Comments on: A Subscription Planner

By: Churn: Taking Payment « the goose

Churn: Taking Payment « the goose — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:38:44 +0000

[...] penniless – eventually. Subscriptions have a lifetime and eventually people will ebb away little by little unless I maintain and enhance the services we offer them. So how do we avoid churn? Well, we [...]

By: thegoose

thegoose — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:37:00 +0000

I just couldn’t let it lie. I’ve updated the plannr to allow for the addition of ‘marketing activities’ – each of which yields a specific number of new subscribers. Similarly you can add individual expenses on a per month basis so in theory you could schedule a bulk email for a particular month and then add the associated cost below. The blue link indicates expense and the yellow bars indicate income.

Right. I’m not allowed touch this again.

By: thegoose

thegoose — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:01:45 +0000

Such is the nature of these things. What starts out as ’simple’, grows hairs.

I think what is needed is a list of marketing activities with associated yields in terms of new subscribers. Then maybe you can select a marketing activity and assign it to a particular month. The more marketing you do – the more subs.

Of course the old ‘viral’ trick would be nice. I must go buy some of that. I’ll get some ‘word of mouth’ while I’m at it.

By: Caelen

Caelen — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:09:50 +0000

I know I’m being irritating but new subscriptions shouldn’t be a % of existing subs, unless your application is viral. It should be a hard figure that reflect the sales effort. I agree that it would be handy to vary it month by month

By: thegoose

thegoose — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:57:28 +0000

Okay, so I broke out the churn and growth to their own lines now. Not sure it helps much unless you can tweak the individual months.

By: thegoose

thegoose — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:58:02 +0000

I’ve added that in along the bottom as a static value for churn. What would be really nice is a place you could mark specific marketing activity. Eg: assign telesales campaign for month 3 and see that impact on the subscriptoin rate.

It’d be nice to have a ‘menu’ of activities with stock values for effectiveness you could use to build up your plan.

By: Caelen

Caelen — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:48:23 +0000

I think it might be worthwhile to separate out sales from churn into two different line items. This is because these two figures have different drivers. Churn is dependent on industry norms (how many people leave the business etc.) and on levels of satisfaction. New sales can be driven with increased sales force, promotion, etc.