Subscription DNA Blog | Page 12 of 26 | Cloud Billing & Management Software

A Subscription to Vehicle Ownership

Nowadays, we subscribe to music, books, Web services, groceries, clothing, cooked meals and even dating services. Why not cars? Subscription services for vehicles are one of the fastest-growing ownership models for car owners. Last month, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) was the most recent automaker to announce a new subscription plan, Jeep Wave, a service that will allow drivers to switch between vehicles as needed for a monthly fee. Similar subscription plans have already been launched by Cadillac, Porsche, BMW, and Volvo.

Subscribing to…Cars?

The new FCA subscription plan has three tiers: “good,” better” and “best,” and users will be able to pick different models in each tier. According to the company, included in the subscription are options for insurance coverage, vehicle selection, and concierge services. FCA hasn’t yet released details about the cost of the three tiers of subscription, what’s included, or the full list of vehicles to be included in each tier.

The Care by Volvo subscription plan, announced in September of 2017, starts at $600 a month. For this price, customers will have access to the Swedish company’s new 2019 XC40 sport utility vehicle. The monthly fee – so far, the most affordable in the car subscription market — also covers insurance, roadside assistance, repairs and scheduled maintenance.

Want access to a variety of Porsches? The Porsche Passport Program will set users back $2,000 or $3,000 (depending on which models they’d like to drive). The subscription, which includes a $500 activation fee and credit check, covers vehicle tax and registration, insurance, unlimited mileage, and maintenance. Smartphone users can download the app and begin using the same day or schedule future rides.

Why Auto Subscriptions?

Car companies believe that subscriptions will appeal to younger customers who are increasingly rejecting traditional vehicle ownership. They are betting that younger drivers will value the flexibility, the excitement of switching out cars and the elimination of the headaches of traditional car loans.

“We engage people with a brand that they usually wouldn’t,” Klaus Zellmer, Porsche North America CEO, told CNBC at the 2018 New York International Auto Show.

The Subscription Model Needs Robust Administrative Support

Many consumers are tired of chasing traditional car loans, particularly now as interest rates are rising. For consumers increasingly used to buying things and using them on a subscription model, it makes sense to a “fewer strings attached” generation.

As more business is done by subscription, consumers may be less reliant on traditional loans and point of purchase payments and more accustomed to having payments processed by subscription software to eliminate hassle.

SubscriptionDNA provides a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that integrates subscription billing, subscription management, paywalls, and authentication, providing customized front-end options so customers can log in and manage their own accounts. Companies can use the solution to automate recurring invoicing, analyze and report, communicate with subscribers, engage in email marketing, process transactions, generate payment requests, track member login statistics and more.

For more information about how SubscriptionDNA can help your business, visit our web site or call 513-574-9800.

Tips for Launching a Successful Subscription Business

There’s a reason why more companies than ever are interested in launching subscription-based business models: recurring revenue rather than one-time revenue from a now-and-again purchase.

“Recurring revenue — the main benefit of the subscription business model — will help improve the value of your business, provide a steady cash flow, and make your business a lot more predictable,” wrote John Warrillow for Inc. magazine.

But launching a subscription business is harder than just waving a magic wand. For starters, you need to figure out how to translate your offerings to a subscription model and find a way to serve the greatest number of customers possible. You also need to support them adequately. Following are some issues to consider before launching your subscription-based business.

Remember that Subscription Billing Is Time-Consuming

If you’re still billing and invoicing by hand, moving to a subscription business is going to be tricky. Customers will need to be billed monthly (or quarterly), and they may be subscribing to different tiers of service, so things are going to get complex. It’s recommended that you put an automated subscription billing solution in place that bills automatically and securely, but also allows customers to make single one-time payments. It’s important that you’re able to accept multiple payment methods and rebill automatically if a payment fails the first time. (It might save you some administrative headaches later!)

Ensure That You Are Flexible

One of the challenges to launching a subscription business today is convincing customers to lock into a contract. Customers today don’t like to sign on the bottom line if they’re not sure that a company is going to deliver, so be sure to have options such as free trials, lower tiers of service and easy cancellation. Trouble-shoot their problems before they have to ask for help with proactive customer outreach.

Proper Subscription Management Helps Ensure Success

Once you’ve launched your new subscription business, you’ll need to manage it, and engage in careful customer support and retention. You’ll need to be able to work with subscribers from multiple perspectives so you can answer their questions, show them the benefit of upgrades to greater tiers of service (if that’s part of your business) and reach out to them when appropriate. You’ll also need a method of gathering data for the purpose of analysis and reporting to measure the health of your business.

Ensure You Have the Right Subscription Management Solution

Subscription DNA provides a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that creatively integrates subscription billing, subscription management, paywalls and authentication. We provide customized front-end options, so you can ensure that it’s easy for your customers to log in and manage their own accounts.

Subscription DNA gives you everything you need to automate recurring invoicing, analyze and report, communicate with targeted user groups, engage in email marketing, process transactions, generate payment requests, track member login statistics and more.

Get started today!

Customer Support is Critical to Subscription Success

When we hear the word “subscription,” we tend to think of magazines. Pay your fee once a year, and a new copy of “National Geographic” arrives in your mailbox each month. But the business model of subscriptions is an increasingly popular one, and now can be applied to everything from cars to wine to clothing to Legos. Younger generations of Americans are not as keen on ownership as older Americans: they like the idea of paying for only what they use, read, watch, drive and wear. They like the variety subscriptions offer. More companies are offering “box” subscription services in which items are shipped, tried out and used or returned for more things.

Customer Support in the Subscription Economy

Because the subscription business model is often more complex and has more moving parts than a purchase model, customer support becomes more challenging, according to Brad Birnbaum writing for Forbes. Companies need to be more careful about “listening” to customers, so this means social media monitoring and dedicated customer support agents.

“Subscription brands need to know what their customers are saying on social to find out if they’re connecting,” wrote Birnbaum. “They need to know if a customer has downgraded their service, and work to find out why.”

Each Interaction Is an Opportunity to Build Loyalty

When you build your customer support infrastructure, remember that subscriptions customers will need to communicate with you more frequently, and they’ll also expect your customer support agents to be experts, according to Birnbaum.

“With great knowledge of your customers comes great responsibility, and that responsibility falls to your agents,” wrote Birnbaum. “Instead of simply solving problems and answering tickets, they need to become makeup stylists, fashion advisors, and pet experts. In other words, agents have to become consultants. Only with that level of deep engagement can they connect with customers and anticipate potential pain points while surprising and delighting them when it counts most.”

To achieve this, you may have to change your hiring practices and engage in more in-depth training on both hard “product” skills and soft skills like deescalating the ire of an angry customer.

You Need a Solid Platform to Build a Subscription Business

Customers like subscriptions because they offer them options, so be sure you’re doing just that and not boxing your customers in, forcing them to shop and pay for things the way you want them to.

A good subscription management platform like Subscription DNA, a software-as-a-service solution that provides subscription billing and membership management, is essential. Using the suite, organizations offering subscriptions can have a single administrative console to manage accounts, automate recurring invoices, analyze reports, communicate with targeted user groups, engage in email marketing, process transactions, generate payment requests, and track member login statistics.

Communicating with your subscription customers – and making it easy for them to communicate with you – will help you improve the quality of customers support you provide. By becoming proactive rather than reactive, you’re better positioned to give your customers what they want when they ask…or even before they ask.

Contact Subscription DNA for more information on our subscription management features.

Rethinking Free Content Supported by Ads in Favor of Paywalls

There’s a reason standard network and non-premium cable television broadcasters are in trouble today: a lack of content. Networks, delighted with how much money reality television saved them, became a repository for mediocre filler. Cable channels once prized for entertainment, art and history became placeholders for commercials. Americans, annoyed at the poor content and frequent commercials, have moved to Amazon Prime, Netflix and individual channel subscriptions such as HBONow. As the latter have demonstrated, people are willing to pay for premium content without advertising.

Paywalls are working well for some Web content providers. It’s important, however, to be sure you’re offering value behind the paywall. TechCrunch’s Danny Crichton (and many others) are criticizing Bloomberg this week for its decision to add a comprehensive paywall to its popular news articles. Essentially, subscribers will have to pony up $35 a month for content they previously got for free.

“Subscriptions should be seen as an upgrade, not a tax,” wrote Crichton. “A subscription should provide new features, content, and capabilities that didn’t exist before while maintaining the former product that consumers have enjoyed for years.”

To make money off content, providers need to walk a fine line. Free content supported by ad revenue is inconstant, unreliable and nerve-wracking. It also annoys the daylights out of people who don’t want their personal information tracked insidiously or pop-ups ads exploding in their faces while they’re trying to read the news. In some cases, however, it’s necessary where consumers perceive that content “ought to be” free.

Making Paywalls Work

The paywall model – which is steady, predictable revenue – works well when a company has content that adds value and that customers are willing to pay for.

“Subscriptions align incentives in a way that advertising can never do, while also avoiding the morass of privacy and ethics that plague ad targeting,” wrote Crichton. “Subscription revenues are also more reliable than ad dollars, making it easier to budget and improve operational efficiency for an organization.”

So how do you induce consumers to pay for content? For starters, you need professionally produced content – daily, in many cases – that readers perceive to be of value. Secondly, you need to understand that customers are more likely to pay for subscriptions in small bites, or in value packages. For the latter, Crichton recommends subscription bundling.

“One way we could fix [the] situation would be to allow subscriptions to combine together more cheaply,” he wrote. “We are starting to see this too: Spotify, Hulu, and Scribd appear to be investigating a deal in which consumers can get a joint subscription from these services for a lower rate. Setapp is a set of more than one hundred OS X apps that come bundled for about $10 a month.”

Use Subscription Management

Whatever approach you choose, be sure you have a professional subscription management platform in place. SubscriptionDNA is as SaaS platform that creatively integrates subscription billing, subscription management, paywalls and authentication that you can use to customize your customer’s experience. Whether you’re looking to monetize a blog, provide privileged content access to members, or anything else, Subscription DNA is an easy and affordable way to do it.

Get in touch today to find out more!

Using a Paywall to Monetize Content for Today’s Digital Subscribers

When newspapers and magazines saw the future – and that it was digital – they realized they would need a new way to earn money to survive. Customers were quickly becoming used to free content online, and fewer of them were willing to pay for physical copies. A few bold players tried to get out in front of the issue. They tried to go large, and assured themselves readers would pay large sums up front for unlimited access to their digital publications.

In most cases, they were wrong.

We Pay for What We Want

While premier publications like the New York Times has (finally) been successful in digital subscriptions, it’s important to note what people are paying for. The New York Times added 139,000 paid subscribers in the first quarter of 2018 – a 25.8 percent jump from the same time last year. Fully 40,000 of these people – or 28 percent — subscribed to the New York Times crossword feature. Yes, just the crossword. (And despite the growth in digital subscribers, it’s also important to note that the NYT’s digital ad revenue declined six percent in the same period.)

There’s Only One New York Times

Most companies aren’t the New York Times (or the Washington Post, or the London Times), so what hope do they have of making money off digital subscriptions? In reality, there’s a viable business model there, as long as it’s done properly and subscriptions are offered in the way readers want them.

People Will Pay for What They Value

If you’re hoping that subscribers will pony up for a large fee to access everything you publish digitally, you’re in trouble. Customers will, however, pay small, piecemeal amounts for what they value, whether it’s a crossword puzzle, a specific article, one-day access for a project or a column by a writer they love. It used to be difficult to build a paywall in a way that allowed subscribers to pay for only what they want. It’s not anymore.

Protect and Monetize Your Content

Subscription DNA paywall software and premium content management features support a variety of paywall models that you can use to customize your customer’s experience, and give them access to exactly what they’re willing to pay for. Whether you’re looking to monetize a blog, provide privileged content access to members, or anything else, Subscription DNA is the way to go.

Our software-as-a-service platform supports free or paid package selection, multiple service ordering, promotional codes, gift subscriptions, special campaigns and much more.