Subscription Rundles—The Future of Subscription Business Is Here…

With the success of the subscription business model, businesses all over the world are looking for their share of revenue in the subscription economy. Some have adopted the subscription model in their simplest form and in literal means while some have experimented with it and customized it to grow in accordance with their business type, product, or market.

One such experimentation of the subscription business is rundle.

This article covers what the subscription rundles are how these rundles are attracting more opportunities for revenue while reaping the landscape for the connected future through the subscription services.

What is Rundle?

Replacing the ‘b’ of a bundle with the ‘r’ from revenue, a professor for marketing from NYU and a leading podcaster, Scott Galloway, has coined this term for the subscription bundles flourishing in the subscription market.

According to Galloway, rundle is meant to describe the power of the recurring revenue boosting the subscription businesses when their services or products are available as bundles. Furthermore, Galloway suggested the inclination of the customer preference towards the rundles with the already successful and rampant subscription bundles offered across the media, travel, SaaS, education, and health.

Also Read: Transitioning to SaaS Subscription Model—Needs, Challenges, Strategies, Monetization, Management, And All It Takes To Move To A Recurring Revenue Model

How Rundles Can be Offered As Subscription Bundles?

Rundles are available as bundles that provide businesses the opportunity to form nexus that facilitates a variety of services in one and budgeted pricing. Depends on the different types of physical or digital products, they can be categorized into various forms of bundles:

Organic Bundles

It is not a new concept of bundling. These bundles are there in our everyday lives for years. Telecom and media industries are examples. For years, our homes are using telecom bundling services to fulfill our needs for telephone or broadband internet. Wireless telecom services are also offering their subscriptions as bundles. Hundreds of thousands of users worldwide are subscribed to the media that are available as print, digital media, and TV bundles.

Stepping a step ahead, the new-age media is following in the footsteps to offer their services as rundles. Amazon Prime bundles a range of streaming services together with their shopping and delivery benefits. Some big broadcast media houses offer a subscription to their satellite channel in bundles. For instance, Disney offers Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, and others as a bundle.

Aggregator Bundles

It is the subscription services offered as a customizable bundle. These bundles empower customers what they can combine in their package and what they do not want, they can leave behind. It allows customers to personalize their own bundles rather than subscribing to multiple services of the same company, separately.

Partnership Bundles

It is the partnership of different companies or the sister concerns of the same company to offer their subscriptions as all-in-one bundles or complimentary subscription services. Today, several companies are joining hands to offer their subscriptions in combinations. Payment services are partnering up with billing SaaS or CRMs to grow their bottom line, Smart TVs are teaming up with satellite TV channels and streaming services to take advantage of their subscriptions while providing their customers the best screen experience.

Also Read: Businesses Tightening the Reins on Post-COVID Measures for Customer Retention

The Rundle Race in the B2B and B2C Landscape

The B2C landscape particularly the SaaS industry is eyeing exploring more revenue opportunities and driving subscriptions in various directions and is experimenting with subscription models.

The SaaS consumer landscape is growing at a breakneck pace due to the tech industry and IT giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Spotify, Spectrum, AT&T, and more. These giants have leaped into the subscription bundles and have started the bundle wars.

Subscription Bundles and the Tech Industry

The IT leaders have finally realized that the everyday advancement in technology and the requirement to upgrade the gadgets, applications, skills, and others have grown to the extent where upfront costing can shrink their customer base and favors the competitors.

The key players of the tech industry are greasing the wheels to provide their all flagship services in a bundle to make the connected future a reality. Recently, Apple has introduced the Apple One—a horde of the subscription plans with an assortment of apps as Apple One. The plans bundle Apple’s premium subscription services, like Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, and Apple Arcade, at a discount. Apple One bundles up to six Apple services into one easy subscription bundle, a rundle.

Likewise, earlier Google has introduced the subscription plan to its apps as a subscription bundle that includes cloud storage, backups, and promotions. More such bundles are on their way to hit the market and make these premium services available at the customer landscape, altogether.

Subscription Bundles and the Streaming Industry

Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Amazon Prime, and all the streaming subscription services providers are now grooving for the subscription bundles to add value to their business as well as for the customer experience, too.

The music streaming platform, Spotify, partnered up with Hulu as an add-on subscription to add extra value to their subscription services. While providing their customers with an add-on for on-demand TV and movies allows Spotify to retain customers for a longer period.

Similarly, the Netflix business model also streams partnerships with several smart TV brands and satellite services providers to provide their experience ultimate watching experience with hi-tech services in a bundle.

Subscription Bundles and the Media and Publishing Industry

Since ever, the print and broadcast industry rely on the subscription business. With the evolution of the new-age subscription landscape and the ascending tech industry, the print and broadcast industry has landed into the digital media subscriptions and soon started to offer their customers the combined services as subscription bundles. These subscriptions are available as a combo of print and digital media edition subscriptions or print, digital media, streaming channel, and/or TV channel subscriptions.

The cable industry is also offering its services in bundles. These bundles usually offer TV, internet, and phone services, together.

Subscription Bundles and the Telecom Industry

The Telecom industry is one of the most successful examples of subscription bundles. The industry has shown tremendous growth as they have been offering organic bundles for quite a time. They offer bundling of the landline or mobile phone services with broadband or satellite TV services.

Also Read: All You Need to Know About the Subscription-Video-On-Demand (SVOD) and Its Way to Lead the Subscription Market

How Rundles Are Revamping the Recurring Revenue Growth?

Rundles are making sense to the merchants as well as the customers. Bundling multiple subscription services is paving the way for easier, simpler, and faster living, working, traveling, dining, entertainment, learning, business, and more with some of the following features:

Discounted Pricing for Customer, Revenue Growth for Merchant

Subscription when bundled automatically reduces the pricing structure as a package. Customers do not need to subscribe to multiple subscriptions and pay them extra bucks, individually. Bundling decreases the cost and increases the efficiency of the subscriptions as rundles.

Streamlined Operations and Business Processes

The SaaS subscription rundles are streamlining the workflows for several revenue operations. The two SaaS platforms can now collaborate to provide customers the best user experience and managing their workflows from one place, only.

Cross-Platform Data Sharing for Shared Marketing and Promotion

Rundles are also a great source for the SaaS, IT, Telecom, and other subscription sectors to drive a better understanding of the market with cross-platform data sharing and develop a product, features, sales, marketing, customer service, and other customer and business strategies.

Billing-In-One-Place

Another advantage of the bundling in billing for all the subscription services in one place. Now customers may not need to keep a track of all their billing invoices from different services increasing the risks to their online payment information. Billing in one and safe place also helps merchants to automate subscription management from one platform only.

One-Window Customer Support

Different subscriptions are interconnected with each other when they are bundled. Rundles offer them the opportunity to offer one-window customer service and technical support to get unconfused, direct, and faster feedback from one direct place.

Also Read: The Shifting SaaS Industry Dynamics Are Changing the Landscape of Marketing—Keep It Up with HubSpot and SubscriptionFlow Integration

Ready to Rundle?

Get ready to roll out the plans for your rundles and gear up your subscription management for symbiotic streaming of the recurring revenue. To make your rundles successful, you need the following key strategies to penetrate the rundles in the market: