Matt Bakke of Fair Share Data on Turning Customers into Subscribers
Matt Bakke of ARK alum and IA client firm Fair Share Data writes in Arkansas Money & Politics about turning customers into subscribers.
Fair Share is a consumer data aggregator that pairs shoppers with targeted offers. Here's more on this Bentonville startup, launched at last fall's ARK Challenge run in Little Rock.
Here's a sample:
Nothing is more beautiful to business owners than black text in their bank statements.
Black text that’s typically floating alone in a sea of jarring red charges. Lucky is the entrepreneur who has never had to worry about the red overtaking the black. All it takes to keep your business afloat is revenue, but there’s only one type of revenue that can guarantee you’ll stay there: Recurring revenue.
“Recurring” meaning “this will happen again, and again, and again.” Recurring revenue is the Alabama football of sales. There are plenty of sexier ways to get to the same result, but I’ll take a boring guarantee every day of the week.
The only problem with recurring revenue is that it’s a tough sell to customers. Media companies like Netflix and Spotify get their users to commit to monthly payments in return for immediate access to a huge catalog of content. Subscription boxes like Dollar Shave Club or Little Rock startup Tagless sell their products at a lower price in exchange for the guarantee of monthly purchasing. The good news is your business doesn’t have to have a catalog of digital content or give steep discounts to benefit from recurring revenue. No matter what you’re selling: Cars, clothes, or even carrots at a farmer’s market, if you view every current customer as a future customer as well, you’re well on your way to follow up sales.
Full post here. Good stuff.