In this week’s Five on Friday, we’ve got an interesting mix of content to help your subscription company grow and be more effective, including the keys to a successful subscription revenue model, pricing OTT content just right, using content outlines to improve writing, approaching brand loyalty like Amazon, 10 email mistakes not to make and, as an added bonus, information about our next Payment Processing Bootcamp in New York City!

5 keys to a successful subscription revenue model

Salesforce, a dominant force in cloud computing, recently wrote a blog post about the importance of taking care of your customers at every stage of the lifecycle and how that is the key to the success of any company’s subscription revenue model. They break down into these five steps:

1. Every touch point with a customer throughout the lifecycle is an opportunity to solidify your brand and the subscriber relationship. Make sure every customer experience is positive, and don’t compromise on quality or skimp on service.
2. Because customers can come from so many different channels these days, it is important to gather and analyze data to truly understand your customer, including how they engaged with you, if/when they dropped off, how often they use your subscription product or service, what kind of support or service they’ve requested, etc.
3. The subscription model allows customers to pay-as-they-go rather than making a heavy outlay before engaging with you. This allows for cyclical renewals, which are opportunities to retain your customer. Use these renewal times to engage with your customer and ask for feedback. How and how often you do this will depend on the type of subscription product or service you offer. For example, you wouldn’t want Netflix to contact you every month to be sure you want to renew, but if you have a SaaS contract with an annual renewal, that’s a good time to check in with customers.
4. Having the right tools to support your subscription model are also important, including subscription management and billing tools, customer service options, automatic renewals, etc.
5. Review your metrics regularly to analyze current data and predict future trends.

To learn more, read the full Salesforce article here.

How much will subscribers pay for OTT content?

Over the last several years, streaming video on-demand, also called over-the-top (OTT) TV, services have grown in popularity, particularly among millennials but also among cord cutters who are tired of paying the high price of cable. Television viewing is fast becoming an a la carte experience where cord cutters and cord nevers watch their favorite shows on OTT services like Netflix, Hulu, CBS All Access, Sling TV, HBO Now, Seeso and others.

Vindicia recently wrote a blog post about pricing for OTT services – how much will subscribers pay for OTT content? According to a recent study by TiVo, 58 percent of people pay for multiple streaming services with Netflix being the most popular. I personally subscribe to three OTT services – Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. According to another study, FierceCable said subscription companies should keep their services below $30 a month, not including a regional sports network.  

“Whether such a service is economically feasible at $40 is debatable,” said MoffetNathanson analyst Craig Moffet, according to FierceCable. “Beyond $50, the demand falls sharply.”

Consumers choose OTT services for things other than price though. Some subscribe to services for the exclusive licensing rights to their favorite shows or for original programming like House of Cards (Netflix), Orange is the New Black (Netflix), Game of Thrones (HBO Now) and Transparent (Amazon Prime).

To read more about pricing OTT products, read Vindicia’s post here.

How outlines hone your content and improve your writing

For some of us, writing comes easy. For others, it is akin to torture from start to finish. Writing can also be challenging for marketers who create content to complete their writing-related tasks along with their many other responsibilities. Convince and Convert recommends creating an outline to guide and simplify the writing process. Here’s their five-step method:

1. Choose a topic and purpose of your content. Consider your audience, how and where the information will be published.
2. Brainstorm talking points. This doesn’t have to be organized or pretty, but it should include key points that you want to include.
3. Organize your ideas into a logical flow and structure.
4. Expand on your main points. Gather some data, examples and supporting information by doing research online, talking to customers or colleagues, and looking to your own experience to support your main points.
5. Review your outline. Does the purpose of the piece further your strategic goals? Will it resonate with readers? Is it organized? Does it flow well? Ask a colleague or supervisor to take a look to see if they can follow the outline. If not, it might need finetuning before you move onto the writing phase.

For more advice on writing content outlines, read Convince and Convert’s original article here.

Brand loyalty: market like its 1959

Loyalty expert Sir Keith Mills, founder of Air Miles, said brands should approach loyalty like Amazon – using data to reproduce the consumer-shopkeeper relationship of the 1950s but on a larger scale.  

“If data and insight can help you tailor your proposition on a one-to-one basis with the consumer then you’ll see your best return. In the future, the one-size-fits-all model won’t provide companies with the same sorts of returns. You might as well do mass marketing,” says Mills.

One way to do this is by having reward options available to customers that are not necessarily led by price. Customers want value, and different customers will find different rewards valuable. Rewards and offers should be personalized, flexible and responsive, driven by data.

For more on an Amazon-style loyalty approach, read the full article by Charlotte Rogers in Marketing Week.

10 email transgressions your mom would ground you for (if she were your boss)

No one wants to disappoint their parents, right? Imagine if your mom or dad were your boss. How would they feel about your email marketing efforts? In this recent article, ClickZ offered these 10 email transgressions your mom would ground you for if you worked for her. Uh-oh…

1. Testing just the subject line. If you test just the subject line, you’ll get more email opens, but you may not improve your click-throughs.
2. Ignoring the need for mobile-friendly formatting.
3. Assuming younger consumers ignore email in favor of social media or Facetime.
4. Buying an email list. The laws have changed and email now requires permission from the receiver.
5. Not playing well with others. Instead, make time to learn from others.
6. Not taking time off. It can be hard to walk away from an intense job, but it is necessary. When you take a vacation or even a mental health day to go to the beach, your brain gets a rest which gets the creative juices flowing again.
7. Not showing Mom your work. Consider the email marketing pieces you send to customers. Would you be proud – or embarrassed – to print it off and show it to your mom? If the latter is true, fix it.
8. Ignoring strategy. Sometimes we put ourselves on auto-pilot, and we think about how we are going to do something, ignoring the why. The why is very important, and it should guide your tactics.
9. Not utilizing first-person marketing. Don’t look at your email list as just a group of people you want to market to. Consider them as valuable individuals with their own thoughts and opinions.  Market to them as individuals, not as a herd of cattle.
10. Forgetting quality in favor of quantity. Sure, you want to grow your list, but growing a list of qualified prospects is better than a mass of email addresses for prospects that have no interest in what you have to offer.

Avoid these 10 email marketing transgressions, and you can make your mom proud. For more email marketing advice, read the full article on ClickZ here.

BONUS:  Subscription Payment Boot Camp East is just a month away!

One of our favorite things to do at Subscription Insider is to bring together experts in different facets of the subscription industry to help you grow and improve your business. We’re doing that again on May 8 in New York City, and we are expecting the event to sell out! Today we announced the final lineup of speakers which include experts from:

• Constant Contact
• The New York Times
• Weight Watchers
• Shutterstock
• LegalShield
• Vantiv
• Vindicia
• Adyen
• House of Kaizen
• Ingenico ePayments
• PLC
  

You don’t want to miss this exclusive event! Sign up today.