In a world of digital dross, content reigns supreme

What magazines or newspapers do you read each week, what social media do you belong to, and what TV channels do you watch?

That was a question posed to me by the Judge in a recent Jury selection process. As I was responding, the defense attorney glancing at me, leaned into his client and whispered something.

I will never know if it was “I’m going to preemptory this idiot out” or “this guy looks sympathetic” – as empanelment was finalized just before I was called back into court. If history stays constant, I’ll be back under selection again in 2024.

Being confronted so directly with such revealing questions got me rethinking about how I actually spend my time, and what media I regularly consume. Which is a topic that intersects very neatly with a new paper released this week by the IBM Institute for Business Value.

Specifically – an Expert Insight on the topic of subscription models. The paper starts with a little bit of the history, a re-exploration of subscription model value, ending with a prescriptive set of actions around what your organization might do to adopt new subscription models if you have not done so already. Or how you might expand subscription models further.

The authors - Sara Carlson, Jean-Michel Fally, Stefano Fanfarillo and Eileen Kelley cite compelling data on subscription model’s value. According to Zuora, subscription business revenue has grown 337% over the past decade. And according to 360iResearch, global subscription billing services markets are expected to double in size between 2020 by 2026 to $12.5 billion.

But the new paper also reports that coming out of the worst of the pandemic, many consumers have become tired of a continuous flow of subscription-related fees. And some are starting to cut subscriptions altogether – and the customer relationships they represent – sometime savagely. As witnessed by the recent stock price retreat of Netflix and others.

Never-the-less, the authors firmly believe that subscription models continue to have significant upside potential. Especially in areas where subscription is either immature or yet to touch.

They conclude that customers fundamentally seek three things: trust, relevance, and convenience. And they outline three overarching types of subscription models organizations not already in the space can pursue within a relationship-first context.

Curation: providing highly personalized products, services, and experiences based on customer preferences

Access: offering special access to members-only items or offering long-term service contracts that could include products, maintenance bundles, and cloud services

Replenishment: replacing the same products with automated renewal

They then go deeper into specific aspects of subscription including proposed metrics, employment of AI and associated technologies, and of course – security. Offering a prescriptive set of recommendations – or actions – that organizations can take to initiate, refine and execute what they hope will become highly effective and successful subscription models and frameworks.

The full study is available here:

Happy reading.