Thread on subscriptions

[ Insight] If you pay for a subscription and still need to put in an effort to make the subscription worth the money, they become a hard sell.

Let’s look at some examples – for and against.

A gym subscription requires you to pay and then get into a routine of showing up and putting in the effort. A hard sell.

The more you don’t show up, the worse you feel about the money you paid.

An Audible or a podcast subscription that requires you to actively spend the time to listen and absorb. This could be a hard sell depending on your level of enjoyment.

But the less you’re able to use them, the worse you feel.

A news publication subscription requires you to dive deep into OpEds, deep journalism & their unique reporting for you to justify the price.

Moreover, you might also feel they’re abetting or altering your biases – both those feelings make you less likely to consider a renewal.

Music & entertainment work a little differently. You derive pleasure and can even use them in the background.

You don’t need to be actively engrossed in these services at all times for the subscriptions to justify their value to you – a passive consumption is more than enough.

Same with sports subscriptions. These don’t make you think much at the time of renewal because the pleasure is derived without much effort.

Their seasonality and time-concentrated format also helps with a focused consumption leading to higher contentment from the user.

Another great example is Amazon Prime – it reinforces its benefits every time you order by giving you the fastest delivery time. There’s also a pool of high quality entertainment to go with it.

Both these benefits delivered without much effort on your part – an easy renewal.

Takeaway pointers for your subscription product:

- Context of the usage (living room, in the car)
- Frequency of engagement (hourly, daily, weekly)
- Metric the user will weigh against the subscription fee at the time of renewal (did I watch enough?, did I learn enough?)