Building a subscription based B2B business and the value infinity loop
Building a subscription based B2B business and the value infinity loop
Lauren MoloneyLOVER OF SUBS
● General Manager of SMB Growth and Customer Commercialisation at News Corp Australia.
● Founding member of News Corp’s digital marketing division, News Xtend.
● News Xtend is a subscription business experiencing up to 80% growth each year.
● Have spent time in New York, San Fran and Tel Aviv studying successful subscription businesses.
Why you need to shift your B2B business from asset transfer mindset to long term relationship mindset.
Why you should move the finish line: move your goals from customer acquisition to number of customers who are still with you in month 6, 12, 36 and so on.
How?Hot Tip #1: Provide value that will make users pay and stayHot Tip #2: Make it stickyHot Tip #3: Surprise and delight in moments of truthHot Tip #4: Turn the churn
Building a subscription business overview
Old School New School
Old Business Model
Customers
Channels
New Business Model
Services
Subscriber
Experience
Channels
This model involves exchanging money for a product or service at a given point in time.
How you grow your business with asset transfer mindset:
● Sell more, more frequently● Increase price● Decrease cost to serve
Old SchoolASSET TRANSFER MINDSET
New SchoolLONG TERM RELATIONSHIP MINDSET
The customer and the business have an ongoing relationship where money is continually exchanged for ongoing value.
How you grow your business with long term relationship mindset:
● Acquire more customers● Increase the value of those customers● Hold onto those customers longer
Subscriber
Quote Collect
Invoice Provision
OrderRecognise
Subscribe
Suspend
Upgrade
Downgrade
Renew
Resume
Challenges:
● What customers deemed to be valuable was unclear due to lack of data.
● Why businesses bought from us was unclear.
● Asset transfer mindset = No recurring revenue =short term business model
How we used to think about customers
B2B : Advertising was
sold as a campaign
B2C : Readers would
buy a daily edition of the newspaper
Challenges
B2CConsumers have a relationship with the brand
Channel agnostic in their consumptionEditorial & advertising subscriptions
B2BMarketing solutions based subscriptions
Owned and paid assets, goal/results orientated, channel agnostic, long term relationship to help build their business
New School
What does a subscription mean for customers?
Solutions to meet more of their needs more of
the time.
Grow and change over timePersonalised value
What does a subscription mean for a business?
Subscription sales are like snowballs, they grow with momentum
Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 Period 4 Period 5 Period 6 Period 7
New customer/revenue
Lost customer/revenue
Customer base/recurring revenue
Maybe No way
MaybeYES, PLEASE
It’s all about Effort vs Impact
HighEffort
LowEffort
High Impact
LowImpact
Ok we know why...
Now how?
Hot tip #1:
Provide value that will make users pay and stay
The value infinity loop
BuyMarket & Sell
OwnSupport & Service
Purchase Receive
Use
Recommend MaintainNeed
Research
Select
4 5
6
781
2
3
“Be relevant”
“Engage me”
“Be transparent”
“Make it easy”
“Minimise my risk”
“Earn my trust”
“Know my history”
“Give me more value”
“Be consistent”
“Reward me”
“Deliver on my needs”
Meet more customer needs
more of the time.
Data is…
CRUCIAL IN KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMERS
Data will enable you to know about your customers and therefore what problem you can solve for them. This is beneficial
to the consumer and the business.
Technology…
MAKES EXECUTING EASY
Make it easy to reach customers in any location.Enable auto renewal and billing.
Means easier personalisation and value add.Showcase the results or value to customers
at any point in time.
A B2C example
Subscribers
Video Content
Membership fees
30 day free trial
Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4
Netflix makes no money
until month 2
How does netflix ensure that customers don’t cancel after their free trial? Once netflix has data on what content you like they are pretty good at keeping you subscribed.
But how do they ensure you stay subscribed after the 30 day free trial period?
Netflix implemented first time user discovery questionnaire in order to get an idea really quickly the type of content the new subscriber likes.
Personalisation = value & stickiness
What can you do today to create more value for your customers?
Map out your customer touchpoints
How can you use that to provide value at every touch point?
What data do you have? Where can you learn about what they want?
Hot tip #2:
Make it sticky
Marketing
Business Management
High
Low
Business Integration
Frequency Of ROI
Evaluation
Marketing/Advertising solutions Like Search, Programmatic, Live Chat,
remarketing & Social
Operational marketing solutions Like quoting/booking tools, lead
management & marketing automation
Integrated business solutions Like POS, loyalty, stock management
and cash flow systems
End Customer Business
AwarenessResearch
AcquisitionService Request
RetentionService Delivery
Put your hand up if...
What makes a business offering sticky?
Make it frictionless to buy and use
Ensure your product and service set is part of your customers everyday life
Make it easy to stay (and harder to leave)
What apple is really saying...
Hot tip #3:
Surprise & delight in the moments of truth
Subscription customer & brand journey
ResearchDiscovery
Customer Engagement
Moments of Truth
Need
Customer Journey
Customer Touch-points
Data/Customer Feedback
Brand Value-adds
What we do
Surprise gifting
1
Who is working on your campaign
document
LIVE 32 4
LIVE results dashboard
Exclusive content through customer
portalNPS check-in Surprise gifting
Loyalty and rewards program initiated
Purpose built resources and template provided that will
help them with other areas of their business
5
Monthly results & review and strategy session
Excellent customer service (NPS of +58)Award winning campaigns & results
Actually… just surprise and delight them all the time
1LIVE 32 4 5
Hot tip #4:
Turn the churn
Churn: The point at which consumers decide the amount they're paying exceeds the value of the service and opt out.
Cancellations by TenureDuration Period (Months)
How do you intercept and re-engage your customer in those moments
before they churn?
Engaging to retain is our strategy to reduce churn.
Hot Tip #1: Provide value that will make users pay and stay
Hot Tip #2: Make it sticky
Hot Tip #3: Surprise and delight in moments of truth
Hot Tip #4: Turn the churn
Thank you.