At Limio, we appreciate the great work achieved by subscription companies to acquire and retain subscribers.

With subscription companies flooding in daily, it's becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate yourself from the crowd. As a consequence, marketers are using more creative approaches and stand-out features to attract customers.

We've spent a little time looking around and selecting five companies that we think are implementing either smart features or tasteful designs to their campaigns.

Spotify - It's the time of the season

Spotify has pioneered the music streaming space for the best part of the last decade,

The particular feature we love is the seasonal campaigns they run to acquire new customers. With 50 million songs available to stream, retention isn't a huge pain point for the giant. It's acquiring new customers and stealing them from competitors that they've focused the energy into. The current freemium model that they're promoting is not revolutionary; three months free then transitioning onto a paid plan. However what they have done differently is make the offer relevant to the season/ time, and in this case, making it Valentine themed. We're sure that they'll carry on offering a similar discount in the future, but having a relevant campaign that's time-constrained creates a sense of urgency to snap up the offer.

There's nothing to say that someone will fall in love with you because you subscribed, but Spotify's simple message is that you'll fall in love with their service if you do.

Disney+ - Drumroll please

On the fourth of February, Disney announced that it had passed 28 million subscribers onto its streaming platform. When you compare that to Netflix's 167 million, it doesn't seem the animation titan is doing so well... Did we forget to mention that Disney+ hasn’t actually been launched worldwide yet? It's not set to launch till late March in the UK, yet millions have already signed up to the service.

That being said, Disney+'s singular landing page fuels the tension before launching by presenting a preview of the major titles it'll be releasing, along with a countdown timer that is synced to the release date in the user's country. Users can smoothly scroll down the page to view how the service works, highlighting benefits, and teasing the viewers with more upcoming shows.

GoPro Plus - No 'I' in team

At the beginning of January 2019, the small and sturdy cube that has come to define adventure cinematography released a subscription service to its camera owners. The subscription gives GoPro users unlimited cloud storage with no reduction in video quality, as well as free repairs and discounts on accessories.

The page itself is to the point, with all the relevant information conveniently located on one location. Their two (bright orange and blue) call-to-actions highlight the free trial aspect of the offer, enticing the customer to register onto the service.

What we love about this service is GoPro's strategic implementation of a software subscription that complements its hardware. No longer does GoPro have one-off customers, instead now it can create and maintain relationships with its customers, building loyalty around its product. The cost for GoPro is the maintenance of a cloud database and loss on the discounted accessories, but it gains a stable recurring revenue alongside and (arguably more importantly) customers that stick around.

Nura - Cancelling out the noise

The first subscription headphones of its kind, Nura uses its app to create a sound that is tailored to its wearer and transmits it through the headphones.

We love their initial straightforward approach on their landing page. A black background that showcases the attractive product and highlights the three different payment options to suit a variety of customer's wallets.

However, if you're not convinced, the page continues to offer warm visuals with product information that allow you to understand the product in more depth. The site also contains a step by step guide explaining how the subscription works, footage of real customers testing the product, and guarantees of no lock-in contracts. Altogether, the page does extremely well in reassuring the customer to both the quality of the product and the service.

As with most subscription services, one of the central ideas is to shift away from conventional ownership. With Nura's subscription model that's exactly what they're seeking to replicate. By replacing a customer's product with a newer model every 24 months, the customer never actually 'owns' the headphones. If the customer did decide to cancel the subscription, then they are contractually obligated to send them back. Depending on how attached you become towards 'things', this could either be a good or bad feature, but an interesting feature nonetheless.

Apple News - Fresh off the press

When it comes to the most visually attractive and technically harmonious page, Apple News steals the show. For a set price (£9.99), Apple offers its readers full access to a large selection of magazines and newspapers.

The first impression of the site is its clean graphics and products so crisp you can almost smell the pages. The variety of magazines Apple showcases makes the customer feel they are truly at a virtual newsstand. Cutting through the middle of the offerings is the product itself, displayed on both an iPad and iPhone to inform the viewer what they're subscribing to. On any Apple device, the call to action directs the user to the Official News app that's integrated into Apple systems.
Viewers that aren't convinced at first glance can take an effortless scrolling trip through the various functions of the subscription. Towards the end of the page, Apple pushes the freemium model and personalisation elements as the last resort to get the customer using the product in any capacity.
 

Limio- The no-code platform to rule them all

We wanted to include a complimentary sixth 'feature'. It's a little biased, but how can you not love a subscription commerce solution that can do all of the above features and more while requiring zero code?

Limio offers the ability to create a functional subscription shop with all of the features we talked about. We've achieved this by creating a fully configurable Content Management System with easy access to reusable blocks (but you can also build your own), backed up by strong subscription management capabilities. At the heart of it, what we really offer is a huge amount of flexibility for everyone.

Want a seasonal campaign for Easter? Done. A pre-launch landing page? Sorted. Software subscriptions to compliment your physical products? Say no more. A variety of pricing options? Easy. Curious about how we can help your business? Get in touch with us here.