Hi, everyone, and welcome to subscription sessions twenty twenty three. I'm so excited to be kicking us off today.
We've got thousands of folks from around the globe here to learn about subscription strategies to grow profitable subscriber growth, especially shout out to our partners' Worldpay and Vertex, as well as our phenomenal speakers, who I am so excited to hear from later today. Without further ado, I'm gonna get us started.
We're gonna kick off with the state of subscriptions what consumers want. We went out with to over six thousand consumers in a number of countries to really understand what's motivating them. Why do they buy? Why do they stay? Why do they share? Right? When we think about profitable driver growth, that customer loyalty, the retention, the engagement.
We've heard about and we'll be hearing about more today. Right? It's no longer growth at all cost. Right?
We're really entrenched in our best customers, and how do we get them to engage more? How do we diversify our offerings to understand that we've got the right level of targeting personalization to really keep up with consumer demands and help to evolve. As our customers and our market evolves. So super exciting.
One of the best places we love to start is consumer research.
So we've really pride ourselves in bringing Matt to bear to our customers and partners.
How can we help you really understand what's in the mind of the subscriber? So let's get going.
We asked what makes a great subscriber experience. What are the components?
You guys are out there building amazing content and offerings and products. So how can you really orchestrate that experience? And when we think about it at Recurly, Right. It's it's what's the right promotion?
What's the right communication? What's the right plan pricing? How do you really orchestrate the offer and the experience. So we asked consumers because we all wanna know.
First, Subscribe said you must create, obviously, but more importantly communicate a great subscriber experience.
So be upfront about what you're offering the flexibility within your plan.
We'll see some really cool data about how people enjoy and actually respond very positively to Hey, you can cancel at any time. You can pause. You can upgrade downgrade. Right?
We'll let you, the subscriber, control the experience. And everybody loves that. Right? Subscribers love that, and they respond well, and they respond with their wallets.
So we'll talk about what that great experience means, and we'll talk about how to communicate subscribers want their loyalty to be rewarded. Right? They're they're engaging with your brand. They're voting with their wallets.
They subscriptions are long term relationships. And so what we're really starting to see is consumers say, hey, listen. What do I get for that? What do I get?
You know, more than amazing shows or amazing articles or that really cool box of the month that I love, You know, what are we getting with this offer?
So better value isn't isn't just it. Right? It doesn't create temporary gratification.
Offers promotions and and looking at some more traditional loyalty tactics, right, really helps to drive long term subscriber relationship.
And personalization, right, it encourages subscribers to start and stay. So the freedom to choose, right? So we'll hear a lot about the today, the freedom to choose my plan, the freedom to choose what part of your company or what part of your offering I want to engage with, the freedom to choose my price point.
How often I pay all of those things. Right? And presenting that simply is always the challenge, but how do you provide that level of personalization and and and sophistication within the offering. We're gonna hear how people are thinking about strategically and how they're gonna enable it technically because that's always the hard part. Right?
So let's dig into the research a little bit. Personalization offer experience.
So how do we focus on our best customers and provide that great experience. Our research showed that seventy four percent of consumers rank the ability to personalize, free trial, pause, cancel payment choices as one of the top reasons to subscribe. So it's not just about your product, right, it's how they experience your product and the level of control and personalization that they get within that. Right?
Really that subscriber friendly approach, and make sure you communicated front. Those are all benefits, and and there's real value in that to the subscriber. And you're gonna see better engagement, better acquisition, better retention, if you not only offer, but communicate well around those. And I'm I'm really looking forward to hearing from Greg.
He's gonna talk about how they enable some of that personalization from a product and technology perspective.
Flexibility and targeted offers, generations you know, subscription, consumer subscribers are no different than your everyday subscriber or your everyday consumer. Excuse me. People's needs by generation are dramatically different. So we've got some really interesting data from a generational perspective, on how people respond to different offers. We've got a little snapshot here upgrading or downgrading a subscription.
Eighty five percent of boomers love that. Less important for gen z. It's really important to understand how, some of the generational the psychographics play into response to different offers. So we've got some great data there. Always feel free to reach out if you wanna unpack more or learn more.
Loyalty opportunities to increase lifetime value.
Seventy three percent of consumers said they'd be more inclined to subscribe If they got a price cut for subscribing over a longer period of time, when I've been talking to customers and prospects, we've heard a we've been hearing a lot of people really considering the move to longer duration subscriptions.
So how do annual plans perform versus monthly plans or semiannual plans. So a lot of people are looking at that as an evolution, either in this year or next year on how they continue to drive engagement and that lifetime value.
Four and five of our respondents, so eighty percent want to be rewarded for subscription loyalty. And how do you do that? Right? Really depends on the customer really depends on the product, but some of the things that we're seeing tested in market lower lower prices discounts, upgrades.
Right? So consumers want value for their loyalty. So how do we communicate that and convey that in a subscription program? Lots of levers that you can pull, especially as a recurring customer.
Right? And I think it's really important to take the research, take consumer preference and understand how that best applies to your business.
Payments are vital for growth. You can't grow on top of a leaky bucket.
This is one of the reasons that curly was built, right, was really to to make sure that payment success was a core under pill underpinning of subscription management and billing. Right? So We're gonna hear from Prasanthil later. One of our favorites on how to optimize success. What does frictionless payments look like? How do you ensure success?
Because fifty three percent of our consumers tell us that they're likely to unsubscribe if they get a payment decline. And payment declines happen for thousands of reasons. So how do you make sure that operationally you're ensuring the best success? Done right?
The payment success strategy can drive a five to nine percent increase in total revenue for your product. So that's important. Right? Nine percent growth is pretty huge. So before we start pulling all the bells and whistles of engagement and loyalty, you have to make sure that foundation is secure and strong.
Really recurly is the best in the game at this. Persant is gonna talk about how they're approaching this at slang. So really look forward to you guys engaging in that session as well.
Consider retention at cancellation. Retention is not a good buy. It's an opportunity. Right?
So subscription We should all be thinking about cancellations as an opportunity, not just the end. We're gonna hear from Megan how they're thinking about loyalty at cinemark, some really exciting findings there. Seventy percent of consumers will reconsider cancellation if they're given a loyalty discount or incentive. Right?
So how do you keep them engaged? They were customers or consumers? Maybe there are reasons for cancellation or something that you can, you can lean into, and you can help them stay engaged. Maybe it's a price point.
Maybe it's a downgrade. Maybe it's a pause. Right? We've seen tons of success with all of those different levers.
And how do you, how do you deploy those in a, in a great way to your different cohorts and customers? Twenty six percent of consumers will stay subscribed for another four to six months if you give them, right, that offer or that that incentive. So some really great opportunities to increase that lifetime value and profitability.
The gift that keeps on giving, it is almost holiday season. Right?
So we love we love end of year. Obviously, most most of y'all are in consumer businesses. This is this is prime time for a lot of us.
Our twenty twenty three holiday survey revealed that sixty two percent of gift givers are prepared to spend up to a hundred dollars per gift subscriptions. That's great. There's market demand.
Sixty seven percent of consumers said they wanted to receive a gift subscription. It is truly the gift that keeps on giving. People love it for a lot of reasons, especially younger generations.
Why should you love it? On average, a subscriber that starts with a gift will stay on for four hundred and eighty five days long after That initial gift subscription, lifespan has been consumed. So it's a really great customer acquisition tool.
I personally spent a lot of time in that space. It's it's one of the key ways that companies can acquire new customers. They can get that referral. They can get that growth and really optimize a holiday season.
So if you guys aren't doing gift subscriptions, hurry up, and let's get them. We can get folks up and running in about ten days, with their gift subscription program. So there's still time. It's a great part of your holiday mix if you're not already thinking about it.
We're gonna hear from Dan about his trend from twenty twenty four. So looking forward to that. So wrap up. I know you guys don't wanna hear too much from me.
You wanna get on to, the rest of our panel as do I. So how do we keep profitable sustain sustainable growth, excuse me, create the the best acquisition environment Right? It's the personalization. It's what are the offers?
How are we thinking about promotion, price plan? And how are we presenting those to our different customers and customer segments? How are we creating that subscriber relationship? Right?
What is the ideal experience from a a payments perspective, from an ongoing offer perspective How are we presenting loyalty in a subscription environment? So I think there's a lot of exciting things that you can do. If you look at the data, you under and what some of those key mile milestones or inflection points are, how do we get ahead of that? Prioritize payments as a growth strategy.
So, again, we can't grow with a leaky bucket. Consumers expect frictionless payments. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes, making sure that you have a proactive Payment success strategy is key to that growth trajectory that we all, we all want and need. And ensure your flexibility and speed to market.
Right? How do you enable Personalization's hard.
Payment success is hard. Right? A frictionless billing experience is hard. How do you enable all of that, with great technology? So we'll hear from some folks about that.
So Here's the agenda for today. We've got an action pack session.
Special thanks again to all of our speakers. I am so looking forward to hearing all of this content and how everybody's looking at their unique business, to grow. And we're gonna go through growth and loyalty compliance payments, subscriber experience with a technical, lens, taxes, and then what's what's next to come. So, hopefully, we get everything from the beginning of the end and how we support it, looking forward to a great day.
And here's our speakers. Thanks, guys. Appreciate y'all.
I'm Theresa.
If you guys have any questions, want more research, questions we didn't answer, Things you wanna see or hear, please feel free to reach out. Enjoy the day. I will, take care. See you soon.
