By Morten Suhr Hansen
The battle for new subscribers is intensifying and there is no doubt that the fight between subscription companies is getting harder now that more and more consumers are experiencing rising prices and therefore, hold back from binding themselves to new subscriptions.
This is why I am very focused on the discipline of acquisition and what causes and prioritizations laid the groundwork for successful subscription companies like Swapfiets, KiwiCo, Goodiebox, and HelloFresh to succeed with their business model.
The reason can be found in different aspects, but the following three points are ubiquitous for all of the above: Strategy, a strong subscription model, and a focus on the intake of new customers by systematically using performance marketing. Let’s look closer at an example:
Swapfiets is disrupting the European bike market
If you visit European cities like Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, and Copenhagen, you will quickly find a huge number of bikes with a blue front wheel. This is Swapfiets, the world’s largest bike subscription company, which over the last five years has grown from a few hundred bikes on the street to more than 275.000 bicycle subscriptions in nine countries.
Actually, the iconic blue front wheel has become a symbol for a bike industry that has experienced a serious disruption in its market. For a fixed monthly fee, Swapfiets offers you a bike that always works, including on-site repair and exchange of the bike, if they cannot fix it within 10 minutes.
How did Swapfiets become so successful in such a short time? Well, after having developed and tested different subscription models, Swapfiets went out with a clear market strategy in The Netherlands of offering a bike subscription for students, and after having reached a ‘proof-of-business’ in The Netherlands, they expanded to new markets and haven’t looked back since.
With a focus on testing assumptions and new target groups, they had a clear strategy that performance channels were the way to go by using Influencer Marketing, social advertising channels like Facebook and Instagram as well as Google Search advertising. With a focus on controlling their acquisition costs (CAC), they were able to quickly scale to new markets and grow their subscriber base. In the beginning, Swapfiets had only two types of bicycles, today they have launched e-bikes, e-scooters, and mopeds as part of their business.
So the next time you go on the streets of Copenhagen and see more than 17.500 bikes with blue front wheels, you can rest assured that their huge success is no coincidence.
Subscrybe launches new ’Subscription Growth’ service!
This type of growth story has given us the inspiration to create an addition to our services within ‘Subscription Innovation’ and ‘Subscription Excellence’ with a newly-founded Growth unit that helps existing subscription businesses grow their subscriber base through digital performance.
Subscription Growth, which is the name of our new business department offers broad competencies within digital marketing specifically for subscription companies.
With this new service, we can ensure a strong transition from strategy and concept to operational handling of acquisition, as well as preparing campaigns and sales channels so the company can reach a successful intake of new subscribers.
Over the last few months, we’ve been working hard to assemble a team with broad competencies so we can offer professional consulting and execution within digital channels like performance marketing, Facebook- and Instagram advertising, Google Search, SEO, and E-mail Marketing.
That’s why we’re very excited to announce Jonas Nygaard as the new director of Subscription Growth. Jonas Nygaard is coming with a heavy subscription experience as a Country Manager for Swapfiets in Denmark and North Germany.
We are very excited to offer even better consulting and a full-service solution, where subscription companies will obtain extra resources for focusing on the intake of new customers and growing their subscription business.
With the launch, we look forward to contributing with new operational competencies and delivering services that can grow many subscription businesses in the coming months.
Eksempler på services fra Subscriptions Growth:
- Paid Social – Advertising across social channels
- Paid Search – Advertising across all of Google’s channels
- Organic Search – SEO and link-building assuring a higher ranking on Google
- Email Marketing – Building automation, segmentation, and list-building.
- Influencer Marketing – Acquisition and ongoing handling of influencers.
- Content Creation – Creation of pictures, videos, graphic material, editing, etc.
You are more than welcome to contact me or Jonas Nygaard if you’d like to hear more about how we work with Subscription Growth.
