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Alongside WorldPay and Mastercard, I recently hosted a roundtable discussion at their joint industry event at United Spaces Waterfront in Stockholm on the topic of recurring payments. It’s no secret that businesses love recurring revenue–in fact, the global subscription economy is projected to hit $1.5 trillion by 2025. Furthermore,...
The subscription business model continues to experience major shifts in subscriber expectations and demands, the value of subscription services, and consumer experiences. Amid challenging times of macroeconomic uncertainty and the revaluation of subscriptions, brands must get ready to grow at the same pace as the industry–expected to top $1.5 trillion...
It's a big promise: "Never lose a subscriber." After all, isn't a churn rate of 0% impossible? Even in the best-case scenarios. Even if you've maxed out your customer loyalty programs, established an iron-clad payment method, and created a retention strategy that markets the best side of your business to...
Now more than ever, consumers crave experiences and products that are catered to their preferences. They want to be able to customize everything from the product or service to payment methods to the frequency at which they receive their goods. In the subscription industry, there are innumerable opportunities to allow...
Imagine this: A shopper wants to purchase your subscription, but their preferred online payment method is a card in their mobile wallet and it isn’t available at your checkout. Broken experiences like this can stop online transactions as some customers would drop the whole checkout process if they have to...
One of the most underrated but important aspects of the subscriber experience is the relationship you create with your subscribers. This year, an expertly-crafted subscriber experience maintains its position at the center of high customer satisfaction (which translates to high customer lifetime value), loyalty, and improved retention rates. If you’re...
"Card declined." These two words can do more than spoil someone's binge-watching plans. Credit card declines can hurt a subscription business' bottom line, and at the very least interrupt your cash flow. Card info changes all the time, and the more customers you have, the harder it is to track...
From a product perspective, consumer preferences mean everything. With this kind of knowledge, you create a product or service that your ideal consumers truly want–and keep them loyal to your brand. And every year, consumer preferences change, and that is a weighty consideration for subscription businesses especially, whose goals include...
The subscription industry has changed, and it will continue to evolve in response to the changing climate of the economy and subscriber preferences: Complexity in maturity: As the industry matures, competition, commoditization, and more factors arise that complicate the existing subscription infrastructure. Simple subscription plans have transformed into variable plans...
As we embark on another year of subscriptions, a fresh outlook on marketing is mandatory. Consumers are conducting their annual evaluations of their subscriptions, and they are deciding if your subscription service is still worth the money. Whether you’re a streaming media subscription business or a SaaS recurring revenue service,...
With subscription popularity soaring over the last few years, consumers increasingly demand a frictionless subscriber experience. If the subscriber experience isn’t optimized and personalized at every touchpoint, you increase the risk of losing new subscribers and retaining existing ones. From regular billing cycles and payment options at checkout to an...
2023 is off to a great start in the land of subscriptions, especially with the announcement of our new partnership with Recuro, a Stockholm-based leading subscription business models consultancy. Combined with the technology and professional services of Recuro, Recurly will now be able to provide subscription businesses with the...
Customer insights are a powerful way to ensure a data-driven, subscriber-centric approach across your business. These insights result from thorough analysis and interpretation of valuable information in consumer interactions and channels. Download now: The State of Subscriptions report provides the acquisition, growth, churn, and payments insights you need to...
Led by Recurly’s CEO Dan Burkhart, CMO Theresa McEndree, and Director of Business Intelligence Brian Grier, the 2023 State of Subscriptions webinar unveils the biggest, most impactful findings in the subscription industry from the past year. With these discoveries, our in-house subscription experts have predicted the year to come:...
Churn is a reality in subscriptions. Businesses are constantly looking for new ways to identify, manage, and reduce churn. Last month, Recurly experts Eric Holle, Senior Product Manager, and Jonas Flodh, Chief Product Officer, sat down with David Krauss, Vice President of Product Marketing, to discuss effective churn management strategies...
A genealogy website based in London, Findmypast is dedicated to finding family stories and bringing them to life. When it first started 65 years ago, Findmypast was solely dedicated to helping its customers locate records–a one-time, direct sales transaction. But as Findmypast grows and records have become digitized, the...
From November 8 to 10, Subscription Insider hosted Subscription Show 2022 with FlexPay and keylight. Taking place in New York City’s Convene Conference Center this year, Subscription Show is “the leading subscription business conference for subscription-specific strategy and intel.” A few of Recurly’s...
What started as standard royal entertainment via tapes and documentaries blossomed into a full-blown on-demand streaming service devoted to Royalty worldwide. In 2018, True Royalty TV started a direct-to-consumer play, eventually growing globally into six markets, with a major portion of its customer base in the U.S. The transition...
Various studies have shown that acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. It’s a big number but hardly surprising; companies have to spend a lot of money on advertising and sales to acquire new subscribers. With that in...
Subscriptions are a top driver of loyalty and revenue growth for brands looking to grow. However, there comes a time when consumers may consider canceling their subscriptions. In fact, 31% of U.S. consumers say they plan to cancel some subscription services this year–after 46% canceled a subscription due to...
“Declined,” “insufficient funds,” and “invalid card number” are some of the phrases subscription businesses fear most. For most ecommerce businesses the solution for a failed one-time transactions are easy to resolve when the purchasers simply uses another payment method to complete the transaction. However, an alternate payment card is generally...
Measuring and reducing your customer churn rate is paramount to grow faster, smarter, and stronger. Every subscription business should be aware of what churn is, the differences in two types of monthly churn rates, how to measure retention rates, and how to offset your customer acquisition cost with a robust...
Any business owners serving regular, loyal customers can stand at their window and estimate their company’s financial health by watching their customers. The questions they might wonder are: How many customers keep coming back?What percentage of customers might not return?How much revenue is lost if the customer base shrinks in...
In a recent survey about the impacts of the pandemic and the overall sentiment of U.S. subscribers, Recurly found that 87% of respondents have a subscription to at least one streaming video service and 46% have a subscription to at least one streaming audio service. The increasing ubiquity of...
Every subscriber matters. Especially when your business runs on a subscription model. Of course, all businesses can expect to struggle if they don’t engage customers and keep them happy. However, a subscription company will feel this is a truism in their bottom line. Subscriber businesses, whether they’re B2B companies or...
Getting new subscribers is on every sales team's agenda. While acquisition efforts matter, retention ensures business growth. But with retention comes subscriber churn. All subscription brands face customer churn–it’s inevitable. We’d be lying if we said that you could eliminate it; however, you can actively work to reduce your...
Subscription models continue to grow exponentially with no signs of stopping. Competition rises, shopping priorities shift, and prices change; yet one thing is certain: not all subscribers will stay with you forever. Enter churn rate, the number of subscribers who cancel your service during a specific period. It may seem...
Customers canceling subscriptions are among the lesser desired situations for any subscription business. Contrary to what it may sound, providing an excellent cancellation experience fuels strong subscriber retention outcomes. This article covers why cancellation journeys are crucial in subscription models, along with some best practices for a stellar cancellation...
Recurring payments form the lifeblood of subscription commerce. Therefore, subscription renewals are critical to drive stable revenue growth and profitability. Any friction during renewals trickles down to the bottom line, making these journeys crucial. This article discusses some of the best practices to incorporate for a seamless subscription renewal...
The pandemic has paved the way for consumer re-evaluation, leading us to the direct-to-consumer (DTC) shift. Emerging consumer models continue to grow, bringing new consumer values, new buying behaviors, and new demands. As a result of this shift to a DTC, subscription-run commerce landscape, businesses must focus on their brand,...
As subscription commerce thrives on the recurring revenue model, ensuring the continuity and growth of subscribers forms the heartbeat of successful businesses in this industry. Acquiring new customers is always attractive, but retaining existing customers costs less and is a solid business objective to pursue. Statistically, companies across the...
In the last couple of years, especially during the pandemic, we saw the rise of new consumption preferences–personalization is one of these. It’s no secret that personalization drives subscription success. According to Forrester, 77% of consumers prefer brands that offer tailored services and experiences, while 66% of customers expect...
Subscription offerings in the direct-to-customer (DTC) framework are steadily rising, enhancing customer experience and simultaneous merchant control. Merchants are turning bullish toward this business model as they’re empowered to eliminate intermediaries from their supply chain, disrupt traditional monopolies, and sell directly to their end consumers. Moreover, with subscriptions, there’s an...
The impact of COVID-19 on subscriber behavior has been drastic. Lockdowns and restrictions expedited the shift from purchases in brick-and-mortar stores to ecommerce–changing every aspect of the customer experience, especially in the subscription business. While some have seen a positive impact, others have faced more challenges than opportunities, forcing...
When running a subscription-based business, fighting against churn is one of your everyday battles. Even though customer acquisition is a major need to scale a business, the ability to retain existing ones is easier and less costly. Here is where tracking revenue retention comes in handy. What is net...
As more companies turn to subscription-based models, it becomes more important to understand what leads to revenue growth and what prevents customer attrition. By the end of this article, you'll fully understand what negative churn is, how to calculate it, and how to achieve it for your company. What is...
Sometimes, to improve on a process or make a situation better, you need to look at it from a different lens. Take the recent invention of computational photography as an example. For over a hundred years, the quality of a photograph was primarily determined by faster shutters, more advanced lenses,...
It happens every six months like clockwork: brand marketers in every industry stop what they’re doing and turn their attention to the “Taking Stock with Teens” survey conducted by analyst firm Piper Sandler. The firm’s semiannual report helps companies gain insight into the habits and mindsets of young consumers,...
Involuntary churn strikes fear in the hearts of subscription businesses everywhere, and for good reason: over half of all churn is involuntary. And considering the fact that acquiring new customers costs 5 times more than retaining an existing one, nipping involuntary churn in the bud is critical for subscription businesses. ...
Userlike, based in Cologne, Germany, offers professional live chat software to help its customers raise conversion rates, promote customer loyalty, reduce churn, and pinpoint areas for improvement. Userlike wanted to maintain its lean business model, but at the same time, recognized the importance of partnering with a reliable subscription...
Spoiling man’s best friend just got a lot easier, all thanks to BARK’s decision to partner with Recurly. BARK, the dog enthusiasts responsible for BarkBox, are leading the pack in subscription business. And they’re doing so by opting for the best technology to optimize their recurring payments and plans...
COVID-19 has taken the world by storm, changing our day-to-day existence in ways we could have never imagined. Back in March, when the pandemic hit the U.S. in full force, many consumers reacted by emptying store shelves of basic necessities including canned goods and toilet paper. Many people, not knowing...
There are many ways Recurly helps subscription businesses recover revenue after a transaction fails. There’s the sophisticated Revenue Optimization Engine, which powers our custom retry strategy, as well as Recurly’s customizable dunning, which makes it easy to automatically reach out to subscribers with on-brand messaging on an optimal cadence. All...
There’s nothing better than receiving packages in the mail. Now imagine those packages filled to the brim with full-size, brand name surprises. FabFitFun has taken this idea and run with it. The company, which originally launched as a female-oriented lifestyle blog and newsletter, bumped its subscriber numbers from the thousands...
Recently, Recurly Chief of Staff, Emma Clark joined Subscription Insider’s Kathy Greenler Sexton to discuss the impacts — both positive and negative — that COVID-19 has had on subscription-based businesses. If you missed out on the webinar, here’s the gist. COVID-19 has entirely reshaped the subscription landscape, as well as increased the economic uncertainty...
PupBox — like many of its puppy customers — was facing growing pains. No, there wasn’t any shortage of adorable consumers: the subscription box for puppies (and their human owners) has been a hit since 2013. But PupBox did face high churn rates due...
In a recent blog post, we discussed why it's important for subscription businesses to offer alternative payment methods like PayPal and Amazon Pay. Today, we’ll share aggregated data insights to show why merchants should consider using multiple payment gateways to grow their business. In this post, we’ll discuss payment gateway usage...
The disruptive force of the COVID-19 pandemic generated 17 million U.S. unemployment claims by mid-April, with the unemployment rate hovering near 15 percent — the highest since WWII. Record-setting workforce displacement and sluggish government response has left tens of millions of people virtually without funds and having to decide between...
COVID-19 has penetrated nearly every aspect of our lives and there is no precedence or template for how to respond to this ever-changing situation. Consumers are challenged with layoffs, shelter in place and quarantine orders, plus struggling with how to work from home while juggling the needs of their daily...
In addition to being highly successful, innovative subscription businesses, what is another thing that BarkBox, FabFitFun, and Speedo all have in common? Answer: they all combine subscriptions with one-time offerings. This is called “hybrid commerce,” and it refers to businesses that have both a recurring line-of-business and sell one-time items. Regardless of whether...
Failed transactions are an everyday part of e-commerce. As a merchant, the last thing you want to see is the error message ‘card declined.’ On average, B2C and B2B can expect a failed transaction rate of approximately 11.5%. One of the most common decline reasons is outdated card information. That’s an...
Software as a Service—also known as the SaaS model—was one of the earliest adopters of the subscription model concept. There are, of course, a multitude of compelling, strategic reasons to adopt a subscription model based on access rather than ownership: more predictable recurring revenue streams (and compounding revenue); improved subscriber...
Output is an LA-based company that develops innovative software products for musicians, composers, producers, and sound designers. The company’s focus is simple: groundbreaking concepts, new sounds, and new sources of inspiration. Output’s customers access different software products either via a monthly subscription or by purchasing a perpetual license. But, with...
One of the significant benefits of subscription commerce is the amount of data and related insights this model generates compared to one-time purchases. New data related to marketing, payments, and customer lifecycle events is generated regularly, at each new billing cycle. This data is invaluable for gaining insights and making...
Last week, the Subscription Trade Association (SUBTA) hosted several hundred attendees in downtown Chicago for their annual Recur Conference. Recur brings together new Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) subscription businesses, industry veterans, and subscription vendors for three days of learning and networking. With nods to all six segments of the subscription industry, the event...
Subscription businesses, like any other business, need to continually attract new customers—and of course, keep their existing customers happy. When businesses exceed all expectations, they may find themselves lauded in the trade press over these results, as AMC Theaters and Spotify were recently. AMC’s Stubs A-List movie ticket subscription service reported...
Much of our previous content, such as our most recent PSD2 blog and our SCA Integration Guide, has focused on Customer Initiated Transactions (CITs), which occur when the customer is “in-session” or otherwise present during the transaction flow. In the subscription commerce world, CIT comes into play when someone first signs...
The content we develop at Recurly is intended to be educational, useful, and approachable. We use campaigns to promote this content, which typically comes in the form of a digital book full of insights, knowledge, and tips for building a subscription business. As brand designers, our role is to work...
Tailor Brands was founded on the belief that powerful branding should be accessible to everyone, regardless of skill level, background in design, or budget size. The company describes its platform as the world’s first automated branding agency—providing AI-software that creates unique brand identities and elements on the spot. Based in...
In our previous blog post, we summarized the common decline reasons for failed transactions and the messages that the gateway delivers. We also talked about Recurly’s Revenue Optimization Engine which helps recover failed transactions. In this blog, we want to discuss some strategies that subscription businesses can utilize to avoid payment...
In a previous blog post, we talked about how Recurly uses machine learning to optimize subscription billing for our customers and prevent involuntary churn. As part of our goal to help our customers maximize their subscription revenue, we introduced the Revenue Optimization Engine in 2018. When a recurring transaction fails, this...
Subscription businesses that want to optimize their payment process and gain an edge over their competition should consider integrating with a second payment gateway. A second gateway can offer increased operational efficiencies along with a variety of other benefits. What are some of the advantages of having multiple gateways? Can...
If you’re an e-commerce business, two of the most dreaded words you’ll hear are “card declined.” When a credit (or debit) card is declined, the sale can’t go through and you don’t earn that revenue. If you’re a subscription business processing a recurring payment, a declined card can also result...
There are so many factors that can cause a recurring credit card transaction to be declined: out-of-date or inaccurate card information, insufficient funds or temporary hold, gateway issues, and fraudulent activity, to name just a few. When payments are unsuccessful, subscription businesses can lose subscribers to involuntary churn. It’s important...
In the last few weeks, the headlines around subscription commerce have centered on two main players: Moviepass and The New York Times. Moviepass, the trendy disruptor to the movie theater business model, continues to grab attention for its questionable pricing and product changes following an initial spike in new sign ups....
The subscription box segment was an early winner in subscription commerce. Whether based on a carefully curated selection of goods or the regular receipt of necessary consumables, subscription boxes have become an enduring success story. But what you put inside your box is only one piece of the puzzle. To...
The popularity of subscription boxes has been a boon to subscription commerce. But this popularity can be a double-edged sword. While recipients may love their different boxes filled with delightfully curated products or regularly needed essentials, sometimes this becomes too much of a good thing. Subscription box fatigue can happen...
On the surface, subscription billing may appear straightforward: just bill the same amount each billing cycle. The reality is that the subscriber lifecycle can involve a number of complex billing scenarios such as upgrades, downgrades, adding or removing additional products, changing quantities, or any combination of these billing events—each of...
In either fixed or indefinite pause scenarios, you have the option to resume subscriptions manually before the end of the pause term, at the subscriber’s request. Streamlined billing When subscribers request to pause their subscription, the subscription remains active until they reach the end of their current billing period, at which...
Global marketing involves more than simply selling a product in other countries. You need to speak to subscribers in their preferred language and ensure that their experience signing up and paying for your subscription product or service is streamlined and optimized. Recurly is pleased to announce support for 11 different...
Churn is a key metric in subscription commerce, tracked closely by the most specialized Box of the Month businesses to multi-million-dollar enterprise SaaS companies. This is because even slight differences in churn rates can have a significant impact on revenue growth. Understanding how to minimize churn and increase subscriber retention...
Subscription businesses can lose the happiest of subscribers because of involuntary churn. Even slight variations in churn can have a significant impact on revenue, so it’s critical to address involuntary churn—and now machine learning can help. Join our latest webinar and you’ll learn: The power of dynamic retry logic, to boost...
Subscription success demands a laser focus on providing subscribers with consistent value which leads to predictable recurring revenue. We recently explored the topic of subscriber acquisition. Now, in our newest e-book, we outline techniques, tactics, and best practices that subscription businesses can use to increase subscriber retention. One way to...
Every subscription business encounters credit card declines. These declines increase churn, reduce your revenue, and can negatively impact your subscriber relationships. But, with the right subscription management platform, you can minimize their impact. Recurly has the advantage of working with thousands of subscription businesses which come from a wide range of industries....
As we have discussed in the first and second blog in this series, dunning is a key process for maximizing revenue, and Recurly offers flexible tools to help you develop and manage your dunning strategy. In particular, Recurly users can set: the length of their dunning cyclethe number and cadence of emails...
In today’s blog, we’re continuing our discussion about dunning. As a reminder, dunning is the process of communicating with customers (usually by email) to try to collect payments due. In effect, discussions about dunning are really discussions about these customer communications. In our last blog, we described how the dunning...
Subscriber churn is a key concern for subscription businesses. When subscribers leave, the business loses both current and future recurring revenue. Of course, some churn is “involuntary”—occurring as a result of a failed payment rather than a subscriber cancelling deliberately. This post describes how Recurly ensures that the dunning process...
In our previous post in this series, we discussed the importance of reducing the friction that occurs during the subscriber lifecycle in order to promote and support continued revenue growth. We focused on free trials as a way to reduce sign-up friction in that post. But friction at sign-up...
As a data scientist at Recurly, my job is to use the vast amount of data that we have collected to build products that make subscription businesses more successful. One way to think about data science at Recurly is as an extended R&D department for our customers. We use a...
For consumers, one of the most popular subscription type is the subscription box—that curated collection of goodies that subscribers receive on a regular basis (often monthly, but not always) which the box purveyor hopes will delight and surprise its recipient. Beauty boxes such as Birchbox were an early success story, along...
Recently, we wrote a blog that involved a London pub’s innovation in beer drinking that enabled a friction-free experience for its customers during the busy holiday season. The goal of course of frictionless commerce is to make it easier for your customers to shop, pay, and receive their purchases, and in...
What do you think caused 5.5 million people in Britain to cancel their credit cards last year? If you guessed fraud, you’d be right. Those 5.5 million people comprise a full 12% of the population—one million higher than last year and evidence that cybercrime has gotten worse in that country and...
In many communities, finding a babysitter or nanny is hard. Sittercity realized the challenges parents and others faced and launched a website to solve the problem, providing parents with a better, more effective way to find childcare. Founded in 2001, the service—which is accessed via a monthly subscription fee—has connected...
