In 2019 the average American spent $640 on subscription services. Subscriptions come in so many different forms, groceries, music, television, toothbrushes, and even cars. How can you jump in and turn your product or service into a subscription? How do you engage with your customers and motivate them to pay for what you have to offer? Do you have a development team that can manage new features? Or do you know of a service out there that could add value to your already fantastic concept? These are just a few things to think about when deciding to add a subscription option.
If your product or service is on the web, it has the potential to be subscription-based.
Consumers are interested in things that are effortless, cost-efficient, and can integrate with products they already have or the services they already use. What drives consumers to subscribe can be based on usage quotas like cloud storage, feature limitations like mail, or increased support options.
Why integrating is key
Subscription conversions are user engagement driven. By adding an integration feature, you will automatically increase user engagement. It is not about adding a ton of features to your product or service. It is about utilizing integration tools and adding to your value proposition. Almost every subscription-based company on the web today offers some sort-of integration service to its premium users. One example is Spotify. Spotify allows users to link to any sound device, like a Sonos, Ipad, phone, or television. You can listen to your music from anywhere at any time.
How to successfully integrate
There are three ways to integrate, directly, develop your own, and iPaas. By directly integrating into your product, you create a great user experience but it is not very cost-efficient. It takes a lot of time and money to develop and maintain. By creating your developer platform you need to have a great market share and investors. And finally, the newest option is an integration platform as a service like IFTTT. They are already at a scale, offer lots of features, and have flexibility.
Having an app on your phone, computer, Alexa, or Google voice is an integration tool. This is a way to connect to your customer and utilize the products they already use. One simple way to integrate is by using voice assistance. 72% of consumers use their voice assistant every day.
What is Freemium and how can you benefit from it?
Businesses that offer a free trial or free option to their services outperform those that do not. By offering a freemium deal, users can experience all of the features and add ons that are available. Free options lead to a 2% – 5% increase in subscriptions. Spotify’s free option allows listeners to hear their music with paid advertisements. When users choose to subscribe, ads will no longer interrupt their music and they can create or download playlists.
Dropbox
Dropbox has 600 million users in 180 countries and has a 2.47% conversion rate. Most of their users do not pay for a subscription. Dropbox offers upgrades based on usage. This is a unique way to sell a service. It engages with the customers who are already using their service and only offers an upgrade in storage when they need it. Their integration method is finding where their customers could potentially be storing data and offering them an option to have it all in one place. They have many client integration options on Mac, Windows, ios, and Android. Dropbox partnered with IFTTT to sync and backup content from social media and google docs.
Spotify
Spotify has 217 million users across 79 countries and has a 29% conversion rate. Spotify offers three different premium options allowing consumers to choose what works best for them. The premium option gets rid of ads and enables listeners to curate their playlists. Spotify has 14 different app integrations like Shazam and Google maps. Spotify also has hundreds of hardware integrations including, Sonos, Google Home, and car dashboards. Spotify partnered with IFTTT to make it easy for users to sync their playlists and save tracks for later. Some of these features include syncing SoundCloud, Youtube, and Google Assistant to save songs.
Trello
Trello has 35 million users. Trello offers a free option with limited features. This way, users will want to upgrade to add team members, increase usability and integration options. Trello has over a hundred of their custom integrations. Trello also integrates with other teamwork platforms like Slack. Hardware integration is limited to computer and phone apps as that is where customers would engage with Trello the most. Trello partnered with IFTTT to increase collaboration and brainstorming capabilities with different types of boards and integrating with Alexa for reminders.
Revolutions view
By adding integrations, you are adding to your value proposition. By collaborating with integration services like IFTTT you can focus on what you do best and add features easily.
Whether you are integrating, creating a subscription option, or going freemium connecting to your users is essential.