Benchmark data is an invaluable resource. It can help businesses make better-informed decisions and provide an objective means to gauge business performance. Recurly has unique and valuable access to comprehensive data and metrics that can help subscription businesses make those critical decisions.

Recently, we conducted a new analysis, assessing subscriber acquisition methods from a sample of more than 1,200 subscription commerce sites over 15 months. We looked at a wide range of industries, so a business can see how they compare overall and to others in their industry. The two subscriber acquisition methods we studied were free trial subscriptions and coupons

Free trials

If you offer a free subscription trial plan, perhaps you’ve wondered what trial lengths other businesses in your industry offer and how trial lengths compare to plan lengths. Of course, free trials are meant to help prospects judge the value of your subscription product or service, so we looked at how offering free trials impact conversion rates and what effect the trial length may have. We also present data that shows which industries are more likely to have a longer customer lifetime from trials that convert to paid.

Coupons

The second half of our study focuses on coupon usage as an acquisition tool. Coupons are a popular tactic which many businesses, use to entice prospects. Our analysis shows if coupon usage result in longer subscription retention, and it segments the results by industry. We also looked at typical discount rates and determined if there is a correlation between discount rates and a subscription’s duration. We know that subscriber acquisition is critical to business growth and success, and we are certain you will find our latest analysis to be useful in your own subscriber acquisition efforts. And for more benchmark data and research, visit our Recurly Research page.