While many companies both small and large consider the prospect of selling products and services on a subscription basis, few companies think in advance how they’ll manage the subscriptions. After all, the idea of managing customers on a monthly basis is a little more onerous then selling them something and seeing the back of the for the next few years, or a decade. Subscription management needs a process and a framework to build upon.
Why Do I Need Subscription Management Software?
A subscription management platform integrates subscription billing, subscription management, paywalls, and authentication, and makes it easy to market to subscribers with email, segmenting your subscriber list in any way you choose. The alternative is a series of separate solutions strung together in a patchwork attempt to cover all the business’ bases and the needs of subscribers.
Solutions such as Subscription DNA allow customers to log in and manage their own accounts right from your web site. Using an administrative console, you can quickly manage accounts, automate recurring invoicing, analyze reports, communicate with targeted user groups, process transactions, generate payment requests, track member login statistics and more.
What’s the Difference Between Subscription Management and Recurring Invoicing?
In many cases, the financial software used by businesses has the capability to do recurring invoices. Customer’s accounts can be adjusted to invoice existing subscriptions, usually by choosing the first bill date and setting the interval (monthly, quarterly or annually) and setting a final expiration date on the subscription. While this is handy in a limited set of circumstances, it’s not subscription management.
Subscription management goes much further, allowing companies to engage in usage billing so they can offer a tiered model of subscriptions. (Use more, get a higher bill, useless, get a lower bill). The recurring invoices can usually cope with only a “one size fits all” billing model. If customers decide to move to a higher tier in the middle of the billing interval, a recurring invoice model isn’t going to be able to cope with the change. In this case, billing adjustments would need to be manual.
Finally, many subscription businesses like to offer marketing promotions, which might go something like this: we’ll provide you with a three-month trial offer at a 50 percent discount from regular prices. If you decide to continue your subscription after three months, you can roll your trial membership into a full paying plan. A recurring billing platform is never going to be able to cope with this level of complexity.
Subscription management platforms allow for a virtually limitless number of subscription billing options, as well as customization for groups, reporting, communication tools, and premium content/paywall capabilities. For more information about Subscription DNA, call 513 574-9800 or visit our web site.