I see a lot of brands when they have this shift to a subscription model that they are then all of a sudden shifting their mindset that anything they produce of value needs to be within, the box of that paid subscription.
But I really encourage you to think of what you're doing across that entire subscriber life cycle, which also includes before they actually become a subscriber. One executive that we've worked with, I love this quote. She says, I don't need them to buy today. I need them to buy tomorrow. So if you really shift that mindset, you're going to get a stickier, higher engaged subscriber in the long run.
There are three key pillars, of your payment strategy that you can really think through to make sure that payments are a growth lever for your business. The first one is around having a multi gateway strategy.
You never wanna depend as a business on a single gateway.
Number one, gateways go down. So, you know, you never want to risk your subscriber having a really terrible checkout experience and their payment not being processed because your payment gateway is down. So you always wanna make sure you have a a backup gateway. The second consideration is if you're looking to expand to international regions.
There are certain gateways that are specific experts in that region and operate well in that region and also offer the payment methods that your subscribers are gonna want in that region. So make sure you're really picking the right partners as you're scaling internationally. The second consideration around your payment strategy is alternate payment methods. You wanna ensure you are offering the right payment methods that your subscribers want, and that can vary by region, by demographic.
So you really wanna look at what that means for your business. The third tip around payments is combating involuntary churn. So about thirteen percent of recurring transactions are at risk of failure. And within that thirteen percent, there's over two thousand reasons why that card can fail.
So if you find the right partner, you can automate recovering those failed transactions both before that payment even fails. So you wanna actually make sure it doesn't fail in the first place. And then if it does fail, you know, what are your tactics and strategies to make sure that that's like a seamless transition to getting that payment back. The most competitive leading media brands that are doing subscriptions really well right now are all prioritizing and investing in an amazing subscriber experience.
And as I mentioned earlier, that's across the entire subscriber life cycle. And that's everything from, again, things on the brand side before they're even a paid subscriber to that onboarding journey, to that renewal journey. And you really wanna ensure that brand perception and loyalty and relationship is still intact.
And so this comes down to flexibility on sign up. You wanna be able to you're providing options, you know, whether it's pretrials, add ons, giving them the ability to purchase one time or recurring model, you know, upgrades, downgrades, adding their family, having bundles, being able to pause their subscription, have it come back really seamlessly. So that's really, really the core of subscriber experience from a subscription business. You really also wanna remind your subscribers of the value.
So you it goes from setting the right expectations upfront. Right? On-site, what are you setting? Do you have FAQs?
Are you positioning the subscription in the right way? Do they really know what they're getting when they're signing up? And then what's that onboarding journey? Right?
Are you making sure you're exposing them to every single part of what you do have to offer to make sure they're aware of that and and being engaged with it. And then ongoing, and then you also wanna make sure on that renewal journey, that's something that often I see overlooked is if someone's especially on an annual subscription. Right? What's that sixty days leading up to the renewal look like?
Right? How are you gonna then start to engage to them to make sure that they're ready to renew, for another term with you? How can you build community amongst your members within that subscription So they really feel like they're part of something and a and a member of a club, whether again, that's through events, through connecting them with each other, or offering things like loyalty points and perks and making them really feel like they're a valued member of your community.
Make sure you have the right partners in place to do so. There's a lot to consider around data, regulations, compliance, taxes. So you really wanna make sure you have the right people in place to really advise you on what is best practice in those areas. You also wanna make sure you're localizing, your content, your currency, your communication.
So if you are launching in a new region, do take a step back and see what the minimum viable product could be to get in market, and then again, iterate and build on that later.
With all of these ideas around pricing and packaging and gateways, you really wanna make sure that you're able to test and optimize and don't set it and forget it. Because a one size fits all subscription approach no longer is what's working for media brands.
It is really a lot of different tactics and figuring out what works for you and your unique model and your audience. And so you wanna do things like a cohort analysis. Right? And if you're running a certain promotion or launching a new plan, you really wanna see it what that impact was at launch, and you need to be patient with the subscription model.
