Understanding modern subscriber needs and expectations

All right, let’s get going here. Um, it’s quite a few of you on already. Uh, you may have seen in the chat a, a ask to introduce yourself and where you’re from. I kicked things off. But no matter where you’re coming in from, really glad to have you here with us. I’m Amy Connery, and I’m gonna be driving a lot of this presentation. I have Simon Reese with me, who’ll be introducing himself in a moment, who will also be part of the commentary here, and we’re also hoping that we can make this very interactive. Love to bring you in as part of the discussion. Um, as I go through, there’ll be opportunity to ask questions in the chat or uh in the Q&A button rather, and then we will have some time for some live Q&A at the end of this session.

So, love to make this interactive. And uh I’ll go through a little bit of housekeeping in a moment as far as some of the basic questions that people typically have with these types of webinars. But before I go further, just a little more introductions about myself. I’m Amy Connery. I am the founder of Zora’s Subscribed Institute. This is a think tank that Zora has. I founded this back in 2018, so it’s been around for quite a while. And the idea is that, look, um, you know, Zora is in a unique Position in the marketplace where uh some of the most innovative and interesting companies in the world are running their recurring revenue businesses on our platform. We’re able to produce insights and benchmarks and to uh to present those out to the broader economy and companies at large because our belief

is that if all of you are able to to run successful recurring revenue businesses, you’ll probably need a system like Zora at some point in time. And this particular presentation is gonna combine some of the data that comes from the real world systems, but really what will be featured here is survey from the Harris poll, which is a consumer-specific data, uh, survey that we’ve done in many countries and we’ll be bringing you, uh, what we’ve seen and the, the shape of the modern subscriber. And Simon and I will be discussing that. So I’m really pleased to have Simon with me in the presentation, not just because it’s a lot more fun to have a discussion versus a monologue, but also because Simon is going to be bringing a wealth of knowledge, um,

based on his experience in the industry and with consumers, and, uh, Simon, love for you to introduce yourself at this point. Great, um, thanks, Amy, and um, yeah, great to be here. Um, I’m Simon Reece. Um, I, um, run my own, um, uh, consulting company called SJ Reece Consulting. Um, and I specialize in digital products and subscriptions. Um, uh, generally focused in the publishing space, um, given my experience, but I’m also, um, working across clients, um, in hospitality, travel, and hotels, and, um, and private members’ clubs. Um, previously, I was, uh, headed up kind of product and innovation teams at Conde Nast, at The Economist, um, during kind of big,

big periods of transformation, uh, and prior to that, um, at, um, startups, the business of fashion for one, a B2B, um, publisher focused on the, um, uh, on the fashion industry, but essentially, all of, all of my experience is based around subscriptions. And how subscription subscriptions can be applied to different industries in different ways with the same kind of underlying um criteria and strategy. Perfect. All right, so I know this is gonna be a great and lively discussion, packed with lots of information, so let’s dive into it. Zor is a public company. I’m not gonna be making any forward-looking statements, but I have to put these in all of the presentations that I deliver. So, Little Housekeeping, you’re already familiar with the chat button, or at least a few of you are

saying hello, let us know where you’re joining from. There is a Q&A panel, um, which you will also see in the top right-hand corner of your slide. As I mentioned, we’ll take Q&A as we go. We’ll also have a dedicated time for Q&A towards the end of this presentation. And if you’ve got questions after the fact as well, we’ll make sure that you know how to find us. Um, two other things to note, there is a documents tab as well, so at least I see on my screen chat messages, docs and Q&A. I don’t think we’ll be doing a lot with messages here, but in the docs tab, you’ll be able to see the, the, um, some documents that we are relevant to the discussion that we’re having that you can download and, and have for afterwards, and then we will be sharing the recording and the content from this presentation. afterwards. So that is a common

question that people have with presentations like this, where there’s a lot of data, will I be getting the slides? The answer is yes, and the docs tab is where you can start to explore the additional resources. So, where is the data in this presentation coming from? Well, as I mentioned at the subscribed Institute, we’ve got a lot of first-party data on real companies, um, an anonymous aggregate basis. But what we don’t have within the institute and which we commission externally is consumer. Data and business data. And so the particular data that we’ll be talking about in today’s survey comes from surveys that we commissioned with the Harris Poll, um, world renowned surveying company. And the objective of this survey was to shed some light on consumer habits and preferences, really tied

to how they prefer purchasing for recurring products and services, like subscriptions, like streaming, retail, food and groceries. Travel, media, etc. all across the board. And also we asked some questions about AI and the monetization of AI. Um, the reason we ask these questions is a lot of the companies that we work with, we’re saying, look, our customers are asking us to be more flexible, or we need to launch a new monetization model. And we were hearing enough of it from the company side that we thought, it’s really interesting, what is actually happening in the market? How does that differ by geography? How does that differ by industry, and Also, and you’ll see some data here. How does that differ um by generation? Are there some differences between, say, Gen X versus boomers

versus millennials? So there’s a lot of data in this survey. We did publish a comprehensive report. I’m not going to be presenting all of the data from the survey here, and so you can explore it more in the docs tab later. But I’m gonna share some of the highlights and some of the trends, and then Simon and I are gonna have an opportunity to discuss it with all of you. So, one of the first findings from the, the survey is that flexibility is really important. And you go out and ask consumers how they want to be, uh, charged for recurring products and services such as subscriptions, and you give them the opportunity to select all that apply. Um, you can. See, you know, there’s some things that about half of the time I want a monthly flat fee, um, maybe a little bit less frequently.

I’m interested in usage, but it’s absolutely on the board. Um, we asked about flat fees for annual, less for recurring billing, or, uh, we asked for limited free trials, we asked about discounted. And, you know, the, the takeaway from this is that as a provider, if you’re only offering one of these, um, you’re missing an opportunity. And so having that flexibility to be able to offer more than one approach allows you to, to really go meet the more the larger number of customers where they want to be. I think there are also some differences based on the type of service that we observed in the study. Um, and so that’s important too. And there’s some difference. Is based on generations and, and individuals and regions that you need to take into account. And so being able to manage a baseline

of flexibility, um, is really important, uh, according to the survey and based on what we’re observing with the companies that we’re working with, um, Simon, to bring you into the conversation, wondering if anything in particular jumps out here and is this aligned with some of the conversations that you’re having as well with the companies you’re helping in this space? Um, yeah, I mean, I don’t, I don’t think this is surprising at all. I think this is, this is pretty expected. I’ll go, I’ll go through each one because I think it’s, uh, I think there’s, there’s a common, maybe for each of them. So, realistically, monthly and annual are the expectation. I, I think it’s the expectation from, from businesses, but also from consumers, um, to have that kind of the, the, the difference between monthly and annual generally, um, you know, monthly might be slightly higher price

point because of the flexibility associated with that, but I think that’s pretty, it’s pretty standard. Um, free trial, I think is really important, particularly for annual only products. You know, there needs to be a way to try the service before you sign up to what is potentially quite a high price point for, for, for a year. Um, Discounted or free again, discounted or free access, um. In exchange for advertisements, advertisements is the classic publishing model, right? Um, back in the day, that’s how, that’s how publishing, um, that was the, the, the only really, um, main, um, revenue model for publishers. Clearly, that’s very different these days. But a lot of broadsheets, particularly with high traffic, still, um, focus their, um, um, their services on, um, advertising their, their revenue, uh, streams.

Um The, the, the 22% of the fee, the, the fee based on usage is a really interesting one, I think, for publishing. Even though it’s the smallest of the group, 22% is pretty, pretty significant still, right? Um, and actually, in publishing paper article, it’s been, there’s been a lot of chat around it for, for, for years, really. No one’s really gone in, um, full steam on it in terms of pay per article. But the businesses that I do know that have trialed it and who are working on it actually see a really interesting. Um, opportunity where actually your one-time usage, your, you know, paper article, actually, the upsal opportunity for full, full price subscriptions is really high, um, that conversion rate. So, I think they’re all, they’re all valid. They all have

uses, but I think it’s deploying them and experimenting with them in the right way to the right segments of users. That’s, that’s a great point, and I, I like how you talked about the combinations, you know, how it’s very rare that any one of these will stand alone in a company and you know, mentioned in particular, it’s important if you have an annual program to also have um some sort of a free trial because there’s an expensive hurdle for people to overcome and you want to give them. An on-ramp, um, you know, to maybe to get in there earlier. Before I move on, there was a question in the Q&A, um, that I wanted to bring into the conversation, which had to do with whether or not you’re seeing any changes to the annual subscription model within an annual subscription model itself, especially in a media space where you have both print and digital and there’s opportunities for, say,

print only or print plus dig digital and if you’re seeing any changes there. So I, so I mean the, the print, the print a question or answer first, I think print is really um now seen as kind of a premium. Tier, as if, if you will, it’s really seen as kind of the, the higher touch, um, um, product that you can actually, uh, uh, there’s a higher price, uh, value or a higher value exchange, and there. So users are willing to pay a higher price for, uh, for print. Generally, print is, you know, annual subscription. It’s a, it’s an investment, um, and it’s something, you know, you want to keep, if it’s The Economist, or if it’s Vogue, or whatever it is, you want to keep those. Um, those magazines and kind of pride of place on your, on your mantelpiece or on your, on your, your coffee table.

Um, so I think generally with, with print, it’s more focused on annual, whereas digital is a bit more focused on monthly, I would say. That chis with me. I’ve got the economist on my kitchen table right now to try to keep my kids off their phones at the kitchen table and actually reading something substance versus TikTok videos. Um, it’s hard in today’s, in today’s world to get people to focus on the written word, but I’m big into it. So, moving on, um, another topic and, and again, um, Q and A, we are monitoring it, so if you’ve got questions, absolutely, um, put those there and we’ll bring you into the conversation or, or um if you’ve got a follow up to a question that we’ve answered and you want to get into more detail there, feel free as well. So, another thing that we asked about, and, and, um,

my apologies from the very beginning that some of these words are a little bit small, um, especially if you’re looking on a regular monitor as I am. Um, what I do want to call out, um, a couple of things in this chart, which is, you know, we wanted to understand the difference between bundling and a la carte. And is bundling unbundling, you know, that, that is an area having that flexibility to both bundle and unbundle is something that we’re hearing. Um, a lot of interest in from the vendor side. And so we really wanted to understand from consumers why they might prefer a bundled service versus a la carte. And the different color bars have to do with um the, the generational. So the all respondents is

in the far left. The next bar that’s teal is Gen Z, the millennials is gray, Gen X is the blue, and then the boomers and um seniors are the dark, uh, the dark black on the far right-hand side of the stacked, uh, the, um, nestled bar chart. So the better value we found was the primary reason for all um of the uh of the different groups, uh, as far as why they might choose to have a bundle versus an a la carte. Um, also fairly intuitive, um, and I, I think something that is driving a lot of the companies. That Zora is working with to, to think about other opportunities and we were talking in the context just now, uh, about print and digital, and

I know that some companies in the Economist in particular, because I’m a subscriber, have an option for the bundled print and digital. Um, and, you know, I think that’s, that’s fairly common, um, that I’ve seen in the media space, um, as well. Simon, I don’t know if you have any comment on that from your perspective. Uh, I mean, exactly, exactly what you said, right? Um, the, the, yeah, um, the, the print is still super important in publishing, um, but as I said before, it’s kind of the more, more premium end. Yeah. And, and I’d say the next, the thing that’s, um, that’s next to the right of the better value is ease of management. So if you think of, you know, there’s been a lot of articles in the news lately around fatigue, subscriber fatigue, you know, I

have too many subscriptions and Um, you know, I just want to make it simple or easy. I think that that theme of simplification is something that in particular with Gen Z, it’s still not as important to them as, as better value, but it was a pretty close second as compared to some of the other categories where, um, it makes it easier for me to manage, um, a service if it’s bundled versus having to manage multiple a la carte options. Also, I think it, it speaks to some of the partnerships and interesting bundles that we’ve seen. Um, an industry with multiple providers, you know, bundling services together. That’s something that certainly that, um, Uh, generation is, is familiar with. So how important is the idea of flexibility, and this is where we get into, um, a little bit more on the generational

differences. Uh, overall, about 80% said that it’s important, very important, or absolutely essential. So imagine a survey question where you have 5 different gradients of being important, and 80% of the survey said that it’s one of those top 3 reasons for, for, um, the flexibility is like really critical. The bottom two of the 5. question, uh, would be not important or it’s not important or it’s not important at all. So, these are people that said, yeah, it’s important. Um, 14% said it’s a 5, said it’s absolutely essential. And when we look at millennials in particular, that was a group that said that flexibility is either absolutely essential or very important. So think of that as a 4 on a 54 or a 5

on a 1 to 5 scale. Um, for everyone else, when you added in that 3, that’s when you Get to that 80%. But for millennials, it was really, really important, um, relative to other, um, age groups. And again, you know, if you, you, you think about the flexibility, balancing that with simplicity, balancing that with better value, people are making trade-offs with their purchase decisions, and, um, I think having that ability to flex your spending based on, you know, what you are looking for at any given period of time. It’s also constantly new services and new offers and Um, that are kind of coming people’s way, new, new services being launched, new bundles being offered, and we’re seeing that people who are most familiar with this kind of coming into

their purchase spending power are absolutely, you know, ranking flexibility as being really important. jiving with what you see as well, Simon? Yeah, I, I, I think this is, I think there’s a, there’s quite a lot to be said about this one. I think to your point around kind of, you know, the older generations, um, not being as concerned about flexibility. I mean, it, it’s a bit of an old, um, trope now, but kind of the end of ownership. Right? I, I kind of feel like that’s kind of ownership has ended already. But, uh, for those older generations, uh, owning something permanently for a long period of time is still really important. If you think about millennials and younger generations. Everything is, everything is streaming, you know, uh, whether it’s, whether it’s um a subscription to, um, publishing, or whether

it’s streaming video or music or anything. If you think to 2025 years ago, it was all CDs and, you know, phys physical papers and everything like that. So I, so I think that Um, explains that difference there, but I think there’s, I think there’s 4 really important things that we need to think about when we, when we think about this. Um, and why, um, kind of, uh, there’s, there’s, there’s a difference here around flexibilities. So. I think, kind of macroeconomic pressures. I’m sure we’ll get onto that a bit later on as well. But clearly, in COVID was a great period for subscriptions, for, for digital subscriptions, clearly like gyms and everything wasn’t great. Um, everyone was, um, bored at home. They were looking at what they could, uh, you know, uh, uh, spend their extra cash on, um, I think since then, it’s changed quite a lot, obviously, with inflation

and, and, and cost of living. I think what we’re seeing now is, is that, that flexibility is really important for, um, those consumers that may want to try something, or if it’s streaming, they want to watch one series or something and then cancel afterwards. I think what’s really important is that, that we need to embrace that and recognize that, and kind of recognize that as that’s the way it is, and we need to think about ways to enable the app, but then obviously have Engagement strategies, etc. to kind of win them back later on. Um, the second thing I think is that flexibility, and I was kind of touching on this before, is that consumers are willing to spend a bit more to have flexibility. Like they, they, they don’t want to be locked in to something long term. So there’s also an opportunity for, for, um, businesses to actually, um, think about their,

um, their price points and how you can optimize that across, across the, the, the more flexible, um, plans you have, perhaps. The third one I think is, is that, you know, consumers want flexibility. Oh, sorry, Amy, are you gonna. No, go right ahead. Keep going. Uh, uh, I think the third one is, you know, for consumers, it’s important, but it’s also kind of required now, right? There’s regulations in lots of parts of the world and certain states in the US that require online cancellations, um, as part, you know, from, from a regulatory standpoint. So, it’s something that we kind of have to do anyway. Um, and then I think the, the last point is that, Particularly at The Economist, but I think every business I’ve worked in, lapsed subscribe is a, a really important segment. Um, and the way that, um, a lapsed,

uh, subscriber, how their subscription went the first time, how flexible it was, how easy it was to cancel, how easy it was to upsell, downsell, um, interact with the product is really important if they have a better experience from that perspective, actually there’s a much higher chance that they’ll come back, um, and subscribe, um, later on. Because it’s, it’s often not. That the consumer doesn’t find value in the product. It’s often that they don’t have time or they don’t have the money, or they’re not getting the value out of it. They see the value, it’s just they don’t have the time to extract it. So that will change in 6 months or maybe a year’s time. Yeah, yeah, super helpful. And I love how you had 3 points there. Um, that’s really, really helpful. So I’ve been giving a lot of data on consumers are asking for flexibility and where your mind might go with all of this

conversation is like, OK, that’s all good and well, but what about the businesses that have to try to accommodate this desire for flexibility? What does that mean for us? Because it might be expensive, it might be, you know, hard to think of it as being feasible, it might require some change. Um, what I want to give you is some data from the Institute directly um out of systems and the data from real businesses who are offering flexibility in terms of 3 to 5 unique pricing models with significant, so more than 10% revenue contribution, um, have the best overall growth by every measure. This slide is all around, um, how usage, 22% as we saw before, um, uh, of the, uh, those polled said that, um, usage,

uh, was an important part of the, uh, of their decision making. I find this quite interesting, um, personally, because I think usage is, uh, and I mean, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s kind, it’s almost the, the opposite of subscription, right? A subscription generally is that you can have kind of, um, you pay a fee and you get the access, and certainly within that, there’s tiered examples or, um, um, uh, based on points, etc. Whereas pay as you go, at least in the UK, um, you know, pay as you use is kind of, um, yeah, the opposite. So I think it’s really interesting that, uh, consumers are, um, still including that as a, as an option for how they consider, um, digital purchase or subscriptions. Absolutely. And, and this is another eye chart. And so what I’ve done, because I, I wasn’t able to change the graphic, um,

but the team, uh, the, the interest in usage is highest in, um, a few categories that are, are pulled out here. Travel services, um, food delivery services, so groceries and food and beverage, um, AI was another interesting one, which we’ll be exploring in, uh, in subsequent slides. As well. So there’s definitely a difference based on it, uh, based on what’s being offered. I think one of the things that that tells me is that consumers, all of us, because we’re all consumers, are getting really smart about how they want to pay for different things. And I think the thing that’s interesting about usage is, it’s like the, um, idea of a free trial. It can sometimes be an on-ramp to something that maybe you commit further

to. So, and, you know, in, in, in An article example, let’s say there is a paper article offered, um, if you really like what you’re reading or the information that you’re getting and you want it more frequently, you probably want to move to a monthly or an annual subscription model if that’s offered, because it’s gonna make more sense for you economically. And, you know, you don’t have to think about the, the, how much usage am I racking up every time I read an article. So it’s different behaviorally as well. So the choices that people make are really influenced by a few factors that we found in this survey. Um, the top two have to do with wallet, right? So afford affordability and value are, um, really high, um,

in terms of, uh, what people are, you know, making their decisions off of, but specifically when it comes to subscription services, and then convenience being another factor. I’ve been looking at subscription services and, and, and. My career for a very long time, decades. And, um, I think, you know, affordability and value for money are, are always up there. Um, certainly, the, the end of ownership is something that we’ve paying attention to and being able to subscribe to something is typically a lower upfront cost than owning it. But if you’re subscribing for it over time, then you might make a decision of whether, like, oh, if I just, you know, bought the thing. It’s really important for me to have that might be a better value for money. So people

are getting smart. They’re making these trade-offs. Um, convenience is something that’s really important as well, that companies need to take, uh, take into account. There are other benefits and reasons that people are, are purchasing, um, recurring products and services that come into play, but it’s important to know what people’s top three are, at least in this point in time. All right. So, overall, um, from the, the, the, the survey abridged version, we’re, we’re really just pulling out a few of the highlights, but there’s a lot more data, um, kind of top three things that we take away from the work. One is that flexibility is really important. Um, we talk a lot about being able to evolve and adapt your monetization strategy

with where your customers are going. And having that flexibility to do that or where your customers want to go is, is really important for a business to have. Um, the second piece is around usage-based pricing being an important and powerful tool. You saw, you know, the 22%. Um, of, of people really exploring that and, uh, and it differs based on the type of service that’s being offered, um, really important part of your overall revenue mix, and then finally the, you know, the third point is cost driving decision making and um affordability and, and value and time to value are all really important in this particular market. Which is something that we can probably all empathize with. Um, is there anything else before I move on from that particular set of data,

uh, Simon that jumps out to you that you want to call out? I guess generational differences is another thing I’ll highlight, but, um, anything that you No, I think, I mean, I think maybe just the this idea about the, the value exchange, I think, I think given, given the generational differences, I think subscriptions is kind of not really seen as a separate thing anymore. It kind of, it’s integrated into everything. So that idea of, um, the value exchange, what value am I going to get out of this at the time of my life or the time, you know, this period of my life? It might not be right now, but it might be right in the next 6 months, or it’s right for me now, but it might not be in the next 6 months. And I think that’s really important. And people are way more fluid and flexible with thinking about how they manage their subscriptions and their, their share of wallets.

Excellent. Um, so just gonna, you know, what does this mean for AI? Um, if I were to ask, uh, you, and I’ve done this with live audiences, how many of you use AI on a weekly basis, probably most of us would raise our hands, whether we know it or not. We’re probably all using AI and to some degree if we’re, you know, using a search engine on a daily basis. Um, it’s out there, it’s, it’s integrated with a lot of the services that, that all of us use every day. Um, a lot of companies that we work with are thinking about introducing AI or making AI a standalone product or integrating it within their product, and they’re trying to figure out, you know, is there an opportunity for us to monetize that? And I’d say we’re at the very beginning, the subscribed Institute has quite a, um,

large body of research on this. So if you’re interested in this topic, I definitely would suggest that you check it out. Um, one of the things that we found from the survey research that we did this time around is that people, about 70%, are not willing to pay right now extra for Gen AI features, whether those be embedded or standalone. Um, you know, I think all of us probably have anecdotes. Some of us might be using chat GPT for free. Actually, there’s some really good value there. I personally pay the $20 a month because the way that I use it, I want to have some of the extra security and knowing that I can kind of train it with a body of research that I have and, um, not have that go into the overall chat GPT. So there are a few people that, um, Um,

if, if you, um, certainly that 30%, who, who, who would be paying, but right now, I think early days, there isn’t a great willingness of people to pay extra for AI. So something we’re keeping an eye on, um, for sure. It’s obviously expensive to provide AI. There’s a lot of value that can be provided. It’s evolving really quickly, um, but for those of you who are thinking about that, Uh, like I said, there’s a great body of work. I’m not sure, Simon, if you’ve got, um, companies you’re working with on this topic as well and anything coming to the surface as far as key questions or success characteristics for companies. I think, um, I mean, in publishing, I think there’s quite a lot of um fear around AI, you know, particularly with kind of using,

using articles to train some of the big models, but, um, this doesn’t surprise me that I think consumers are not willing to pay a subscription specifically for a tool. I mean, Chat GPT is a slightly different case, I think. But what really, what I see is that AI will be used kind of like, um, within everything, right? Like it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not like a, a product in and of itself. Clearly it is with GPT, but it will be integrated in lots of different things. So in publishing, for example, Um, there, there’s a way that, uh, AI can be used to, um, summarize a lot of the, the content of someone, you know, one of the main reasons why, um, uh, why consumers cancel publishing subscriptions is because they don’t have the time to read everything. Can there a way that AI be used, um, optionally, of course, to be able to, you

know, understand and consume that content in a, in a faster way. Um, Uh, I think the other thing with AI is that actually internally, it’s really important from an internal, I know we’re talking about consumers here, but to serve the consumer better, when we think about cancellation and retention strategies, um, and being flexible with that in terms of someone wants to cancel, can you upsell them, downsell them, cross-sell them, give them discounts, that kind of thing. That’s a really great use case for, um, AO models to help predict. Um, what will, what will best serve that user in that, in that particular time. Um, I think it’s really exciting. I mean, I think, I think it’s great. I think there’s a lot of fear, but I, I do think that it’s kind of, it will integrate into everything. And, and realistically, it is expensive,

but I think by adding an AI solution, for example, you know, summaries of articles or summaries of, you know, uh, uh, an addition for, uh, you know, uh, um, for example, Um, that’s an additional feature, and there’s an argument to say, actually, maybe you can increase the subscription price because it includes that feature, right? If, if there’s a more a more of a richer feature set. So I don’t think anyone’s really doing this fully yet, but I think there’s a lot of good stuff to come. That’s great. It certainly is an exciting area to watch. It’s evolving really quickly. So I’m sure we’ll be doing more sessions like this on that specifically. So, I’m going to go through a few slides with, with how, you know, how businesses are keeping up with some of these shifting consumer expectations, share a quick model, and then we’re gonna

have a, a little bit of a discussion, see if there’s any additional Q&A, um, from the audience. And then I have a question for. You, Simon, um, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll preempt it so that you have some time to kind of think about it, which is, we’ve talked a lot about flexibility being important, but what are some situations that are occurring that are making flexibility really hard um to achieve and how our companies overcoming some of those obstacles. So, Um, you know, we’ve talked about what is constantly evolving. So if we think of the evolution of, of business today, of modern business, we’ve got a mix of macro factors, technology innovation, you know, Zora talks a lot about the shift to the subscription economy, and we’ve certainly all lived through that. But now what we’re seeing is proliferation of different

types of monetization models. In this survey, we talked about annual, monthly, we talked about usage. We, but there are other things, right? There’s ramp, there’s pre-paid job, pay as you go. I mean, lots of different ways that people talk about this. There’s hybrid combinations of these things. And there’s this continued with the AI boom that we just talked about, this advancement of monetization models. And how do you make sense of it? Um, I think, think the, the, the conclusion that we come to that this survey supports, as well as the work that we do with a lot of the companies that are using our systems is that simply doing subscription alone. It typically not enough for differentiation, to guarantee growth, to maintain market share, and also to create brand loyalty, um, and, and to create loyalists,

loyalists with on-ramps and other ways of doing business with you. So, what we have here is just a model of, um, thinking about all of the different levers that you have at your disposal for how you monetize. And I think a lot of times people, um, think about the, um, packaging and pricing, so the things on the far right, a lot, like, what’s the right price point? How do we package things up together, that the revenue model itself, whether it’s a single transaction, whether it’s recurring, how that looks like, whether there’s usage, whether you have ads supported. It’s a whole other level of flexibility that, um, that companies are considering today that they may not have been thinking about all of that before. Um, certainly, there’s a lot of evolution

in pricing and packaging, um, but what I’ve been seeing, we’ve been talking about these, um, revenue models as being different ways that companies and, and people want to have relationships with you and your business. And so what they have a transactional relationship or recurring relationship, a usage relationship. So, something to think about. I’m actually in the process right now. Hopefully it will be done soon, um, writing an article, um, on this and how you kind of approach a, um, a monetization framework and the types of decisions you make and how and when and, and, um, again, there’s a lot of really interesting potentials for, um, you know, how, how decisions are being made in this flexible world. But of course, that creates, uh, some complexity on the business side. So

we’ll talk a bit about that. Um, I want to stay on this recommendation slide. This is our last slide of the presentation, and I know that we’re kind of rounding out the time that we have together. So I wanna make sure that you have all the contact information for Simon. You can find me at Zora or at the subscribed Institute, uh, where I’m, I’m also on LinkedIn, so pretty easy to find through those ways. Um, recommendation, like we’ve probably said the word flexibility about 40 times or so. I had to be flexible and my internet went down and um it came back up. So that’s great. And, uh, and those, these things happen. But yeah, having that, that ability to flex, really important, um, being able to customize how you package, so bundling, um, resilient approach, you know, thinking about retention and, and building loyalty, and,

um, we didn’t talk a lot in this presentation, but we do talk in other sessions about the importance of being able to pause a subscription as opposed to cancel a subscription, really important in today’s world, holding on to that relationship. And then of course prioritizing value and affordability. Um, so with that, Simon, um, have you had an opportunity to think about my question? Uh, yeah, and what do you think? Are there times before I do, I, I don’t know how long we’ve got left. I just, I think one thing with this, I think what’s really important is just to, is to experiment. I think that’s, I know it’s easy for us to sit here and say, oh, experiment, you know, there’s a prop roadmap and a million more things to do, but. To try to get some experimentation either through user research from your own customers and see what of the, see

which of these monetization strategies will have the highest impact and do some tests and experiment, um. Uh, yeah, that’s my only thing from this slide, uh. I think your question was around, yeah, I, I think, I think the question was around which, which industries or which products might not allow for flexibility, and I think it’s important. To recognize that, you know, extreme flexibility isn’t right for all products. So for example, one of my, one of my clients, uh, in hospitality, you pay a subscription and you get uh quite a significant discount to hotel stays and, and, and restaurants and, and that kind of thing within the group. Um, we did a whole bunch of, you know, trials in terms of a monthly flexible, um, uh, payment frequency. And what we found is that obviously, we had a, a huge

conversion increase, which is great. It’s exactly what we want in terms of your subscriber number, but that actually, a lot of those, um, uh, uh, members, those subscribers were, you know, booking a very expensive holiday. It’s saving thousands of pounds, which is great for them, but then canceling as soon as they got back, you know, 3 months later. Um, so, again, to our point before about that value exchange, you know, our consumers are really smart. They’re gonna, they’re gonna recognize how they can, how they can work the system sometimes. So it’s important to think about how that’s managed. Clearly, there are ways that you can manage that type of thing when it’s a, when it’s a high price point, um, product or when it’s a physical product. And there’s ways that you can get around that, and it’s not easy, but it’s just important to recognize that it’s not quite as easy. Just to say flexibility is right for everyone and switch it on, because you need to think about how,

um, how your, how your model will work and whether your conversion or retention balance out. I think that’s really important, um, you know, one of the things that you said that I think can be an important tool for people who are considering this is the experimentation. Um, in the history of, of pricing and packaging, there’s always been this idea of testing, right? A B testing, testing one, testing the other, usually, or in the past, it had to do with price points. I think now that we have all of these levers available to us, it’s what kind of, you know, can we test some of these different revenue models? Can we test some of these different packaging models and, and that can put us in a position where, um, we can make a change with more certainty, uh, versus You know, willy-nilly launching models. I will say that while the data shows

us that companies that have between 3 to 5 models with greater than 10% of their revenue grow fastest, on the converse, um, one of the things that we’ve also seen from our data is that companies that have a proliferation of models with less than 10% of revenue. So think the long tail of pricing and packaging. So they’re not managing that. They tend to grow. More slowly, it becomes a drag on their business. And so finding that sweet spot between, you want to have that flexibility, but you don’t want to have that at the expense of having a well, um, structured and articulated strategy and model, um, that is generating, uh, a significant greater than 10% of revenue in the key segments, um, and customer types that you are,

um, going after. So balance is probably something that should be on this slide as well as uh as far as recommendations. All right, so that said, um, I, I don’t see any other questions in the tab and uh this has been a great conversation, Simon, thank you so much for Uh, for lending your expertise here as well. Thank you to everyone who has joined. Apologize again for my internet, uh, situation, but thankfully it’s back on and it probably won’t go out for months now until I do another webinar and, you know, decides to happen again. Um, but thank you for bearing with me there, and thank you for staying on, and look forward to continuing the conversation in whatever way makes the most sense for you and your business. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Amy, thanks everyone.