Since The Membership Puzzle Project (MPP) launch in May 2017, they have studied, advised, and supported more than 100 newsrooms around the world, from Akron, Ohio, to New Delhi, India as they make the transition to a member-driven newsroom. In this conversation I’m talking with Ariel Zirulnick, who runs MPP's Membership In News Fund, which supports these exceptional experiments with.
I recently interviewed Ariel for the inaugural D2C Summit, a new conference I co-created with Global Media Association FIPP and want to share that conversation with you here on the podcast.
In our conversation, we discuss the original goals of the MPP as this public research project nears its end, explore how the project has fared since launching four years ago, and share key lessons from the Project that can help any membership organization to thrive.
“Our goal is to teach forever habits.” Joanna Strober has reimagined the youth weight loss industry through her wellness program, Kurbo. Tune in to hear Joanna talk with Robbie about the role of a human coach in a digital program, how to communicate with both parents and kids, and instilling habits in customers for the long term. Highlights from this episode: 7:00 – Joanna talks about what triggers people to enroll in subscriptions and what motivates people to make subscription a habit 9:52 – Robbie and Joanna talk about the 7 key areas of competence in a subscription business, and about why WW is more passionate about their subscription mission than their subscription product 16:40 – Joanna talks about Kurbo’s FOREVER PROMISE 17:24 – Kurbo’s “reverse freemium” model, and the power of breaking the mold when it comes to adopting a subscription model 19:50 — Robbie and Joanna talk about customer success, its importance, and what it looks like 23:50 – Joanna explains why human connection is essential and hints at Kurbo’s “Secret Sauce” 27:00 – Weathering negative social media storms 34:40 – The challenges of the launch, scale, and lead phases of growing a business 37:00 – Joanna gives advice to entrepreneurs who want to start a business in THE MEMBERSHIP ECONOMY and investors who want to fund a business in THE MEMBERSHIP ECONOMY 39:22 – Joanna gives advice to smaller companies undergoing acquisition by a larger company 40:20 – Robbie’s speed round Joanna’s Bio: Joanna Strober is an entrepreneur and investor who founded Kurbo, the first digital weight loss platform for kids. Joanna grew Kurbo into a subscription business so successful that it caught the interest of WW (Weight Watchers reimagined), one of the biggest names in wellness. She is ...
Even though people think of me as a subscription person, I always say that for me, subscriptions are simply a tactic. Subscriptions force companies to better align their pricing with performance. If the subscriber doesn’t perceive ongoing value, they cancel the subscription…so it becomes the organization’s responsibility to ensure that the customer is achieving the desired outcome. That’s the real goal of subscriptions—to better align payment with outcome. Professor Marco Bertini is a professor at both Esade in Spain and the Harvard Business School here in the US. He is an expert on performance-based pricing—not just subscriptions, but pay-for-consumption models and even outcome-based pricing. Marco’s new book, The Ends Game: How Smart Companies Stop Selling Products and Start Delivering Value, which he cowrote with Oded Koenigsberg of the London Business School is one of the best pricing books I’ve read in a long time. In today’s conversation, we talk about how to optimize your pricing model to ensure that your customers can access the value you provide, use your offering well, and most importantly get the performance outcomes they need. Welcome to the show marco. ...
Mindful.org is dedicated to a very specific goal--sharing the gifts of mindfulness through content, training, courses, and directories— and helping people enjoy better health, foster more caring relationships, and cultivate a more compassionate society. Because of that core focus, Mindful has been able to develop deep expertise about how people want to engage in mindfulness--expertise which has provided a launching pad for a range of additional offerings, including a very successful corporate training business, which has become a larger source of revenue than the subscription itself. In other words, their niche focus has allowed them to be more impactful, while generating multiple revenue streams to support their mission. In this conversation with Mindful.org CEO Bryan Welch, we’ll discuss how you can build multiple revenue streams around a strong vertical with a small number of passionate members. This conversation was recorded as part of the D2C (Direct to Consumer) Summit that I coproduced with FIPP, the Global Media Association, so you’ll hear a couple of references to the conference. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook ...
