What Should We Charge? What Should We Build? What Happens When They Leave?
Three new resources on subscription pricing, product decisions, and what really happens when a subscriber cancels.
Hi {{ first_name }},
Some of the hardest questions in a subscription business can sound incredibly simple. What should we charge? Is this product idea worth pursuing? What happens when a subscriber decides to leave?
Start pulling on any one of those threads, and there is usually much more underneath it.
That is where this week’s three new Member Center resources come in. Each starts with a fairly straightforward question and helps you understand what else you may need to look at before making the decision in front of you.
START WITH HOW SUBSCRIPTION PRICING ACTUALLY WORKS
Pricing can get complicated quickly, especially if you are new to it.
- So we went back to the beginning with How Subscription Pricing Works: A Beginner’s Guide.
The goal is to help someone understand what actually goes into a subscription pricing decision before getting buried in pricing models, terminology or advanced strategy.
A price is a number, of course. But deciding what that number should be means thinking about the offer, the value subscribers receive, the economics of the business and how the subscription itself works. The guide also includes a downloadable worksheet to help you work through the pieces of a pricing decision for your own business.
This is a good place to start if you are learning subscription pricing, bringing someone new into a pricing conversation, or simply want a clearer foundation before tackling a bigger pricing decision.
BEFORE YOU BUILD IT, WHAT DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?
I like this one because product decisions can move very quickly from “this sounds like a good idea” to people, budget and development time being committed to it.
The resource helps slow down that jump. What do we actually know? What are we assuming? What do we still need to learn before we decide whether to build something, change it, enter a market or pursue an opportunity?
The point isn’t to turn everyone into a market researcher. It is to help operators do enough homework to make a better decision before the organization commits resources to it. There is also a downloadable worksheet so you can use the questions against a real product or market decision you are considering.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A SUBSCRIBER CANCELS?
Our third addition this week started with another question that sounds simple: A subscriber clicks cancel. What happens next? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
- What Happens Across Your Business When a Subscriber Cancels is a deeper Operating Analysis that follows cancellation across the business, including the subscriber experience, billing, payments, retention, refunds, customer service, data, technology and vendors.
It is easy to think of cancellation as a single moment in the subscriber journey. From inside the business, it can touch multiple teams and systems before, during and after that click.
This resource is designed to help you see those connections. If you are reviewing your cancellation experience, investigating complaints, responding to changing requirements or simply trying to understand who owns what when a subscriber leaves, this is a useful place to start.
There is a thread connecting all three resources this week.
The question sitting in front of you is rarely the whole question.
Pricing gets easier to think about when you understand what sits behind the number. Product decisions get better when you understand what you know before you commit. Cancellation looks very different once you follow it beyond the cancel button.
That is a big part of what I want the Member Center to help you do. Understand the problem in front of you, see what else it touches, and have something practical to turn to when it is time to decide what to do next.
A QUICK NOTE FROM NEW YORK
I also spent part of this week in New York for our Subscription Insider executive roundtable on the 44th floor of Hearst Tower.
The room before everyone arrived. A few hours later, every seat was full.
The view was amazing. Even better was the conversation around the table.
Several Subscription Insider members joined us, along with other senior subscription operators, and it was wonderful to actually see people in person. We spent the afternoon talking openly about the issues people are working through inside their businesses.
So much of what we do happens through a screen. Articles, emails, Zoom calls, Member Center resources. Sitting together around a table, comparing notes and hearing what is actually happening inside subscription businesses is different. I came away from the afternoon with plenty to think about.
And I finally got to meet Alycia Simpson in person.
Alycia and I first met during the pandemic and have worked together regularly ever since. Somehow, all these years later, this was the first time we had actually been in the same room together.
And, of course, we are already working on something together. Later today, Alycia and I are working on the educational outline for a new online workshop we are developing. The idea is very practical. You bring one real problem you are working through, and we spend the session helping you work through it.
I want people to leave having made real progress on something they need to solve, rather than leaving with another set of slides to look at later. More on that soon.
In the meantime, take a look at this week’s additions, and as always, let me know what would make the Member Center more useful to you.
Kathy
Kathy Greenler Sexton
CEO & Publisher
Subscription Insider®
