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October 15, 2020 | Authored by: Jesus Luzardo

Bundling towards growth in 2021

Here’s the story. You launched a subscription-based business—and it’s delivering results. An eager subscriber base is enjoying your service. Your recurring revenue looks like it’s heading in the right direction. Nevertheless, it feels like a new competitor is launching every month or even every week. Customer acquisition costs are rising, which is especially worrisome in the face of increasing churn. What this picture illustrates is, in short, slowing growth and further reflects the difficulty of reaching potential customers beyond your core audience. Staying ahead of the competition requires that you find new cost-efficient ways to attract customers. In addition, it further highlights the need to build loyalty fast so subscribers stay with your service. The way the subscription industry is moving is different than many may have imagined. But that does not mean that we need to give up, that growth is not on the horizon — and, that 2021 is not the year for this growth. To cut to the chase, I strongly believe that the way to accelerate growth lies in bundling. More than that, accelerating growth is in next-generation subscription models.

This past year has been tough. It has been confusing. It has been a game-changer. COVID-19 has helped foster the evolution of different subscription models that seek to boost customer engagement. Did you know that 63% of e-commerce now flows through marketplaces? Bundling with aggregators is taking shape as the marketplace approach for subscriptions. At Vindicia, we have been working day and night to ensure that growth occurs for our customer base, even during these challenging times. And, this new approach, entitled MarketONE, makes it simpler to embrace this next phase ahead.

Before we jump to the detailed solutions to implement into 2021 and beyond, the first stop on the road to growth is realizing that there are serious obstacles to subscription success — and, that you’re not alone along this journey. To understand the perceived roadblocks, and be on the same page, let’s first outline the ones that are frequently witnessed across this realm of operation and that helped guide us to the creation of the above-mentioned driver for innovation and success. In this context, after a surge of early subscribers, many companies face slowing growth and subscription fatigue among consumers. A number of factors stand in the way of gaining tractions, including:

  • The ever-increasing expense and effort to deliver user journeys that keep pace with expectations set by tech digital giants.
  • Limited processors, currency, language, and payment-type options to expand into global markets effectively.
  • Difficulty exploring and implementing partnerships that bundle offerings to extend distribution reach with complementary services, offering a seamless experience for your subscribers.
  • Little access to large aggregators, such as telecom and media service providers, that offer subscriptions as bundles.
  • Limited success recovering failed transactions with traditional approaches like retry logic, leading to high churn rates, as well as addressing the active churn.

Yes, these may seem complicated. But, I’m sure that they’re also ones that you are all too familiar with. Instead of using these factors to instill fear — we dove in and have used them to create an all-encompassing solution. Driven by data obtained from our SaaS-based platform that helps fuel growth across the entire subscription management lifecycle, delivering higher revenue at every stage as well as lessons learned from our customer base, plus overall deep experience within the industry, we are proud to introduce MarketONE. This solution takes into account all the obstacles detailed above to help you streamline recurring transactions, subscription bundling, and the end-user journey. It allows you to deliver the value and experience that your subscribers expect – while gaining the flexibility to explore what’s next and find what works best for your business.

In 2021, we believe that the secret to growth is in taking subscriptions to the next level, conquering new markets, and staying ahead of the competition. MarketONE helps you evolve and stay ahead of the competition. The flexible platform combines:

  • Vindicia Subscribe: Scale faster with go-to-market flexibility, global implementation support, and industry-leading retention tools.
  • Vindicia Bundle: Create and join bundles with partners that build audiences, engagement, and loyalty.
  • Vindicia Connect: deliver the frictionless user journey that your subscribers expect – without the technical complexity.

Bringing these three game-changing must-haves together allows and delivers faster time to market and a much lower total cost of ownership. Working together, they provide the foundation for subscription innovation and customer relationships that last a lifetime — beyond 2021. So, to sum it up. We are here for you. You’re not alone. Let’s enter 2021 with a growth plan that makes sense. For any questions — I invite you to reach out today and every day. Subscription success is possible — when we do it together: we can bundle towards growth together.

About Author

Jesus Luzardo

Jesus Luzardo

Jesus Luzardo is VP, Global Head of Sales at Vindicia. As an international technology industry veteran, Jesus brings over 30 years of experience in commercial, marketing, strategy, operations and technology roles. Prior to Vindicia, Jesus was Head of Marketing for Amdocs in the Caribbean and Latin America region, driving marketing to significantly expand Amdocs’ sales pipeline. Before Amdocs, he was Head of Sales for Utiba (acquired by Amdocs in 2014), focusing on mobile financial services. His experience includes two years as Head of Corporate/B2B and CCO at Cable & Wireless, and 15 years with Motorola. He lives by Vince Lombardi’s motto: “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” Jesus holds an MBA from Universidad del Zulia (Venezuela), a B.S. in Electronic Engineering from Universidad Rafael Urdaneta (Venezuela), and Advanced Management certifications from Kellogg Institute of Management and IESE (Universidad de Navarra, Spain).