Rethinking Revenue Models for Digital Services (Webinar 3/28/19)

Reisman to lead a Webinar hosted by New York Angels, 4–5:30 pm on Thursday, 3/28/19.

Registration is on the Meetup site, and I expect a recording will be posted for those who are unable to attend live.

This presents a broad rethinking of a full range of current and future revenue models in light of insights drawn from my work on FairPay, including discussions with many businesses representing a full range of content/services, sizes, and stages, as well as leading-edge research in marketing and behavioral economics. It is relevant to investors, startups, and growing businesses — across for-profits, non-profits, and platforms/aggregators.

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As described on the Meetup site:

CONTENT:

Customer relationships and revenue models are critical to business success. This session explores the sea-change yet to come in the digital economy — how businesses now only dimly grasp where this is likely to go, and how to profit by moving in that direction.

Digital disruption is being shaped by two opposing forces that have yet to be reconciled:

1. Recurring revenue businesses thrive on the growth of computer-mediated recurring relationships that center on mutual lifetime value.
2. For digital content and services, the invisible hand breaks down, resulting in conflict: consumers question the relationship between value and price, while providers struggle to impose artificial scarcity.

As a result, businesses struggle to find models that attract and retain enough profitable customers to sustain and grow their business.

This presentation provides new insight into harmonizing these opposing forces — to sustainably mass-customize value propositions and set prices to maximize the mutual lifetime value of each customer relationship, for as many customers as can be satisfied. A wide range of common and emerging revenue models are considered as practical examples — with a focus on content subscriptions — drawing on recent findings in behavioral economics and game theory.

• In its broader focus, this forms a “unified consumer relationship theory” that puts all B2C revenue strategies into a customer-value-based continuum — subscriptions, meters, memberships, crowdfunding, freemium, tiers, micropayments, dynamic pricing, discounts, bundling, acquisition, retention, loyalty, incentives, advertising — Anything as a Service, across the entire customer lifetime journey.
• In its narrower focus, it suggests innovative strategies for dynamically customizing value propositions for each customer.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

• Investors, startups, and growing businesses — across for-profits, non-profits, and platforms/aggregators.
• Businesspeople who find economics and consumer behavior thought-provoking.
• Focus is on digital content/services businesses, but the lessons apply broadly.

DESIRED LEARNING:

• Digital subscriptions thrive on cooperative relationships and mass-customization.
• Current revenue models impede relationship development by imposing artificial scarcity in ways that are insufficiently customized and customer-value-centric.
• Incremental strategies can re-center on finding the value sweet spot for each customer, and building trust and cooperation.
• That will increase reach, loyalty, and sustainable CLV.