Thoughts on Business Models (from the founder of Sifter)
garrettdimon.com
garrettdimon.com
Keeping churn rates down is critical to success with subscription-based products, along with keeping customer acquisition costs low, so I'd be much more interested in hearing about strategies / innovations in those areas.
Keeping churn low has way too many potential variables. The quality of the product, the benefits or usefulness, the cost, customer support, and dozens of other things all ultimately play a role. Even the type of product could affect churn. Is it something that people only need occasionally or something that they'd use daily?
I honestly couldn't tell you how our churn manages to stay so low. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's focusing on making a high quality product and taking extremely good care of customers. We've never had someone tell us that they were canceling because of the quality of the product or support.
A low customer acquisition rate might be a bad thing. ;)