Does Five on Friday sound familiar? We hope so! This was a popular column Subscription Insider started about a year ago, but put on hiatus as we focused on some other aspects of the business. You’ve been asking us to bring it back, so we found a way to make that happen.

Here’s the first edition of Five on Friday for 2017, chock full of information on subscription trends, scary fraud statistics, advice for personalizing the customer experience, and information about upcoming Subscription Insider events.

Enjoy!

Top 10 subscription trends for 2017

Recurring billing management provider Recurly  works with thousands of subscription-based companies around the world. In a new report, Recurly outlines the top 10 subscription trends for 2017. Here’s a quick list. Read the complete report here. 

1. Cord cutting continues, OTT conquers.
2. EMV catapults e-commerce fraud to the fore.
3. New ways to pay with mobile
4. The age of the customer
5. Omnichannel offers the best of all worlds.
6. Access, not ownership, is the name of the game.
7. Subscriptions and security power the Internet of Things.
8. The digital tax man cometh.
9. Make adaptation and innovation your New Year’s resolution.
10. Data-driven marketing provides powerful results.

CNP fraud is growing faster than CNP transactions

According to a new report by ThreatMetrix, during Q4 of 2016, card not present attacks outpaced growth in online transactions by 15 percent, showing that risk of fraud is heightened. Fortunately, 122 million attacks were identified and stopped in a real time, a 35 percent increase over the prior year.  

“The worrying thing for digital businesses, however, is that hashed passwords or encrypted data mean very little to the cybercriminals of 2017. Fraudsters are continually one step ahead, concocting near perfect identities from the digital detritus that companies and indeed individual users are giving up,” said Alisdair Faulkner, chief products officer for ThreatMetrix, said.

“It is identity, not passwords or payment details, that is the cybercrime currency of 2017: near perfect, yet terrifying, simulacrums of you and I that can be used to open new accounts, hack into existing ones, and monetize fraud attacks,” Faulkner added.

In addition to reporting trends, ThreatMetrix also revealed some surprises during their data collection:

• Holiday shopping is no longer a seasonal business. It is a year-long commitment with peaks at certain periods throughout the year.
•  They are seeing a “massive spike” in gift card transactions and attacks, and a spike in rejected transactions from the media segment, primarily due to account validation and identity testing attacks.
• Mobile transactions are outpacing desktop transactions by 200%.
• There is growth in new account fraud for e-commerce merchants, a direct impact of the EMV migration.
• Brazil is now a key attack originator, and they are seeing a significant increase in attacks from emerging economies including Tunisia, Ukraine, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Finland, Pakistan, Serbia, Morocco, Guadeloupe, Qatar and Cuba.

For more on 2017 trends, view the ThreatMetrix report here.

4 ways to improve personalization as a marketing tool

Columnist Jim Dicso of Marketing Land agrees with Recurly that this is the age of the customer, and our customers want personalization, whether it is a one-off email about a specific event or continuous campaigns that deliver a tailored customer experience. Dicso offers four ways that brands can maximize their efforts to build stronger, longer-lasting customer relationships.

1. Keep your personalization goals at the forefront. Remember that personalization should grab and keep a customer’s attention, and be sure to balance your message with how it is delivered.
2. Understand that segmentation is not personalization. Targeting a specific segment of your audience with a particular message is not the same as truly personalizing a message or experience. Know the difference.
3. Aggregate data to create more effective content. Dicso gives the example of T. Rowe Price. The company sends out a birthday message to those who have 529 college savings plans. In addition to a video birthday message, it talks about college savings in relation to that customer’s age. They took two data points – birthdate and age – to create a personalized, relevant message.
4. Never stop learning about and from your customers. Because personalization is relatively new, trial and error is a legit way to understand what works and what doesn’t, says Dicso. Use the information you get from this testing and directly from customers to learn from your successes and your mistakes.

Read Dicso’s full article here.

5 Head-turning Recurring Revenue Stats from 2016

Aria Systems, a subscription billing software company, compiled five significant stats and headlines from 2016 from various sources.

1. Adobe reports record $1.46 billion revenue and $0.75 earnings per share in Q3 2016.
2. Streaming music grew 57 percent in 2016.
3. Connected car service revenues will top $42 billion in six years.
4. Netflix added 3.6 million new subscribers in Q3 2016.
5. Usage billing take its place at the table with 52 percent of companies utilizing it.

For more information and the full infographic, visit Aria Systems online.  

3 Subscription Insider Events Coming Your Way – Register Early!

We are thrilled to be able to offer expert intelligence and advice on a wide variety of subscription topics. Here are three events that are now open for registration:

Webinar, March 1, 1 PM Eastern
Revenue Data Signals: How to Use Data to Understand Subscription Revenue Risk and Opportunity
Free
Register Now

Webinar, March 23, 1 PM Eastern
How to Maximize SaaS Renewal
Free
Register Now 

Event, May 8, 2017, New York
Payment Boot Camp EAST
Click here for event details and pricing.

We hope you enjoyed reading Five on Friday. We’ll be back next week with more subscription tips, trends and ideas.