Subscription Automation for Publishers: Thriving in the Digital-First Era

A broken subscription journey is the fastest path to losing readers. Publishers shouldn’t have to be concerned about failed payments, renewal friction and complex invoicing. Their only focus should be on delivering high-quality content that keeps their readers immersed.

Unfortunately, carrying out subscription-related tasks manually takes attention away from what truly matters. It demands plenty of precious time and resources, and still falls short in delivering the desired results.

In order to access subscription management that is truly hassle-free, publishers need a software with smart automation at its core. This software helps them create impactful subscriber experiences that inspire loyalty.

Publishers Need Automation to Keep Up with Modern Needs

Since the subscription-based payment model has gained a strong hold in the market, businesses are under growing pressure to evolve. They can’t afford to lag behind in the race, as staying behind means risking your customer base. Publication companies are living the same situation. They have to keep up with modern subscriber demands, and those are billing convenience and service-access speed.

To achieve that, smart automation is the only way forward. These are some industry pressures that subscription automation helps overcome:

• Declining ad revenue

Ads are now considered an outdated source of generating income. Revenue generated by displaying advertisements varies, making it highly unpredictable. Plus, ads are generally disruptive to the reader experience, making them a cause of dissatisfaction. Users today prefer ad-free services, and are even willing to pay for going ad-free. A number of platforms are monetizing this factor, YouTube Premium being the prime example.

• Competition from creator platforms

Publishers face competition from popular creator platforms that have fully switched to an automated subscription model. Take Patreon as an example. Even popular publication companies such as New York Times offer multiple subscription plans now, and manage thousands of subscribers automatically. Forward-thinking publishers need to follow this standard to keep up with customer expectations.

• Need for predictable recurring income

Perhaps the best benefit of subscription automation for publishers is that it brings them a steady revenue stream. By keeping readers loyal to their services, companies can generate long-term revenue from them. This can effectively replace ad-based revenue, allowing you to deliver a premium reading experience rather than one disrupted by ads.

• Global audience and payment complexity

When aiming for a global readership, payment complexity is the primary factor that needs to be addressed. International payments require a stack of multiple payment gateways and payment method options. They also have varying tax compliance requirements, and involve currency conversion. Without advanced software, scaling a publication company on an international level isn’t possible.

What Operating Without Automation Looks Like

In this fast-paced digital era, manual subscription operations slow down growth, and hold companies back from scaling. In the absence of automation, publishers are very much likely to run into problems like

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Manual renewals

Legacy systems don’t support the auto-renewal feature. As a result, teams have to manually renew each reader’s subscription. It is acceptable for a limited number of customers. But once customer volume reaches even a hundred, renewals start getting out of hand. Renewing all subscriptions at once isn’t possible which means customers can experience delays in content access or payment.

Expiry date tracking

Companies need to track subscription cycle, discount, trial and seasonal offer expirations. Tracking them all together can become overwhelming, leading to missed expiration dates for certain items. As a result, discounts can go on longer than intended, renewals can get missed and offers can be misused.

Failed payments

Without any mechanism for handling failed payments, losing revenue becomes easier. When a payment fails, the business cannot retry it automatically, making it harder to recover it. It can reach out to the customer manually, but customers can be unresponsive, delaying recovery even further.

Inconsistent pricing rules

Pricing inconsistency emerges when there is no centralized billing system to manage it. This can result in different prices for the same plan on different channels. For example, a customer might see one price on the website, another in an email offer, and yet another at the paywall. This looks unprofessional and can cause mistrust. And this usually takes place when the sales and marketing teams of a company aren’t on the same page with regards to pricing updates.

Reporting blind spots

Legacy systems have many blind spots when it comes to business reporting. As data is not centralized, there are multiple information silos; different departments often have access to different sets of information. Meaning, publishers don’t have true visibility into their financial processes. That makes it difficult to spot and fix revenue leakage.

SubscriptionFlow is The Automation Platform for Publishers

There’s no need to complicate subscription operations when solutions like SubscriptionFlow are available. SubscriptionFlow brings intelligent automation to your billing and lifecycle management tasks, freeing up your valuable time to focus on quality content delivery. Publishers grow their readership and revenue with features like

End-to-end subscription lifecycle management

From sign up to payment to renewal to upgrade or cancellation, your customer’s entire subscription lifecycle runs on automation. Manual intervention is not required, making it easy for companies to onboard more readers and scale worry-free. Your readers simply have to authorize recurring billing at the start, then enjoy uninterrupted content access forever.

Smart paywall and reader management

Dynamic paywall is the number one reader acquisition tool for publishers. This paywall adapts to each of your reader’s content preferences, and interaction patterns. It then creates personalized subscription offers for them, or recommends them an existing plan that suits their needs best. It also auto-adjusts its timing to pop-up when reader engagement is highest. This way it maximizes conversion rates and minimizes manual customer engagement.

Powerful dunning sequences

With SubscriptionFlow’s dunning management, publishers get unlimited attempts to retry their failed payments. They can also rely on AI agents for curating optimized dunning strategies for them, for increased recovery rates.

Revenue and churn analytics

Say goodbye to reporting blind spots. SubscriptionFlow centralizes billing data, and also serves as a platform that holds all of your integrations together. With all your data in one place, reporting accuracy increases, letting you predict revenue and spot churn patterns proactively.

Support for global currencies and tax rules

Publishers can turn their global scaling dream into reality. They can connect with a number of payment gateways compatible with different countries and currencies, and automate tax calculations on invoices. This helps them remain tax compliant no matter which country they wish to expand into, and offer their audience country-specific payment methods.

Flexible plans

There’s no creative restriction when it comes to creating plans. Companies can offer exciting bundles, add-on options, digital + printed content access, and seasonal content packages. Each plan is billed smoothly, with its activation and expiration managed proactively.

Power modern digital publishing revenue with SubscriptionFlow. Schedule a demo to get tailored automation solutions.