Convenience and Curation: Subscription Boxes Deliver the Goods

Admit it. You or your business have been thinking about launching a box of the month. And why not? It’s one of the most successful subscription models for consumer-facing businesses! Some of the most popular box categories are fashion, beauty samples, organic food, eco products, and kids’ crafts and activities....

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How the Amazon Prime Effect is Leading Retailers to the Subscription Model

Jeff Bezos recently opened his company’s annual shareholder meeting with the news that Amazon had reached an impressive milestone: $100 billion in annual sales. What’s more, they reached this number faster than any other company in history. Along with this impressive stat, Bezos reported on their Amazon Prime offering—their annual...

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Choosing the Right Payment Gateway - Part 4

As noted in our previous blogs in this series (available here, here and here), choosing a payment gateway can be a daunting, but important, task. In this blog series, we’ve outlined many of the things a merchant should consider in assessing different payment gateways. A careful review of a gateway’s reliability,...

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Using the Right Tools for the Right Job: A Data Extraction Story

Just as a carpenter would certainly choose a hammer to drive a nail, not the blunt end of a screwdriver, so too should a merchant use the correct tool to extract data from Recurly. Today, a merchant has three different options for extracting data. Listen for events in Recurly (via...

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Choosing the Right Billing Model for Your Subscription-based Business

As subscription based-businesses continue to evolve, they’re seeking greater control and flexibility in terms of the plans they are able to offer their subscribers and how they’re priced. A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works in any business, and subscription businesses are no exception. Customers want to know they’re getting value, and...

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Increased Targeting and Engagement With Recurly’s Bulk Unique Coupons

In 1965, American families began clipping coupons en masse and marketers realized how coupons convert prospects, upsell customers, and encourage brand loyalty. In 1990, the internet begat the era of online coupons, making it easier than ever for subscription-based and other businesses to reach an online audiences with their promotions....

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Dealing in Decadence: Subscription Businesses for Lavish Lifestyles

In our last post about luxury subscription offerings, we discussed two subscription businesses that provide subscribers a chance to own temporarily that which they cannot (or choose not to) buy permanently. These businesses and others like them use the subscription model to fulfill four-carat desires on half-carat budgets. But there are...

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PayPal comes to Recurly.js!

We're excited to announce that Recurly.js will soon support PayPal, giving your customers the flexibility to choose between preferred payment methods – all within your same branded payment form. We are currently beta-testing PayPal with a select group of merchants and will be ready to make this available through an...

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Minimizing the Impact of Declined Transactions

In today's blog post, we'll explore best practices to minimize the impact of declined transactions. We’ll also share tips for benchmarking and iterating on site configurations to improve transaction decline recovery and drive revenue. Benchmark For merchants concerned about their decline rates, the most important place to start is by...

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Benchmarking & Minimizing Credit Card Transaction Decline Rates

Many merchants are concerned about their transaction decline rates and want to ensure that the rates are within what is normal for their industry or segment. Their concerns can be amplified by seeing large blocks of declined transactions, multiple attempts to collect on a single invoice, and numerous customer updates...

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