Written by : Rashmi Singh
Just a few years back when anyone thought of starting a new publication business, the only business model that came to their mind was the advertisement-based model. Thankfully, this has changed.
Now, when most people think of starting a newspaper or magazine publication, they immediately think of a subscription-based model. So, what caused this change?
Earlier, to run their business on the subscription model, publishers needed pricey software and dedicated full-time developers to handle user-side problems. It was easier for publishers to work with advertisers than asking their audience to pay for the content. This changed with the evolution of subscription management tools.
Today’s subscription management tools are user-friendly, budget-friendly, and come with a lot of useful features. Digital publishers are now comfortable using these tools knowing that the subscription management tool will not let subscriptions seep out of their system.
The work of a newspaper subscription management tool starts from the moment a reader signs up and ends when the user cancels the subscription. What includes in between these two points is a number of processes like releasing invoices, processing a single or recurring payment, processing refunds, handling downgrade or upgrade of plans, and managing user communication.
There are various newspaper and magazine subscription management tools out there that offer similar services. What separates a great tool from a mediocre one is the following:
Flexibility of creating plans
There are many subscription models for publishers. The most common ones are metered, freemium, and hard-wall. Each of them has a different role for every publisher. So, it is essential that when you get subscription management software, it gives you the flexibility to choose or change subscription models without any hassle.
Streamlining the billing
Handling the finance and account side is as important as delivering content. If you do not choose the right subscription management tool, your finance team will have a hard time releasing the bills to your customers every month. To prevent that, your subscription management tool must come with in-built integrations with accounting and tax solutions.
Creating a seamless payment experience
E-commerce businesses handled online payments way before digital publishers did. Thanks to their business insights, we now know that if the customers do not like the payment experience, they will stop shopping right away and leave the product in the cart. In short, you lose potential revenue if you don’t deliver a seamless payment experience.
Thus, a few must-have features of a subscription management tool include supporting several payment gateways, having pre-built checkout pages, and customizability of the checkout pages.
Reducing Involuntary Churn
Publishers lose a lot of money on the table because of involuntary churn. And a surprising fact about churn is that more than 50% of involuntary churn happens because of failed transactions. To fight that, your subscription management tool must include features such as account updater functionality, dunning, and dynamic retries.
Insightful Subscription Analytics
What’s the average lifetime value of your paying user? And taking that into consideration, is it worth it to acquire new users through paid ads? The right newspaper and magazine subscription management platform can give you similar insightful subscription analytics that can steer your business in the right direction.
It is true that the content needs to be high-quality for users to pay for it. But content alone is not enough to survive and thrive on a subscription model. You also need an intelligent subscription management platform that taps into the hidden strength of subscriptions.
Accesstype is a robust content monetization platform offered by Quintype that helps news and magazine publishers with every step of subscription management. It offers pre-built features such as metered access, intuitive reporting and flexible integrations, and much more. Click here to know more about Accesstype.