Before you knock off for the weekend, check out this week’s edition of Five on Friday: PSFK explores how automatic refills are enhancing subscription services – and revenues, we share top subscription jobs from LinkedIn, The Athletic says it doesn’t plan to change its ad-free philosophy any time soon, research shows that OTT TV services will grow to 400 million subscribers this year, and Digiday explains the extremist approach to GDPR, which kicks in next week.

Subscription Services See Success with Auto-Refills 

In today’s instant, gotta-have-it-now world, subscription services are finding success with automatic refills, reports PSFK. With auto-refills, consumers don’t have to worry about shopping for needed items they use repeatedly, as subscription services develop customer loyalty and build recurring revenue.

For example, last year The Vitamin Shoppe launched SPARK Auto Delivery, so customers can subscribe to their favorite “must have” products online, via mobile or in store to be delivered when they want them. By subscribing to auto-refills, customers save 10 percent, get two times the amount of Healthy Awards, free shipping, a complimentary wellness plan.

Subscription services that offer meal kits and grooming products like razors operate in a similar way. Read more automatic refill examples in ‘How Automatic Refills Are Enhancing Subscription Services‘ on PSFK.

LinkedIn: Top Subscription Jobs

Subscription Marketing Manager (Acquisition/Customer Care)
Aquent
London, U.K. 

In this role for a global technology company, your focus will be all about growth! How to grow our overall subscriptions base and specifically how to drive ot though to premium products. This will include owning and driving acquisition campaigns to hundreds of millions of consumers – in this role the specific focus will be on our in-house targeting tool. You will work closely with the teams developing original content on, and use this content to drive our growth strategy. Within all of this you will use data and testing to inform our plans and optimise our marketing. Read more here. 

Employee Communications Manager
Zuora
San Mateo, CA

Zuora is seeking an energetic, creative, self-motivated “ZEO” in our employee communications function. This is a fabulous career growth opportunity to build on a strong foundation of openness at a recently listed company with a fun, collaborative culture and a recognized leader driving a global Subscription Economy™. Zuora places tremendous importance on employee communications, a key element for advancing employee engagement, our core values and one-of-a-kind culture. This position will both manage and contribute to a variety of internal communications programs globally in support of company goals and objectives. Read more here. 

Senior Retention Marketing Manager
Tronc
Los Angeles, CA

This role will be responsible for reducing churn and driving ARPU among digital subscribers to Tribune Interactive’s news brands such as the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, The Baltimore Sun and more. Key activities include leading marketing campaigns and initiatives that drive subscriber engagement and retention, increasing digital activation among print subscribers, digital subscriber revenue management and driving actionable insights from well considered data analysis. Read more here. 

Xbox Lifecycle Marketing Manager
Microsoft
Redmond, WA

The Xbox Relationship Marketing team seeks an innovator to lead lifecycle marketing programs for our highly successful Xbox Live product. Xbox Live is a vibrant online community where millions of our members already enjoy multiplayer gaming, free games, exclusive member discounts and the many entertainment apps available on Xbox Live. As the leader of Xbox Lifecycle Marketing, this person will lead efforts to develop customer-focused digital marketing campaigns that engage customers and deepen relationships with Xbox Live members at various stages of the customer journey. This person must be able to think strategically about opportunities across customer segments and channels to match strategies and tactics to achieve business success. This person must place the customer at the center of all decisions and be willing to make the right call based on what’s best for both the brand and our fans. This person needs to be adaptable and be able to think with both sides of their brain; creative skills are important, but data acumen is paramount. Read more.

Senior Manager, Business Strategy, Creative Cloud
Adobe
San Francisco, CA

Adobe is seeking a Sr. Manager to join the Creative Cloud Business Strategy team within Adobe’s Digital Media business Unit. In this role, you will be a part of the team that has driven business decisions that have helped in Adobe’s business model transformation (from selling perpetual software to a subscription business). The Business Strategy team is responsible to define future growth strategy for Creative Cloud and owns identification, sizing and prioritization of growth opportunities, and builds business cases and provides strategic insights and recommendations to drive future growth based on research, analysis, and financial modeling. 

The Athletic Says ‘No’ to Ads in Favor of User Experience

Two years ago, The Athletic banked on the idea that sports fans would be willing to pay a premium for high quality, exclusive sports coverage. They were right. According to Adweek, the digital sports news startup now has subscribers in the six-figures, and the company continues to expand into new markets. In March, we reported on the company’s latest funding round which raised $20 million to help the company reach more U.S. markets. The Athletic does not currently accept advertising, and does not appear to be considering them any time soon. In fact, they are looking at other ways to diversify revenue streams, but advertising is not one of the options being considered. 

‘We’ve built our business today on the fact that the user experience is sacred,’ Hansmann told Adweek. ‘To interrupt that experience with ads or third-party content of some kind would effectively violate the trust that we have with our customers, and we don’t have any intention of doing that.’

Read more about The Athletic’s decision not to offer advertising at this time on Adweek.

Research: OTT Services to Grow to 400 Million Subscribers This Year

A new report by ABI Research predicts that over-the-top TV services will grow to 400 million subscribers in 2018 and revenue will grow to $51.4 billion by 2022. Why are services like Netflix, Hulu, DirecTV Now and CBS All Access so successful? OTT services over less expensive alternatives to cable TV with no long-term commitment.

‘vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor) services offer live TV packages as low as US$10 and customized packages are attracting cost- sensitive customers,” said Khin Sandi Lynn, an industry analyst for ABI Research. ‘Pay-TV operators recognize the consumer demand for vMVPD services and are trying to expand their OTT offering by providing more content choice to compete against other subscription OTT services such as Netflix.’

OTT TV is becoming even more popular as services like YouTube Live and Sling offer skinny bundles, packaging on-demand programming along with live, broadcast TV. Such bundles are much more affordable than cable packages but still give viewers the shows they want to watch.

‘As competition intensifies, content and quality of service are crucial to win the OTT war,’ added Lynn. 

The Extremist Approach to GDPR: Will U.S. Publishers Block European Visitors?

May 25 is the big day – the day that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect. The new consumer privacy laws impact all companies who have customers that reside in the EU, even if the companies reside elsewhere. As the deadline looms, some U.S. publishers with smaller EU audiences are considering blocking IP addresses originating from the European Union, so they don’t risk hefty fines for noncompliance. Digiday calls this the extremist approach.  

Digiday talked to Christina Roberts, vice president of digital media operations for health news and lifestyle publication Well+Good who has updated its privacy policy and, for now, will block its EU readers which they estimate at less than 3 percent of their audience. According to Roberts, this action buys the company some time to figure out what safeguards they need to put in place.

‘There’s a lot of things within GDPR that are kind of vague,’ Roberts said. ‘Seeing what our competitors are doing will be helpful to seeing what is absolutely necessary. Blocking gives us some time.’

Find out who else is using this wait-and-see approach to GDPR in ‘The extremist approach to GDPR: some U.S. publishers consider blocking European visitors‘ on Digiday.