Value Nurturing -- A New Edition of Anne Janzer's "Subscription Marketing"

Anne Janzer is continuing to nurture the value offered in her classic book, Subscription Marketing -- a Third Edition was just released (with a special offer of the Kindle edition for just 99 cents through February 7).

Her subtitle is "Strategies for Nurturing Customers in a World of Churn" -- that to me is the heart of subscription businesses -- and of my related work on FairPay.

As she puts it:

Subscription Marketing is two-way communication between your company and customers in a subscription relationship, with the purpose of sustaining the value of that relationship for both parties.

While this book focuses on marketing after the sale (which I call value nurturing), those activities are part of a broader shift in the marketing discipline. Subscription marketing is marketing with a long-term perspective. It’s changing your mindset to focus on the relationship rather than revenue alone. It’s looking beyond lead generation to cultivating both trust and value, before and after the point of conversion.

Anne's new edition focuses more deeply on how that mindset is critical to success. Additions include:

• "a new chapter on trust and value -- the true marketing imperatives of the Subscription Economy"
• updated and expanded examples of value nurturing
• new chapters on startups, small businesses, and large, established businesses.

Anne and I are in full agreement on the vital importance of value nurturing. Several years ago she wrote a very nice review of my own book on FairPay, where she observed:

In many ways, the FairPay pricing model is the perfect complement to the practice of value nurturing outlined in Subscription Marketing. Organizations that adopt a FairPay pricing must work hard to nurture the customer’s perception of value, both within the solution and beyond.

Her book has been the perfect complement to mine -- with far more detail on the basics of that mindset, and the practice of value nurturing. Drawing on her background as a professional business writing consultant, Anne's new edition expands very nicely on that.

If you want to succeed in a subscription business, you should read Anne's book carefully. If you want to do more than succeed, read her book and mine.