uk-netmarketing Archive (2011-2015)

Hi Caroline,



We deal with a lot of development for subscription sites and services,
largely BTB – so often come up against this.  Premium content marketing and
trial & subs conversion is something I/we do a lot of.



B2B premium publishers often offer a trial subscription (often free),
there are different schools of thought on whether you take the card details
before the trial period,  or convert the user during the trial period,
acquiring payment data at the time.



I would advocate not taking the card details, in that it drives up
conversion,  My argument goes that by  tracking increased trialist activity
(log in’s, downloads, reads,  searches, referrals to colleagues who access
on the same known IP range etc), you can feed that data into CRM, pass the
business intelligence to the sales and marketing bods (ideally systems
integrated) and focus on the ‘active’ trialists, for optimised subscription
conversion.   ‘Active’ trialists can also be targeted with (more expensive)
marketing activity, to help optimise marketing spend.  You can also use
systems like Mailchimp to setup conditional ‘drip’ direct mail campaigns
during the trial period to automate direct marketing efforts and increase
conversion.



Indeed, email triggers can be setup for subscription renewal conversion
too,  www.Mailchimp.com  or www.Mandrill.com  worth a look for that (also
saw www.Pardot.com  demoed this morning and it was impressive for the
‘drip’ campaign management, with conditional campaign tools & workflow  &
marketing campaign management in general, hooks straight into Salesforce
too, if that is a tool you use)



Free trails are open to abuse if you don’t stop repeat trials using a
combination of cookie / email address / IP to police serial trial access.



That said I really like your idea of a month only super premium
subscription,  there are always users who have taken a free trail but want
access to content for a short time / particular single reason.  I am not
sure they are one in the same as those that will take a year’s
subscription, as you say,  so perhaps an additional subscription type after
trial?



On the subject of cancelling subs why not put the onus on the customer to
do that?  For example Worldpay ‘futurepay’ agreements can be cancelled by
the customer, just by following the payment request email links (or you can
bake that into the account on site, with some development effort).



HTH



Angus





--

Angus Phillipson

Byte9 <http://www.thebyte9.com/>



angus at thebyte9.com**

+44 (0) 771 043 8972

+44 (0) 0208 780 6350







*From:* uk-netmarketing-bounces at mm.chinwag.com [mailto:
uk-netmarketing-bounces at mm.chinwag.com] *On Behalf Of *Caroline Bottomley
*Sent:* 16 January 2013 10:29
*To:* uk-netmarketing
*Subject:* [uk-netmarketing] Renewing subscriptions



hello Chinwaggers,



We have renewing subscriptions on our site, eg £12.99 a month,
£41.9something for 6 months (=£ 6.99 per month).

We spend a fair amount of time, maybe once or twice a week, refunding
customers who've realised the subscriptions are renewing and who want a
refund.

It's bad customer care and it takes up time.

So we've made it MUCH CLEARER when people sign up that they're renewing
subscriptions, plus we're about to introduce email reminders before their
renewal sub is taken from their bank account.



Clearly renewing subs are the way to go as they sweep up all those lovely
customers who are on the fence, ie they don't mind the sub going out of
their bank account, even if they're not using the site that much.



However, to further serve people who get very annoyed by renewing
subscriptions and who only want a peek at Radar, I'm thinking of offering a
one month only subscription - but priced much higher, at £25.



Any sage advice from people who've been here before or who have opinions
about these things?



many thanks for any help, as ever



Caroline





Caroline Bottomley

@radarmusicvideos <https://twitter.com/radarmusicvideo>

facebook <http://www.facebook.com/RadarMusicVideos>

RadarMusicVideos <http://www.radarmusicvideos.com/home>



Radar:

- Judges Silver Lovie Award in Music 2012

- People's Lovie in Music 2012 (thank you)

Ellis Bahl's Radar-made video:

- Best Alternative Video, UKMVAs

- Best 12 Videos of 2012, Vimeo
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.chinwag.com/pipermail/uk-netmarketing/attachments/20130116/c7e3dd53/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 15919 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mm.chinwag.com/pipermail/uk-netmarketing/attachments/20130116/c7e3dd53/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 11958 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mm.chinwag.com/pipermail/uk-netmarketing/attachments/20130116/c7e3dd53/attachment.jpg>