These different instrument groups require different skills to play, and their music may even be written differently. If a violin player plays a French horn part without transposing the score, they’d be playing incorrect notes.

Yet somehow, when they take the stage to perform, we see these different sections work in perfect coordination. The reason may be self-evident; they have the help of conductors. These conductors help the orchestra sections prepare efficiently and coordinate their output, yielding beautiful harmonies.

Now, I hear you saying, “I’m an executive in the tech field. Why are you telling me about oboes?” That’s simple: Because your business is a busy orchestra. Your CRM is your string section. Your ERP is your percussion. Your email marketing platform could be your woodwinds. Each section may make a sweet sound individually, but are they coordinated? Do you have conductors communicating between your platforms?

As any orchestra needs conductors to connect the sections to produce a coherent piece of music, so too do your disparate business systems need a robust set of APIs to play in perfect harmony.

More on APIs and subscription business

APIs Defined

API stands for application programming interface. They are small snippets of code that allow two systems to communicate even if they are coded in different languages or were not originally designed to interface with each other.

For example, Facebook and Twitter are two different platforms. Because they are coded in different programming languages and have different data architecture, they are not able to communicate directly with each other. In order for a user to access data from one program in another, they need conductors who are fluent in Facebook and Twitter, and can smooth out the cooperation between them. Because both companies opened up their systems with APIs, a Twitter user can post a tweet and have that message simultaneously post to their Facebook account – and vice versa.

Imagine if these platforms were not allowed to talk to each other. Users would have to update both applications manually. That takes time and effort. More likely than not, users would stick with the application they prefer most and stop using the other. Strategically, these two companies, who compete with each other for users and advertising revenue, open their platforms with APIs to give people the flexibility to use the platforms in ways that work best for them.

APIs Applied — Subscription Reporting

Of course, the above example may seem trivial. But imagine applying APIs to your business. Let’s take a complex task like subscription reporting.

APIs can pull important data from your marketing, subscription and CRM platforms, and plug that information into a reporting tool that best serves your needs.

For example, an API can combine data from the email marketing platform with data from the subscription management platform to measure email marketing KPIs along with trends in your recurring revenue.

You can see how much revenue was generated through each different type of email campaign that you send (renewal, winback, dunning or credit card expiration emails), which payment types lead to more sales, and which regions of the globe perform best.

Analyzing these segments of data gives you powerful insights. What is the renewal and churn rate of customers who subscribed in February versus the renewal and churn rate of those who signed up in November? A reporting API that calls a database of transactions can help you build better cohort reports.

Keystone

Don’t waste time and valuable resources transposing between your business systems. Not only is that expensive and error-prone, it can lead to a less profitable business altogether. Employing the right APIs means having a coordinated business. With your business systems all vibrating in harmony, you can sit back and listen to the rich melody of increased revenue.

Download our free ebook, Aligning Your Subscription Business With APIs, today

Andrea Bailif-Gush is the Product Marketing Manager at cleverbridge

The post APIs — The Conductors of Your Business Orchestra appeared first on cleverbridge.

If your focus is on offering the best customer experience, whether in terms of your product or billing, 2017 is going to force you to focus on some crucial questions.

• What is the true cost of managing customer billing and payments in-house?
• How can you effectively acquire and retain cross-border shoppers? Are there any risks?
• How do subscription businesses increase customer lifetime value?
• How does an API-based ecosystem improve my business?

The following compilation of subscription billing ebooks will help you answer all those questions and others.

What Are the Hidden Costs of Your In-House Subscription Billing Solution?

It may seem like building a subscription billing solution is something you can handle on your own. But maintaining a homegrown solution carries with it significant hidden costs. As your business grows, can you scale with your increased volume? Will simply maintaining your infrastructure take resources away from improving your core offering?

Don’t let the hidden costs of an in-house solution bleed your business dry. Check out our microsite to learn more.

7 Tips for Growing Your Global Subscriber Base

Selling subscriptions in international markets is more complicated than simply translating your marketing website and order process into new languages. To grow your global subscriber base, customers need to be approached in a way that makes sense in their local context. In fact, there are seven key areas every subscription business must address when they start selling in new regions.

Download this ebook to learn all about localizing your subscription business for international markets.

Aligning Your Subscription Business With APIs

Manually keeping your product catalog, marketing strategy, subscription reporting and customer self-service options aligned across multiple systems costs resources and ultimately erodes your bottom line. But there is a better way. A subscription business using APIs is aligned to maximize customer satisfaction and recurring revenue.

Download the ebook to learn more about reducing time and effort managing billing and payments.

Increasing the Lifetime Value of  Subscribers

Getting a customer to subscribe doesn’t guarantee that they’ll stick around forever. If you want to retain their business for as long as possible, make sure that you’re offering ongoing value to your subscribers. This guide dives into optimizing for long-term subscriber relationships and profitability.

Inside the ebook you will find for more tactics for increasing the lifetime value of subscribers, such as:

• Reducing subscriber churn
• Deepening subscriber usage
• Increasing upgrades and add-ons

3 Compliance Risks for Global Subscriptions

You want to boldly venture into new markets, but wily dragons in the form of ever-changing global compliance regulations lurk at every turn. Violating these regulations can damage your business’s reputation and your bottom line.

This ebook covers everything you need to know about increasing global revenue while effectively managing your risk. That starts by:

• Offering shopping experiences that comply with local legislation
• Obtaining customer consent for email and other marketing efforts
• Ensuring data privacy and information security by complying with a variety of industry standards (PCI DSS, ISO27k and GDPR)
• Collecting and remitting taxes

Do Subscriptions Make Sense for Your Business?

How can you be sure that a subscription model is what’s best for your business – and for your customers?

This ebook covers everything you need to consider, like:

• Which type of subscription model best fits my business?
• What are the pros and cons of subscription billing?
• What do all successful subscription businesses have in common?
• Will a subscription model ultimately benefit my customers?

Subscription Metrics and Reporting Tips

Financial and revenue metrics are the responsibility of your Finance team (they love that stuff). But in today’s subscription environment, the role of your Finance team is changing. They’re no longer just the cost accountant, measuring overall business health; now they’re actively driving growth across all functions within your organization.

In this ebook, you’ll learn tips and tricks for developing a subscription metrics and reporting strategy that enables your Finance team to:

• Measure value with subscription metrics
• Assign useful subscriber identities
• Analyze and report by cohort and subscriber role
• Determine the most meaningful insights for your business

Keystone

For us, the focus is on the customer experience. Something that seems as simple as a monthly or annual renewal means that the design and function of your site, marketing emails, sign-up process, payment and billing, renewal and cancellation events are all acting in concert. By solving these challenges, you can expect greater recurring revenue and less churn.

The post 2016 Roundup: Subscription Billing Ebooks appeared first on cleverbridge.

The Evolution of CRM Data

Of course, focusing on customer relationships is not new. Companies have been using CRM tools for years. As we see from today’s infographic from Signal, CRM tools have evolved over time with technology and customer demands. In the early days, companies used simple pen and paper to record customer transactions. As businesses began to count on repeat business from influential customers, the Rolodex was added as a customer contact management tool. Coordinating customer contacts with a record of transactions took customer relationship management to new heights. As technology allowed for the digitization of this information, the modern CRM tool was born. The modern CRM tool is cloud based and mobile ready — just like your customers.

CRM Data — Value Unlocked

Using your CRM data to support customer relationships isn’t just an exercise in kindness or diplomacy. It will return increased revenue, increased customer satisfaction and decreased subscriber churn. After detailing the development of CRM technology, Signal tells us just why CRM data can be so valuable, saying “Above all, CRM data paves a path for advertisers to shift to one-to-one marketing at massive scale.” Integrating your CRM data with your email marketing platform and subscription management solution allows companies to precisely target customers through list segmentation and communication personalization.

Signal points out that companies who use a personalized CRM data-based approach win two to three times more subscribers than companies who focus on traditional cookie-based methods. And the best news of all — your company already owns this data. The trick is unlocking the value stored deep in your CRM data to forge long-term customer relationships and a stream of recurring revenue to your business. Enjoy the full infographic below.

Learn how the best teams use APIs to connect their data sources.

The post Unlocking Value From Your CRM Data [Infographic] appeared first on cleverbridge.

Source: GIPHY

It’s hard to believe that there was any news besides Prince this month. Here on the blog we covered ten tips for customer lifecycle campaigns, news of the booming AgTech sector, as well as how brands work to bring customers with them as they shift to subscription billing.

These are the other stories from around the web that you missed this month.

AgTech and APIs

The Rise of API-based SaaS | ChartMogul

The B2B market often suffers from inflexibility. APIs are changing that. This piece from ChartMogul notes, “Just as the world is waking up to the importance of design and user experience in enterprise products – arguably years after the consumer market saw the same evolution – there is a new breed of B2B solution, which ditches the visual user experience altogether – the API-based SaaS.”

Farmers Reap New Tools From Their Own Hightech Tinkering | WSJ

Farmers aren’t waiting around for developers; they’re applying their own knowledge and experimentation to develop new and better AgTech solutions. While some of their innovations are crafted purely for personal use, others are hoping to bring their innovations to market. “Some farmers-turned-techies aim to reap profits on their innovations. Dirt Tech, a startup run by two farmers and two software engineers, is developing a range of mobile applications that help map soil fertility across farmers’ fields, or mark rocks to avoid damage to machinery or allow for yanking them out.”

Capitalizing Data

Data’s Identity in Today’s Economy | MIT Technology Review

As we have pointed out, companies must have a strategy for monetizing data. Commenting on a recent study, Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, points out that data can even be considered a form of capital. Because data is less tangible than a building, a factory or a vehicle, many companies miss this point. “It’s a blind spot. But this is something that is more and more important to the world economy. It’s not visible, but it’s still something that smart managers have to keep an eye on.”

Subscription Billing in the News

Customer Loyalty 3.0 Is Never About Transactions. It’s About Getting to Know Your Customers | Entrepreneur

Just converting a user to a paying customer falls woefully short in today’s customer-centric environment. Entrepreneur has a message for companies stuck in the past: “loyalty is not transactional — period.” Loyalty a byproduct of strong, long-term customer relationships.

“While the notion of relationships may seem simple, it’s not. Many of the biggest brands have failed to do this despite having multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. Customers are all driven by different parameters, which means that you need to do a lot of listening and keeping track of the likes, dislikes and drivers of your customers’ behavior.”

Amazon Has Built a Subscription Launchpad with Prime | TechCrunch

Amazon’s move this month to offer stand-alone subscriptions to their video streaming service revealed an important approach to building a subscriber base. With millions already subscribed to their Amazon Prime service, they can pilot new services to see how customers use them and whether they might be valuable enough to sell separately. For a company that has struggled to turn a profit, this strategy could be a sign of how Amazon is bucking that trend.

“Amazon wants to turn the company into a subscription business, one subscription at a time.” — TechCruch

“Amazon has built a subscription launchpad with Prime. The company can try out new services and see if they work. From day one, these new services will have millions of subscribers … Slowly but surely, Amazon could turn its razor-thin margins on ecommerce products into substantial subscription revenue.”

Indian Ecommerce

Amazon May Violate India’s New Rules on Foreign Ecommerce | New York Times

Speaking of Amazon, “Late last month, the Indian government issued additional rules governing foreign ownership of ecommerce companies operating in the country. The government added regulations related to pricing and the sourcing of sales on sites that Amazon and several rivals appear to violate. What is more, the new policy was effective immediately, giving Amazon and others no time to comply.”

Indian Digital Payments Company TranServ Gets $15M to Launch New Financial Products | TechCrunch

Startup investment is up in India, and TransServ is benefiting. TransServ is using that investment to establish a digital payment system that fits the Indian customer.

“Several factors are fueling demand for digital payments in India, including the rapid growth of its ecommerce industry and the increasing accessibility of smartphones. The country’s credit card penetration rate is still very low, however, which means companies need to help consumers find alternative ways of making online payments.”

Learn more about subscription billing and your business on our Subscriptions Resources Page

The post April Ecommerce Digest appeared first on cleverbridge.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Study: Rush to Connect to Internet of Things Could Open Security Gaps | Chicago Tribune

An AT&T study found that while many businesses are jumping into the Internet of Things, few have considered the significant security challenges that face connected device ecosystems. The survey found that, “only 14 percent of companies looking at or already using connected devices have auditing processes in place to track those devices and their security.” The study also found companies are behind in incorporating important stake holders in their discussion of IoT security, saying, “Only 17 percent of companies surveyed in the study involve their boards of directors when considering IoT security.”

Colm Lennon, founder of Haka Products, a Chicago startup that helps companies take new products and innovations to market, points out that without leadership involved, departments vital to the security of connected devices will fail to work together. “All of the roles in this connected Internet of Things space, they have to really work closely together if the company wants to innovate at great speed but also innovate with the intent of doing so to protect their customers, to protect themselves and to protect their partners,” he said. “It can’t just be engineering running with this thing and learning it on their own.”

For any business supporting connected devices, the key to securing your ecosystem is in crafting an agile strategy that involves all stakeholders. Succeeding in data security means increased customer loyalty and satisfaction while hedging against the massive financial downsides to suffering a serious breach.

The Future of Mobile Purchases

Most Digital Buyers Will Make Purchases via a Smartphone by 2017 | eMarketer

According to eMarketer’s recent study, 51.2 percent of digital buyers will use a smartphone for their transaction by 2017. They also say 2017 will be a benchmark year as $75.5 billion, or 50 percent of all retail mcommerce sales, will be transacted on smartphones. That will be up from 48 percent in 2016.

These trends are important for any digital goods vendor looking to capture the attention of consumers. Having a mobile optimized site or dedicated mobile app will be essential for future success.

According to Yory Wurmser, retail analyst for eMarketer, “In order to get people to make purchases on their phones, retailers need to make it as easy as possible for consumers … That means fully optimized mobile websites, a checkout process with few steps, and fully personalized merchandising.”

APIs

Why CIOs need to plan for API deprecation | CIO

CIO brings us an important reminder that APIs, like all other technical assets, can suffer from deprecation, or technical debt. In other words, antiquated code in your system, which may not be compatible with newer technologies being employed across the market, demands your programmers’ attention — either to fix, revise or replace it. The mere presense of outdated code represents a liability and a future expense. This is true for your APIs too.

In an interview with Brian Pontarelli, CEO of Inversoft, we learn about keeping APIs current and their users up-to-date. Even with the greatest care, sometimes the systems break down. “We try to do feature upgrades with API compatibility four to six times a year. We break our API compatibility once every two years,” said Pontarelli.

For any executives involved in the process, Pontarelli’s tip is simple: stay current. “If you’re staying current, the pain of a deprecation is going to be less than if you’re years behind. It takes communication and planning. I think that’s key to any relationship between a vendor and a company.”

Global Tax Compliance

Digital Goods Taxation | Taxamo

This piece from Taxamo looks at recent legislation in several countries that taxes digital goods and how their business is helping the market cope. As the digital goods industry grows, governments don’t want to be left out of the game — and it’s a big game. “Norway, one of the pioneers of such taxation, introduced its value-added tax on eServices (VOES) scheme in July 2011. It has since recouped €283.5m, as of August 2015.”

And this trend is likely to continue. Taxamo notes, “As traditional tax bases begin to erode, tax authorities across the globe are recalibrating their tax collection systems to include new types of services. There has been a domino effect of tax authorities adopting … digital VAT and this trend is not likely to change in the coming years.”

Don’t forget to check out our Subscription Resources page today.

The post February Ecommerce Digest appeared first on cleverbridge.