Robbie Baxter shares  a summarized chapter from her forthcoming book The Forever Transaction, which explores the obstacles and strategies of building and growing a subscription business. Any business that has been around for two centuries knows something about adapting to changing marketing conditions. Bonnier AB is a private-held Swedish media company that was founded in the 19th century, and is now using a subscription model to tackle the challenges of the 21st century media landscape.[1] The company created the C…

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 Baxter shares the latest post from her Subscription Stories series. In this episode, “Freemium, Free Trial and Free Surprises with Elena Verna of Reforge. When Does It Make Sense to Give It Away, and When Doesn’t It?” In my work with subscription and membership models, one of the books that influenced me the most was Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Free was written by Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of WIRED Magazine and published in 2009 by Hyperion….

  Robbie Kellman Baxter shares a recent post from her series Subscription Stories. This week, why customer success growth closely aligns to the rise of subscription-based businesses, and how a customer success orientation can help dramatically increase your customer lifetime value. Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, which is often called the Customer Success Company. Nick is both an expert on the emerging discipline of customer success and the leader of a SaaS company that is dedicated to a forever promise…

  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 Baxter brings the subscription-based business model to education and shares how it can benefit from the Membership Economy. The past year has been a difficult one for schools. It sometimes seems like everything’s in flux. Many families have changed strategies. Some have left traditional schools to join neighborhood pods. Others have gone from independent schools to public schools to save money. At the same time, some public school families have gone private, fleeing the chaos of the public…

  Robbie Kellman Baxter shares her latest post on key subscription-based business strategies. This week she covers the new metrics of subscription models. Selling is hard. You have to find the prospects, attract their attention, build their trust, understand their needs and goals, and then get them to sign the agreement. It’s much easier to keep the customers you have, and focus on extending and expanding that relationship. That’s why there’s been an explosion in the “Anything-as-a-service” models (XaaS)–in the…

  Robbie Kellman Baxter shares a podcast from her new series, Subscription Stories – True Tales from the Trenches. This week, she is in conversation with Brad Handler, vacation entrepreneur. They discuss his affordable business model, the integration of membership and subscription into the luxury travel service, and more.  I’m Robbie Kellman Baxter. Today’s subscription story belongs to Brad Handler. He and his brother, Brent Handler, are vacation entrepreneurs who are incorporating membership and subscription in some really novel ways….

  Robbie Kellman Baxter takes a look at the Apple ONE bundling strategy to assess the pros and cons of bundling offers and partnerships from the perspective of a subscription-based business strategy.  Rumors are flying about Apple’s emerging bundling strategy. Apparently they are getting ready to launch several tiers of new bundled subscriptions, incorporating different combos of the following: Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, iCloud storage and eventually a new Fitness offering. It makes sense. We’ve already…

  Subscription-based business models have transformed how many companies engage and retain customers. From B2B to B2C, the popularity of developing a subscription-based service has been steadily increasing and is fast becoming the new normal in terms of a sustainable business model. Robbie Kellman Baxter, leading expert in this field, has recently launched a new podcast Subscription Stories – tales from the trenches, where she interviews leaders of this revolution about how they’re using subscription pricing and membership models to…

  Robbie Kellman Baxter makes the case for subscription-based businesses and provides a few expert tips on how to take your business in that direction.  If you’ve been tasked with launching a subscription-based business at your organization, or are thinking about starting your own XXX-as-a-service or XXX-of-the-month-club, before diving in, take a step back. To ensure a solid foundation, I encourage companies to devote a few weeks (usually at least 2 and no more than 12 weeks) to fleshing out…

Robbie Kellman Baxter reviews the progression of the subscription business model, from the early days of SaaS to a future of manufacturing based on the subscription model. My first job after business school was as a product manager at an enterprise software company. I picked it because it was one of the first companies experimenting with what today we call Software-as-a-Service, and I could see that was going to be the futureIt just made so much sense. The old business model…

Robbie Kellman Baxter explains how to navigate the legal labyrinth when establishing a Saas business, and save a bundle on legal advice.   On my first day of high school, not one teacher talked about math, or history, or German, or literature, or biology. Instead, each teacher handed out and then discussed lists of rules which explained, in excruciating detail, what would happen if we were late to class, or skipped class, or didn’t turn in assignments. I had two…