Subscription Stories

True Tales from the Trenches

Subscription models are crazy powerful. Savvy small companies can easily deploy them to knock huge Goliaths off kilter. We’ve seen it in entertainment, software, hardware, news, retail, hospitality—the list goes on. In her podcast series, Robbie Kellman Baxter interviews the leaders of this revolution about how they’re using subscription pricing and membership models to redefine the biggest industries and generate predictable recurring revenue along the way.

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Episode Blogs

Going Deep on Customer Retention Analytics for Subscriptions with Harvard Business School’s Eva Ascarza

When I first started talking about the Membership Economy, there just weren’t that many academics or researchers interested in studying the power of customer retention. That’s why I’m really happy to see some of the best minds in finance, strategy and marketing today...

The 16-Year Evolution of a Global Subscription Pioneer with Babbel’s CRO and US CEO Julie Hansen

Based in Germany, and a global leader in digital language learning, 16-year-old Babbel was part of the early wave of online subscriptions. When they launched, subscription pricing was unusual and controversial. The early team even had to develop their own Subscription...

The Secret to Building Great Subscriptions with Leading Silicon Valley Product Builder, Tom Willerer

Before you start building your subscription product, make sure you really, really understand the ongoing problem you are solving. So says product leader Tom Willerer. Tom, my guest today, has worked with some of Silicon Valley’s most renowned companies, like Netflix,...

Does Your Company Need a Chief Customer Officer? With Rod Cherkas, Author of The CCO Playbook

In the Membership Economy, customer-centricity is critical in building lasting relationships and optimizing lifetime value. As a result, the Chief Customer Officer, or CCO, is increasingly present at the leadership table. Today’s guest, Rod Cherkas, founder of...

Blending Hardware, Software, and Services into an Ideal Healthcare Subscription with Dan Zavorotny of Nutrisense

I’m fascinated by the recent explosion of healthcare subscription companies. If you’re a regular listener of subscription stories, you probably knew that, as recent guests have included Midi Health’s Joanna Strober, Whoop’s Ben Foster and Matthew Mengerink of Thirty...

Building a Purpose-Driven Subscription Community with Mighty Networks’ Gina Bianchini

I have interviewed today’s guest many times, and it’s always a wild ride. Mighty Networks founder and CEO Gina Bianchini is so smart, passionate and insightful. She was my finale guest for Season 1 of the Subscription Stories podcast, back in 2020. That episode holds...

Season Four Wrap-Up and Season Five Sneak Peek

We opened with two thought leaders, Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractible, and Tiffani Bova, Salesforce Global Evangulist. We also heard from two Subscription experts, Piano’s Trevor Kaufman and Optimized Payment’s Paul Larsen talking best practices....

Product-Led Growth for Subscriptions, Using Examples from Medium, LinkedIn and The Athletic with Caitlin Roman

Everyone’s talking about “product-led growth” in the subscription world right now. Companies are seeing the connection between the way the product is designed and how effective the company is at acquiring, engaging and retaining customers—and even driving...

Scaling a Telehealth Pet Subscription, by Starting in Person. With Zubin Bhettay, CEO of Fuzzy

Sometimes the best way to launch a digital subscription is to launch a physical subscription. Even if you plan to scale with a virtual business model, you can learn so much more about your customer, value proposition and messaging by starting the old fashioned way—in...

Emerging Best Practices in Personalization with Piano.io CEO Trevor Kaufman

We can learn a lot from subscription businesses that experiment with different revenue models and personalization. Organizations with too many offers risk overcomplicating things with competing goals. I’m talking about companies with multiple revenue streams—different...

Maximizing Customer Lifetime Value in Volatile Times with Paul Larsen of Optimized Payments

The single biggest source of churn might surprise you. It’s not a communications issue, or a product/market fit issue, or even an onboarding problem. The biggest driver of churn in most consumer subscriptions is what’s known as passive or involuntary churn....

Building an Educational Subscription at Scale with LinkedIn Learning’s Jill Raines

You’re probably all familiar with LinkedIn Learning, formerly known as Lynda.com. It’s LinkedIn’s professional development platform. They offer more than 18,000 video courses available via subscription. There’s a huge range of educational topics covered—from how to...

How Employee Experience and Customer Experience Drive Corporate Growth with Salesforce’s Tiffani Bova

We’ve spoken before on the show about the importance of Customer Experience in driving growth, with guests like Wharton’s Peter Fader, Gainsight’s Nick Mehta and Bain & Company’s Stu Berman. But today’s guest says you need to think beyond the customer. If...

Bestselling Author Nir Eyal on How to Ethically Hook Your Subscribers

To drive recurring revenue, you need products and services that people use. Habitually. Repeatedly. Organizations strive to design addictive subscriptions. But for every beloved membership, there seem to be a dozen offerings that drive subscription fatigue. How...

Season Three Wrap-Up and Season Four Sneak Peak

We packed a lot into this Season 3. There's truly something for everyone. We opened the season with David Lorsch, the Chief Revenue Officer of Strava, the world’s largest athletic community, talking about how to upgrade freemium subscribers to premium. Listen...