Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches

The Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) Market is expected to Surpass $190 Billion by 2026, according to Market Research Future. That’s a compound annual growth rate,of of 55.8%. Acer is at the forefront of that wave, and today’s guest, Mailin Jappé, launched and now runs Acer’s DaaS business for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). It’s hard enough to launch a subscription startup on your own—doing it inside a large manufacturer adds a whole level of complexity.

In today’s conversation, Mailin shares the challenges she faced in launching the business, how she’s transformed the culture to one of access, not ownership, and the right kind of team to support subscription innovation in manufacturing.

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In the world of subscriptions, the role of a marketer is rapidly evolving. It’s not enough to acquire subscribers—you have to acquire the right subscribers. But how do you market with an eye toward retention? Today’s guest, Anne Janzer, is the author of Subscription Marketing, now in its third edition. In this episode, we focus on the right mindset for marketers and how to establish the right voice to connect with your subscribers. Anne also shares some clever ways to get the biggest return on your marketing spend, as well as who and how to hire for your subscription marketing team.

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When I first started talking about the Membership Economy, there just weren’t that many academics or researchers interested in studying the power of customer retention.  That’s why I’m really happy to see some of the best minds in finance, strategy and marketing today are thinking about how to build, and measure durable relationships between organizations and the people they serve. Today’s guest, Eva Ascarza, is the Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Her primary research subject is customer management (with special attention to the problem of customer retention). That’s good news for all of us building subscription businesses. In today’s discussion, we talk about the right metrics to measure and improve customer retention, how to use pattern recognition to predict which customers will be most valuable, and why cohort-based analysis is so important.

Based in Germany, and a global leader in digital language learning, 16-year-old Babbel was part of the early wave of online subscriptions. When they launched, subscription pricing was unusual and controversial. The early team even had to develop their own Subscription Engine to support the business. My guest today, Julie Hansen, has led the company’s expansion to North America, as well as their evolving overall business strategy. In our conversation, we discuss the differences between European and US-Based Subscription best practices; how to make the case for investing in features that drive engagement, rather than just acquisition; and how a first mover can stay nimble even as the competitive landscape grows more crowded.

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Before you start building your subscription product, make sure you really, really understand the ongoing problem you are solving. So says product leader Tom Willerer. Tom, my guest today, has worked with some of Silicon Valley’s most renowned companies, like Netflix, Opendoor and Coursera. He’s also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Reforge and a Venture Advisor at VC firm NEA. Today we’re talking about how to define your forever problem so you can build a forever transaction. In our discussion, we share the secrets to building subscription products, how to build conviction you’re on the right path and when to commit to scale.

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In the Membership Economy, customer-centricity is critical in building lasting relationships and optimizing lifetime value. As a result, the Chief Customer Officer, or CCO, is increasingly present at the leadership table. Today’s guest, Rod Cherkas, founder of HelloCCO, literally wrote the book on the CCO role. It’s called The Chief Customer Officer Playbook: 8 Strategies that will Accelerate your Career and Win you a Seat at the Executive Table and it just came out in Spring of 2023. The book is based on Rod’s own experience as a Post-Sale leader at companies including Intuit, RingCentral, Marketo and Gainsight. In today’s conversation, we talk about key metrics for customer success, the changing role of CCO, and what most companies get wrong when trying to build forever transactions with their customers.

I’m fascinated by the recent explosion of healthcare subscription companies.  If you’re a regular listener of subscription stories, you probably knew that, as recent guests have included Midi Health’s Joanna Strober, Whoop’s Ben Foster and Matthew Mengerink of Thirty Madison.  We’ve even explored telehealth for PETs on the show with Fuzzy’s Zubin Bhettay.  Today’s guest Dan Zavorotny, Co-Founder and COO of Nutrisense, is focused on helping subscribers optimize metabolic health through a solution that combines hardware, software, and professional advice.

In our conversation, Dan shares the story of how he found product market fit, the challenge of building retention around a “checkup-type offering” and how to manage a business when  third parties (in this case hardware manufacturers) provide a significant part of your prop.

I have interviewed today’s guest many times, and it’s always a wild ride. Mighty Networks founder and CEO Gina Bianchini is so smart, passionate and insightful.  She was my finale guest for Season 1 of the Subscription Stories podcast, back in 2020. That episode holds the record for most popular Subscription Stories show of all time.  We were all stuck at home, afraid to go out in person, and were looking for ways to connect, authentically with others.  Mighty Networks was established to make it easy for people to build engaged communities around their passion and purpose. Nearly 3 years later, people are back to connecting in person—but Mighty Networks continues to grow.  Why? Gina would say it’s because people crave meaning and connection through community.  

I invited her back to the show to talk about her new WSJ bestselling book, Purpose: Design a Community and Change Your Life. In our wide-ranging conversation, we also discuss how to implement best practices in launching, scaling and hosting a vibrant online community, and how someone can actually discover their purpose, even if they’re feeling stuck. Welcome to the show Gina!

Hey it’s Robbie Kellman Baxter, host of the Subscription Stories podcast. Season 5 is launching soon, but while you wait, catch up on our most recent season. Season 4 has some of our listener’s favorite episodes ever.

We opened the season with two thought leaders, Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractible, and Tiffani Bova, Salesforce Global Evangelist. If you’re interested in the technical side of building forever transactions, you’ll love hearing from, Piano’s Travor Kaufman and Optimized Payment’s Paul Larsen, experts in operationalizing online subscriptions and billing. And there were some great practitioners with years of “in the trenches” experience leading Membership Economy businesses—LinkedIn Learning’s Jill Raines, Fuzzy’s Zubin Bhettay, and Product Leader Caitlin Roman, most recently of The Athletic.

If you haven’t listened to those episodes—I encourage you to check them out. And if you like them, please be sure to rate and review them on Apple iTunes or Apple Podcasts—that helps me, and makes it easier for others to find the podcast.

This spring, I’m hard at work to make sure that Season 5 is the best and most practical season of Subscription Stories so far. You’ll hear from Mighty Network’s Gina Bianchini, our most popular guest ever returning to talk about her new book, Purpose, as well as Rod Cherkas of Hello CCO sharing the Chief Customer Officer’s Playbook, and Dan Zavorotny, founder of Nutrisense, sharing a new model for metabolic health.

And that’s just the beginning. To make sure you don’t miss a thing, Follow Subscription Stories wherever you get your podcasts—just tap on the Follow or Subscribe button.

Thanks for your support, and thanks for listening to Subscription Stories.

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Everyone’s talking about “product-led growth” in the subscription world right now. Companies are seeing the connection between the way the product is designed and how effective the company is at acquiring, engaging and retaining customers—and even driving referrals.

To do product-led growth well, product managers need to think like business leaders, as well as thinking like product builders.

It isn’t easy and not everyone has the right skills. My guest today, Caitlin Roman, has led product teams at three great subscription-first organizations, LinkedIn, Medium and most recently The Athletic, which was acquired in January of 2022 by the New York Times, for about $550Million.

I’m excited to talk to her, because she has developed pattern recognition about what it takes to build great products that actually help grow the business.

In today’s conversation, Caitlin and I talk about best practices learned at LinkedIn, Medium and The Athletic, the skills needed to drive product-led growth, and how to partner with data analytics teams to make better, faster decisions.

Excerpt:

"If you have real value behind your content, you can confidently charge for it." Caitlin Roman has led product teams at LinkedIn, Medium, and most recently, The Athletic. She sits down with Robbie to share the best practices she has learned working in these companies, putting product development into the spotlight to generate tangible business growth. She also talks about building an effective product team that can work alongside the data analytics team to make better and quicker decisions. 

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