Cambridge Business Association
The Forever Transaction
Book

The Forever Transaction

How to Build a Subscription Model So Compelling, Your Customers Will Never Want to Leave

Robbie Kellman Baxter
McGraw-Hill, 2020
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Zuora’s Subscription Economy Index for the fourth quarter of 2018 reported that membership business revenues are increasing some five times faster than the revenues of S&P 500 firms. In the United States alone, people spent an average $237 monthly on subscriptions in 2018 – and that was pre-COVID-19. Buyers subscribe to many products and services, such as fancy boxed dinners to cook at home or online movies, to gain predictability and convenience. Robbie Kellman Baxter, an expert on subscription pricing and membership programs, teaches companies how to establish sustainable programs that enlist loyal customers as dedicated members or subscribers and retain them for the long run and for long-range profit.

Summary

Build enduring relationships with customers through a subscription or membership program.

You can achieve sustained profitability by developing enduring, predictable relationships with your customers. Membership and subscription models that pay off year after year are disrupting traditional sales patterns in many industries because consumers prefer them. Some of the world’s most profitable companies – including Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft and LinkedIn – rely on subscription and membership programs.

Companies use subscriptions to develop significant long-term customer relationships as they move buyers from an “ownership model” to an “access model,” from one-time payments to “multiple recurring payments” and from impersonal one-way communications to exchanges among community members. Subscriptions and memberships are different entities. With subscriptions, subscribers pay periodically to utilize services, content or even physical products. A membership program nourishes the feeling of belonging.

Subscription and membership programs serve targeted customers by...

About the Author

Peninsula Strategies founder Robbie Kellman Baxter has served as a New York City Urban Fellow. She has worked as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, and a Silicon Valley product marketer. She also wrote bestseller The Membership Economy.

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