New research from Bango, which provides a SaaS platform for managing subscriptions, shows that executives at subscription services believe that being part of a multi-service bundling hub – like the ones being provided by telco pioneers – will help grow their business.
In a survey, 53% of executives said ‘super-bundling’ within a centralised subscription management hub provided by aggregators like telcos will play a vital role in their future customer acquisition and retention strategies. 31% warned of potential revenue and market share loss for those that do not adapt quickly enough to the need to be part of super-bundling hubs.
Bango provides the Bango Digital Vending Machine (DVM), which enables a subscription service – like a streaming service or fitness application – to make itself available for consumers to sign-up via a reseller hub. A graphic on Bango’s website illustrates the idea with a physical vending machine containing Netflix, BritBox, Max, Peleton, Audible, Amazon Kindle, Dropbox, McAfee and Xbox Game Pass.
The ‘reseller’ could be a classic service provider like a telco or cable company, or potentially a streaming aggregator or connected device platform (if they have the customer relationship and billing capabilities necessary). This value-adding function can be seen at Optus with its Optus SubHub and Verizon with Verizon +play content hub. These bring together dozens of subscription services.
StreamTV polled subscription service executives from various industries on behalf of Bango. The 100 respondents spanned SVOD, sports, music, gaming, and others.
The study shows widespread endorsement of the super-bundling model. Explaining the rationale behind support for this concept, 73% cited ‘new customer acquisition’ as a high priority, and 68% gave ‘reducing churn’ as a reason.
When deciding who to select as their bundling partners, communications service providers dominate. 60% of subscription leaders cite satellite/cable providers as the most effective partners for this paradigm, followed by broadband service providers (56%) and mobile phone companies (56%).
More than three out of five subscription leaders agree that:
Subscription services should be bundling their services with content providers from other industries (69%)
Super-bundling content hubs will be a vital revenue source for subscription services in the future (66%)
Super-bundling content hubs will offer a strong competitive advantage for subscription services (65%).
The subscription service execs are also aware of the challenges of implementing this model without help, with 61% saying their core challenge would be working with multiple partners (i.e., becoming part of a subscription hub at different telcos, cable companies, mobile phone companies, etc.). Using a one-to-one onboarding approach, over half would expect these challenges:
Technical integration issues (64%)
Complexity of contract negotiations (63%)
Time-consuming onboarding processes (52%).
Bango says they will need access to specialised technology and infrastructure, and points out that resellers could also find it complex and costly to bring together multiple vendor subscriptions.
“This is where the Bango Digital Vending Machine meets a critical need," declares Anil Malhotra, CMO and Co-Founder at Bango. "Tackling the complexities of sign-up, billing, partnerships and subscription management is no small feat, but DVM takes care of this.
"DVM handles the heavy lifting of super-bundling, providing the infrastructure to bring together aggregators like telcos with diverse content and service providers through one unified hub. This allows subscription providers to focus on what they do best - delivering excellent content experiences to their subscribers."
The new Bango report is called ‘Subscriptions executives survey: The future is bundling’.