Robbie Kellman Baxter shares an article on a surprising subscription offered by BMW. BMW Group recently announced a subscription to heated seats subscriptions. The offering is available in several markets, including the UK, Germany, New Zealand, and South Africa although not the US, yet. According to the Verge, other subscription offerings on offer will include Driving Assistant ($35/month), Map Updates ($79/month) and High Beam Assistant ($10/month). Automotive manufacturers are diving into the world of recurring revenue. A few examples include…

Robbie Kellman Baxter explains what went wrong with a subscription company that found shares falling.  Peloton’s stock is down, after quite a ride. Peloton (PTON) is widely expected to deliver a year-over-year decline in earnings even though revenues are up, for the quarter ended December 2021. And the stock has been in a steady decline for the past six months, with a 12 month drop in share price from a high of $157.83 in Feb of 2021 to today’s price…

Robbie Kellman Baxter provides an interview with Michael Brito, who managed The Economist’s group subscription business.  Much of the conversation around news media subscriptions has been about going direct to consumer. But sometimes these strategies include a little B2B or even B2B2C by partnering with businesses to see organizations can expand their reach and build deeper, more engaged relationships by selling in bulk to buyers who then distribute access to their own employees, customers, families or members. In this kind…

Robbie Kellman Baxter asks and answers what features should be free and what should be paid in a freemium subscription? I get asked all the time what features should be freemium (aka free forever) and what features should go behind the paywall. The answer is, of course, it depends. But here are some useful frameworks. Does your business model depend on VIRAL MARKETING? If your “free” subscribers are a marketing channel for attracting paid subscribers, you might want to invest…

In this article, Robbie Baxter interviews Alli Harper,  founder and owner of OurShelves, on how an e-commerce subscription can play a role in social impact. Most subscription entrepreneurs initially are attracted to the model for its predictable recurring revenue, but there are other benefits to having an ongoing relationship with members. Our guest, Alli Harper, works at the intersection of subscription eCommerce and social impact. Her subscription business is an intentional tactic to advance change in the picture book industry…

In the latest Subscription Stories podcast from Robbie Baxter, she identifies how  YPO gets CEOs to engage in membership community, even though they’re really busy. Scott Mordell was the CEO of the Young Presidents’ Organization or YPO from 2011 through 2020. Prior to that, he was a YPO member as the result of leadership roles at Chamberlain Group, HeathCo LLC, Duchossois Industries and Arlington International Racecourse. The YPO Community includes more than 29,000 members in more than 140 countries. Membership…

  Robbie Baxter shares a roundup of key insights from this year’s D2C (direct to consumer) summit. A perk of my work as a speaker is that I get to go to a lot of conferences. It’s one of my favorite ways to learn, and to build my community. This month, I’m taking it a step further, and co-creating a new conference, along with my friends at FIPP, the global media association based in the UK. Definitely more work, but…

  Robbie Baxter shares the latest interview from Subscription Stories. In this article, she interviews Matt Fielder of Vinyl Me on beginning his business and scaling up. What comes next, once you’ve launched your subscription model, you’ve proven that there are people who wanted what you were offering and that those people would continue to subscribe after joining? You’re holding everything together with paper clips and duct tape, maybe with your kitchen table as global headquarters now it’s time to…

  For all those thinking about starting a subscription-based business, or adding a subscription service to a business, Robbie Kellman Baxter shares an article that identifies five things you shouldn’t do and one you should.  Netflix is a true leader of the Membership Economy. Back in 2002 when I first started working with them, I fell in love with their business model. I loved their focus on doing one thing really well, their Forever Promise (FP). I describe that FP…

  Robbie Baxter interviews Scott Mordell the CEO of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO). They discuss the YPO processes and membership.   “Scott Mordell was CEO of the Young Presidents Organization, or YPO, from 2011 through 2020. What is fascinating about YPO is how intensely engaged their community is. Members will move mountains to make sure they can attend their regular meetings, despite the fact that they’re among the busiest people in the world. Many of them even qualify as…

  Robbie Kellman Baxter shares valuable advice for product managers who are ramping up operations to prepare for new subscribers to their subscription-based business. So you’ve launched your subscription app, and you have some subscribers. You’ve only scratched the surface. Now the real work begins. The key to subscription models is that the benefits keep improving to support the subscriber’s ongoing goal. And at the same time as you’re optimizing for your existing subscribers, you have to continue to stay…

  Charity: water’s MZ Goodman joins Robbie Kellman Baxter to share how she is applying subscription model best practices to a nonprofit. They discuss how MZ leverages content marketing and digital community strategies developed in her work at The New York Times to build a donation-based subscription model, how they’ve leveraged a single 20-minute video to raise millions, and how to think about a Forever Promise in the context of engaging donors. Welcome to the show. It’s your host, Robbie…

  As we begin to consider the far-reaching and long-lasting impacts of the current pandemic, Robbie Kellman Baxter thinks ahead and shares her thoughts on the future of live gatherings and how that will affect a wide range of institutions, organizations, and individuals. A few weeks ago, Facebook announced they’re canceling any large physical events with 50 or more people through June 2021. (Some they’ll hold as virtual events.) Microsoft announced something similar. Many organizations are allowing no business travel…

  Robbie Kellman Baxter identifies what ‘freemium really means’, how it can be used as a tactic, and the role of freemium in both ordinary and extraordinary times.  Lots of organizations, particularly subscription businesses, are changing their rules about what is free and what is paid, in response to the coronavirus. The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News are a few of the many publishers that have removed the paywall in front of coronavirus-related content. In other words,…

  Robbie Kellman Baxter explains what a subscription business can do to mitigate customer loss and generate customer gain through attraction and retention strategies. ‘Millennials aren’t joiners.’ ‘Millennials don’t pay for news.’ ‘Our customers love us, but the average age is going up. It seems like millennials just aren’t interested.’ These are statements I hear all the time from membership organizations that have been around for a few decades or more: professional associations and trade groups, religious institutions, newspapers, gyms,…

  Robbie Kellman Baxter explains why a free trial is not always the best tactic and identifies three  reasons a subscription business isn’t attracting new members. Recently, a CEO of a major professional association asked me what I thought of a 30 day free trial for new members. He worried that potential members would sign up for the free trial, binge the value in that free period and then cancel without paying. But his board was concerned that not enough…