It’s not a secret that young Americans of the millennial generation are in different financial straits than their parents. Many of them have thousands of dollars of student loan payments – which necessitates hefty monthly bills – so they’re not making large purchases such as homes and vehicles at the same rate that older generations did. Instead, they’re looking for goods and services they can pay for monthly. For this reason, young people are driving what’s becoming known as the subscription economy.

Why Subscriptions?

Since younger people don’t have the lump sums for large payments, they prefer to buy on a month-to-month basis. In fact, 92 percent have active subscription services, according to a recent survey conducted by Vantiv and Socratic Technologies. According to recent data from the Consumer Technology Association, music and video streaming services alone are projected to generate close to $32.3 billion in revenue in 2020. Add in everything else younger Americans are buying by subscription such as clothing, cosmetics, wine and beer, shaving supplies, musical instruments, and even cars, and the potential of subscription selling becomes enormous.

For these younger Americans, the subscription economy offers an option that’s simple, predictable, recurring and tailored for them. It’s probable that as this generation ages and becomes more financially secure, their subscription habits will likely stay with them. For this reason, it makes sense for companies to marketing subscription services towards the millennial generation for the long term.

How Do Subscriptions Benefit Your Business?

One of the biggest benefits of a subscription model is more regular and predictable cash flow. For smaller businesses or new businesses, the subscription model provides an opportunity to compete with larger or better-established companies. With an understanding that young American consumers are the highest adopter of subscription services, companies should be placing marketing dollars towards that demographic today to ultimately increase company value. It’s vital, however, to have an effective infrastructure for subscription management in place.

Look for a Dedicated Subscription Management Platform

Subscription DNA’s subscription management software is ideal for small businesses, and features group enrollment tools and group communications, email marketing automation, cloud billing automation and payments, intuitive membership management, CRM and premium content and paywall management. Your customers can even log in and manage their own accounts right from your Web site.

Even small businesses just beginning to use the subscription model can quickly and easily build the type of community that keeps subscription customers engaged, interested and loyal.

Contact Subscription DNA to learn how you can market to, communicate with and support younger consumers.   

Subscription services are gaining popularity today as the market seeks out new, convenient and fun ways to buy products and services. Also to quench their thirst to learn about new things that can enhance their lifestyles.

One recent report from Digitas took a closer look at the rate at which people are turning to subscription services and why they’ve become such an in-demand service for the market.

The new research, “The Subscriber’s Dilemma: From ‘More Please’ to ‘No Thanks,”  conducted by the Harris Poll for Digitas,  surveyed over 2,000 U.S. adults and found that among them, over 1,400  currently have active subscriptions services.

While these numbers are promising, there is another layer for brands to consider when it comes to providing value while beating out the competition.

Overcoming Challenges

Delivering just the right amount of communications and outreach, accurately and consistently billing for these services are a few of the hurdles brands face without the right tools in place.

As more companies jump on the subscription services bandwagon, it’s important that they create services and offer products that are must-haves if they want to draw in the number of subscribers needed to be successful.

The goal is to offer, “convenience, access, and perks that they feel they can’t live without,” according to the company.

The report also looked more closely at the types of subscription services consumers we’re gravitating toward and found that clothing and entertainment ranked high on the list for “must have services” with transportation and personal care subscription services failing to impress at this time.

As far as reasons consumers are choosing to subscribe, they noted validation from friends and peers about their subscription items was more important than gaining access to exclusive content when they choose a service.

Other telling information released as part of the study and of extreme importance for companies as they get started with their subscription services, is the fact that respondents said they prefer to receive communications from the subscription companies via email with many saying they’d prefer not to be contacted by a chatbot about the service.

Understanding the market and developing solutions and services that target get the right audience is key when building a subscription-based service.

SubscriptionDNA makes it possible to save time, money, and do more to please customers and potential business. Our enterprise cloud billing and membership management software makes it easy to control every aspect of your subscription business. Streamline business and save time.

Contact us today to get started!