why Beverage Subscriptions Are Growing in Popularity

You’ve heard about razors, beauty products and other toiletries and household goods being delivered via subscription on a schedule. Beverage companies are getting in on the action too, helping consumers automatically replenish supplies of their favorite beverages. PSFK.com notes that Ugly Drinks, a London-based service, offers flavored sparkling water in four flavors (cherry, peach, lemon lime and watermelon) via subscription. In the U.S. a trial 48-pack is available for $35.99, a 25 percent discount for the first shipment.

Another beverage service is Nosy Wine Club. With this subscription service, each month a new wine expert selects three wines for subscribers to try. There are no membership fees, and members can skip a month or cancel at any time. Other options include shipments every two months or every three months. This wine club is currently only available in Europe, Portugal, Spain and the U.K.

A quick search on HelloSubscription.com shows a wide range of other beverage options including the Amazon Beverage Sample Box ($9.99), Amazon Sparkling Drinks Sample Box ($9.99), Wine Awesomeness ($49.00), Hint Water ($16.00 every two weeks), Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club ($42.95 a month), Coffee Crate ($29.00 a month), and more.

Why are beverages jumping on the subscription bandwagon? Consumers want convenience and curation, and the subscription box model serves those needs well.

Subscription Fatigue: When Consumers Become Complacent

It seems virtually every type of business these days is available via subscription model – health care, automobiles, beverages, beauty products, software, pet food, snacks, kids’ clothing, etc. Many brands have been revitalized by the subscription and membership models, while startups have been able to enter the marketplace with lower barriers to entry. But at what point does consumer fatigue set in, asks Allison Yano in a recent article on The American Genius.

Obviously, consumers must show enough of a genuine interest in a product or service to take the time to subscribe, but once they do, they are in a “fix it and forget it” mode. Now the dog food gets delivered on time, they can skip doctor’s visits with services like Teladoc, and they can rely on Target or Amazon to bring household basics like paper towel, diapers, shampoo and coffee to them like clockwork. Each step requires very little, if any, thought.

At some point though, this automation can cause complacency, and people realize that they’ve subscribed to so many products and services that it is putting a big dent in their budget. They may start unsubscribing or realize that shopping for their own toilet paper is really not as inconvenient of expensive as they once thought.

How can brands avoid this fatigue? By continuing to provide a unique, positive experience for subscribers and being more than just a routine, automatic purchase. Experiences must be unique, memorable and something a subscriber simply doesn’t want to do without. That’s how you keep them from becoming complacent.

Read more in Yano’s article, “Consumers Already Becoming Complacent About Subscription Products.”

Increase Productivity, Ditch Email, says Asana CEO

How would you like to take back your work day – save time, be more organized and stay connected with colleagues? That’s what 500 employees from $1.5 billion project management company Asana have achieved by ditching email, says Forbes. Staffers still receive external emails from customers, but they don’t send emails to each other anymore.

In an April 9 article on Forbes, Jillian D’Onfro interviewed Asana co-founder and CEO Dustin Moskovitz about this bold move.

“It’s just very natural for everyone to be organizing their conversations around the actual work,” Moskovitz said. “Most of the time, when you’re having an email thread with your coworkers, it’s really about some project that you’re working on, or some action items or goals. In Asana, that’s all organized in ‘projects’ or ‘tasks’ and each of those can have conversation threads around them. So our conversations happen there.”

Asana must be doing something right. They have more than 60,000 clients including Airbnb, Deloitte, NASA, United Way, Trivago and The New York Times,  and now have more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Asana is a freemium product, offering a free version with basic functionality, as well as premium ($9.99 per user per month), business ($19.99 per user per month) and enterprise subscriptions, following a 30-day free trial. Asana says their premium version increase team productivity by 45%.

Apple Music Now Has More Paid U.S. Subscribers Than Spotify

In the United States, Apple Music now has more paid subscribers than Spotify, according to Business Insider. In February, Apple Music had approximately 28 million paid subscribers, compared to Spotify’s 26 million. Also, Apple Music reported that its monthly subscriptions grew from 2.6% to 3%, while Spotify grew from 1.5% to 2%.

The key difference between the two services is that Apple Music only offers a paid subscription, while Spotify uses a freemium model, with an ad-supported free tier and a premium tier. As a result, Spotify has more users, but not as many paying subscribers. As of the end of Spotify’s fourth quarter 2018, the company had 207 million active users worldwide, and 96 million paid subscribers. Apple Music, on the other hand, only had 50 million subscribers worldwide.

Spotify may have the advantage in terms of users, but Apple has more than just Apple Music to sustain the company long-term. It has its software, products and services, and subscription revenue – existing and new – including Apple News+, Apple TV+, Apple Music and the Apple Arcade. Apple does not need to beat Spotify, but it is probably glad that it is, at least for now.

Five Ways to Grow Your Email List

Email marketing has proven to be a very effective tool in growing subscription businesses, and it all starts with your email list of prospects, customers and even past customers. Here are five ways to grow your email list, compliments of Shopify.

1. Create a landing page with a clear call to action to get people to subscribe. This is crucial, even if you are a startup who hasn’t officially set up shop yet. Set up a landing page to begin gathering email addresses, and consider offering an incentive – like an attractive discount – if they sign up for updates on your new subscription product or service.
2. Use opt-in forms in multiple places on your website. For example, your landing page should have a form, other pages on your websites might have overlays or a popup form or might including them in the header or footer of your page.
3. Offer a compelling reason to sign up for your email list. People won’t sign up just for the sake of signing up. Give them a good reason, such as special discounts, exclusive offers or ask for their email address to enter a contest.
4. If you have a physical store or are hosting an event, ask for emails when you are face-to-face with your customer.
5. Some websites will let customers check out without setting up an account. As those customers check out, offer the option to sign-up for a free online account. By offering the option, you aren’t forcing anyone to subscriber, but you are giving them an opportunity to engage with you in the future.

Get more great tips on email marketing at Shopify.