Customerland

The New Rules Of Subscriber Loyalty

• mike giambattista • Season 4 • Episode 7

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0:00 | 36:09

Want proof that churn isn’t the end of the story? We sit down with Recurly’s Chief Product Officer, Priya Lakshminarayanan, to explore how pause states, micro subscriptions, and one‑click plan changes are rewriting the rules of subscriber loyalty. Drawing on network‑wide data from millions of users, Priya explains why nearly one in four new subscriptions comes from a former customer and how 75% of paused users eventually return when brands make exits humane and re‑entry effortless.

We dig into the rise of micro subscriptions—short passes that replace bloated free trials—and why they convert around 13% of users into ongoing plans. From there, we map the journey that grows revenue: compress time to value in the first 90 days, use context‑aware prompts to surface upgrades when benefits are felt, and lean on annual plans that generate 50–60% more revenue than monthly without sacrificing trust. Priya shows how Recurly’s engagement tools turn helpful nudges into one‑click actions tied directly to billing, so a downgrade, pause, or tailored discount happens in the moment a user needs relief, not days later.

We also tackle the loyalty stack that matters now: transparent billing, excellent support, and a sharper focus on data privacy that’s moved to the forefront of subscriber decisions. Flexibility to pause or switch plans emerges as a true customer‑first signal, while ethical and sustainable practices vary in weight by vertical and demographic. Finally, Priya previews an AI retention agent designed to detect churn type in real time, select the right save tactic within budget, and keep growth on autopilot.

If you care about retention, ARPU, and building real trust, this conversation offers practical, data‑backed steps you can put to work today. Listen, share with a teammate who owns subscriptions, and leave a quick review to tell us which tactic you’ll test first.

Trust, Privacy, And Flexibility

SPEAKER_00

I I think data privacy is higher just because you hear constantly um in the media and other product experiences about you know how data is getting proliferated, monetized, et cetera. And so that's top of mind and hence likely what ranked higher. Um, but we are seeing that subscribers do value both the transparency as well as the flexibility in being able to pause and cancel easily. And that's where we advise brands that um not just for compliance or regulatory reasons, you know, just to build that trust, earn that trust, you know, make it easy to pause and cancel.

Meet Recurly And Its Scale

SPEAKER_01

Today on investors in customer land, I'm honored uh to be speaking with Priya Lakshmi Narayanand, who is chief product officer at Recurly. If I even came close to the pronunciation of your last name correctly, I deserve big props for that. But um a couple of things to say before we even get into this conversation. Um, one is that we've been trying to record this for six to seven, maybe even eight months. But you know, all of us were doggedly determined to pull this off because there's so much to talk about here. Um, but I think maybe the best way to do this is to one, thank you for your patience and tenacity. Of course. Um, but maybe describe your role at Recurly, what Recurly does for people who may not be familiar with the company, and then we can kind of roll from there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, sounds good. Thank you for having me on the podcast, Mike. And you did fantastically well with my last name. Um, thank you for that. Um, and that's not even my full last name. So maybe after the podcast I will let you know. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01

I have I have four syllables in my last name. I think I counted six in yours, and there's more yet.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there's the first part. My husband jokes that I have a full postal address as my name.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

We'll get to that after this recording is over, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00

Um, yeah, so thank you for having me. Um I'm uh chief product officer at Rickurly. Um, I lead product and design at Rickurly. Ricurly is a subscription management and recurring billing platform, and we help businesses handle the complexities of the subscription business model. Um, we offer a suite of products um, mainly to optimize the entire subscriber lifecycle, all the way from acquisition to retention and even revenue recognition. So we had acquired a company a couple of years ago in revenue recognition. So it sort of rounds out the whole set of operations. Um we have about 76 million or so subscribers on the platform, um, process over 15 billion annually in total payment volume, um, and and a lot of household brands on our platform, like Paramount, Twitch, um, a major football league that everybody would know about. Um, so excited to be here to be talking about uh Rikullian subscriptions.

Why Subscriptions Reveal Consumer Behavior

SPEAKER_01

Well, thank you for joining me yet again. Um early on in our attempts to schedule this, um, your team had sent over an early edition of the 2026 State of Subscriptions report, which I found to be really interesting for all kinds of reasons. Just to set context on this side of the conversation, we spend a lot of time talking about customer engagement and what that looks like. And subscriptions have tended to be kind of an ancillary topic to most of the central discussions. But I think that was wrong. I think, especially after looking at this report, uh because subscriptions are so ubiquitous, they're so much a part of consumers' lives, we're all subscribed to something in some form or another. That your insights are are, I think, um, salient not only for companies who have subscription uh capabilities and subscription lines of businesses, but it's also, I think, a really interesting pointer towards consumer attitudes and habits towards the way they think about, because there have been some changes here uh recently in the way they think about subscription type purchases. So uh I'm gonna cheat and pull out some some highlights and cherry pick some of these, some of these data points, and maybe we can just kind of talk about them a little bit and see see where this takes us.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, of course. Happy to do that.

The Power Of Pausing Over Canceling

SPEAKER_01

So um I think I think one of the one of the big things that stood out to me, and I'm putting this, I'm using your words here. Nearly one in four new subscriptions comes from a former customer as people move in and out of services based on usage and life changes. Brands that offer pause subscriptions are seeing stronger outcomes. Paused usage rose 337%, and this is the part that got me 75% of customers who pause eventually return. Love to understand when that trend started coming to light, or was it something that Rick Curly identified early on and said we need to build to this?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I've I've been with the company since 2025, and I've I've I saw it in our 2025 state of subscriptions report as well. Um, it's basically an annual report that is data-driven based on um, you know, anonymized data in our network of thousands of global brands and millions of unique subscribers. So I saw similar trends in the 25 report as well. Um internally, we have this thing as cancellation is not goodbye, right? Um, so brands that do well to think about how we can offer pauses, they do much better in retaining and bringing subscribers back than those uh merchants who just allow subscribers to cancel and leave the platform. So definitely pause, we're seeing adoption of pauses quite a bit. Um you might have noticed another metric in the state of subscriptions report, which is you know, two-thirds of consumers they maintain one to four subscriptions. So, you know, any new product that offers subscriptions, it's sort of vying for the consumer's attention. And so people might be like, okay, I'm now exceeding my allotted count of subscriptions. So I'm I should put one on pause, try the other one. Um, so offering pause is a great way for um businesses to have an opportunity to re-engage that subscriber and bring them back.

Psychology Behind The Pause

SPEAKER_01

A lot of our listeners operate in within the loyalty space, and I think they're gonna be very glad to hear that uh, as you put it, uh uh a goodbye does not necessarily mean a permanent goodbye. You had better phrase than that one. Um but I think there are a lot of ways for companies to kind of embrace or or manage for that. Um and I'm I'm trying to think of practically speaking, the psychology, the consumer side of that, of that pause, what's happening in their mind? Is it is it more akin to oh good, I can still do this if I want to, if I choose to come back, or is it kind of like a soft goodbye because it's too hard to actually say goodbye? You know, it's kind of like you're breaking up in a relationship. It's me, not you. You know, you can't really say what you need to say, or is there more to it than that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I feel like there's there's more to it, predominantly because um, you know, it depends on what kind of vertical or industry um you're offering a subscription as well. Like digital media and entertainment um is really prime for this because, you know, this football season, I I want to watch a few games now, but then I want to put it on pause and then pick up some something, a different show that's popular that all my friends are talking about on a different platform. I don't want to cancel it because I want to come back for the next season when the games pick up again. You know, it's hard to keep setting up, signing up um accounts again and again. I have my payment method in there. I have everything set up, right? I have my preferences in there, I don't want to lose it. So that's that's the reason offering you know friction-free off-ramps, um, it can really significantly boost long-term retention. Um, we did see that um as part of the customer survey that we did, like ease of cancellation or ease of you know, putting it in pause, it's no longer subscribed or canceled. There's another state, which is I'm paused. Um, and 38% of consumers they prefer pausing over canceling. I mean, that's huge, right? If brands internalize that and offer, like I said, a friction-free pause, then they have a lot of opportunity to bring that subscriber back.

Tactics To Reengage Paused Users

SPEAKER_01

Based on the fact that you probably see how brands work these, work out these pauses, is there any kind are there are there any kind of standard processes, do's or don'ts as it relates to optimizing a paused customer? And I guess what I'm wondering is, you know, uh, again, from a loyalty standpoint, you're wondering what is that optimal communication cadence? What kinds of things should you and should you not be saying to retain those customers? Do you have a view to that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I would say um, you know, surprise and delight, like even though I'm a paused customer, um, delight me with some bonus offers, right? Hey, you know, we see that you've paused for X number of months, but here is a I'm tied to some new value that you are launching because subscribers, of course, like they want to understand the benefits that they are going to get. Um, so if you say, hey, there's a new um offering coming up or a new program, or I'm giving you some percentage off because you've been such a loyal customer, come back to the platform. Um, I think delighting them with such bonus capabilities, um, particularly when they come back to browse, not necessarily to reactivate, can be a great way to bring them back. Um, and you know, community and shared identity can be a great way to bring them back. Hey, you know, we see that um subscribers on our platform tend to do X or find this value Y. Um, we hope you will consider reconsider like something like that, bringing them, associating them back into the community that they had good value from in the past. That's another great way to do it as well.

Micro Subscriptions Replace Free Trials

SPEAKER_01

Very interesting. I I'd like to cherry pick another another data point here, uh, if I may. Um, micro subscriptions, short-term passes that replace traditional free trials convert 13% of users into ongoing subscribers. Um, further, uh, while trical trial conversion is stabilized at 34%, annual plans tend to generate 50 to 60% more revenue than monthly plans. That's giant. Think about how that rolls down to the bottom line. Those are real, real numbers there. Correct. So how does it work? Are there standards for that? Is this is this uh micro subscription idea uh better for certain industries than others? Where would you say it works best and how to optimize it? That's probably more than one question. I tend to do that. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00

It's okay. We we can unpack it one by one. Um so micro subscriptions is a trend that we are seeing um in digital media and entertainment, in healthcare supplements, etc., uh, where it's sort of it tends to replace this traditional free trial, like free trial of 90 days. Um instead, you give them a taste for specific value that they're looking for at that moment. So they are more likely to first sign up and experience the platform, the benefits. Um, you know, it's more prevalent in these verticals because it sort of lends itself, right? Hey, new show, I'm gonna binge watch it over a weekend. So a weekend pass is more interesting than, you know, like a free trial of 90 days. Um and then I enjoy it, I discover some other content. Okay, now I want to either upgrade or um I want to get another mini pass. So you keep them coming back to the platform. So that's that's the reason you know, micro subscriptions are getting more popular. Um, and it's also ways for the brand to reinfor keep reinforcing value. Hey, here is a chunk of new value now you can see with the platform, and then they retain, then lifetime value um increases over time.

SPEAKER_01

Would you see uh can you see in the in the data you have a view to uh what lifetime value looks like in uh a customer uh relationship based on micro subscriptions versus monthly or yearlies?

Upgrades, LTV, And Lower Tiers

SPEAKER_00

Um we didn't do a direct comparison. I you know I I can maybe get back to you on that. Okay, but we do feel uh we we have seen the trend that people who've experienced the platform seen benefit, they tend to convert to the annual plan, the premium plan, um, more often than not. Um I think YouTube had a great example. They introduced a lower-tiered um plan, and the concern was, oh, more people are gonna sign up for the lower-tiered plan and the premium offer will suffer. But what what they saw was they acquired more subscribers and then they saw upgrades from the lower tier to the higher tiered. And we think of the micro subscriptions as one of those options to bring in subscribers who are not yet ready to pay the full annual subscription fee.

SPEAKER_01

Sure. I would think it's a it's a it's a tremendous acquisition accelerator. And then you just have to figure out how to move them into deeper into the processes.

SPEAKER_00

Correct. And we think of subscriber engagement as a as a great way to do it. Now they're on the platform. Like Recurly has a product called Ricurly Engage. We offer sort of lifecycle engagement options where it's just in time prompts that you place in front of them that can help then guide them to these upgrades or upsells based on the value that they've already seen.

One‑Click, Trust‑Building Engagement

SPEAKER_01

Interesting. I'm thinking of about 13 ways this conversation could go sideways with just random questions I have for you on how that could work and you know the various we we talk to a lot of technology providers who are serving upstream technologies to the customer, to customer engagement in one form or another. Like that could mean marketing, or it could mean CX, or it could mean you know, Martech or loyalty, anything in between. And um I know these things that you're telling me. I've read the reports, but it's an entirely different realization when you get to see what conversions look like. It it's not theoretical anymore. Um happy to report I was on the right track, though.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, absolutely, right? Um, the key difference, like you said, there are many platforms today that help brands engage consumers. Um, the key difference in the type of engagement that we offer is it's a one-click to action, right? You present them with the right offer of an upgrade or um even a pause or a cancel, right? This is where you earn trust. Hey, I have not, you know, we've seen that you're not using the premium plan that you paid for. Um, would you rather that we downgraded you to our basic? So, you know, you're not wasting money on some value that you're not deriving. That brings bring builds like tremendous trust in the brand. And then if they say yes, then it's a one-click action that's connected to the billing system. Um, that is the difference between what we are able to do versus, you know, any other communication platform. Because then that sort of it's just information that they are presenting. They have to internalize it and then act on it later, which in most cases never happens. But this is a moment for the brand to build trust with their subscribers.

SPEAKER_01

There are purchase subscriptions and then there are kind of loyalty program subscriptions. Do you distinguish between the two of those and do they operate and act differently?

Loyalty Vs Membership In E‑Commerce

SPEAKER_00

Um, I mean, in the Recurly platform, you can set up uh digital subscriptions are what we do. And if you create a digital subscription for a membership that is 1999, it sort of acts no different than uh digital subscription to a media service, for example. Um, in the e-commerce world, though, there might be a difference. So we launched a recent product um called Recall E-Commerce for the Shopify ecosystem, where you you are subscribing to, you know, if you're a new parent, probably to diapers, diaper service for, you know, every month, et cetera. And then along with that, you also get a loyalty or a membership program that then allows you additional benefits, right? You can, you know, skip products or you can gift or you can um communicate like there's a community forum. Um, so those are additional perks that are free shipping, for example, that you know, similar to Amazon Prime. Um, and so in the in the physical goods space, I see sort of how they play a different role um than the digital goods space.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting. Does do those functions roll through Recurly or is that mostly part of what's native to Shopify?

SPEAKER_00

Uh the the membership, it's it can be set up through Recurly, yeah. The membership offer.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting. Very interesting. I'm looking at a statistic here that says um the big number is 52%. Know your subscriber. More than half of consumers, 52%, canceled at least one subscription in the past year, most often because they weren't using it. The implication is clear. Retention depends on understanding how subscribers engage and continuously reinforcing value. And again, I think um my analytical mind wants to break down how recurly determines value because there are many, many dimensions to value. Um, I'd love to hear from your standpoint, from a subscription lens. What are the factors that determine value that you can advise your clients on? Hey, this is moving upscale, this is moving downscale, here's how to adjust.

Why Users Cancel And How To Save

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, we the the metric that you referenced, we when we did the survey, we saw that the top three reasons for cancellation was, hey, I wasn't using it enough. So, you know, I'm I'm gonna put my attention elsewhere. Or the price was too high, um, or I sort of lost interest in this kind of a service. So if you take those three top three reasons, then you can sort of break down what value means for a subscriber through those, through that lens. Um, so if I wasn't using it enough, that means maybe during you know the onboarding, um, like we always think about optimizing time to value for a subscriber. Like the first 90 days is the highest risk of cancellation because they haven't seen um quick enough, the value quick enough. And so we advise our brands on how to optimize that time to value, right? Like within the first 90 days, like do interactive walkthroughs to lead them to this habit moment for them to take a key action, um, celebrate some milestones. Hey, your first um, you know, show has been watched or new, we we now understand your preferences. It's some kind of engagement with the subscriber for the time to value. And then if you take the second reason, which is price was too high, then you now have data that sort of tells you, okay, if how do I constantly engage with my subscriber at the moment of cancellation? You could say, hey, was the price too high? If they say yes, then say, can I give you a discount for the next three months, right? So if price is the factor, then you can sort of intercept at the moment of cancellation and give them different options. Um, and then if they've lost interest, that's where I think um the surprise and delight I spoke about earlier and constant subscriber engagement, like in the right moments as they are on the platform to reinforce value is important.

SPEAKER_01

So just to get a little bit into the technical weeds here, um, though the analysis and decisioning um to uh to serve those messages, is that part of the recurly platform, or does that usually come from somewhere else in the stack?

Real‑Time Prompts And Offers

SPEAKER_00

Um the recurly engage product now um actually actively tracks subscriber behavior on the platform. So if they are about to click the cancel button, we can actually tell that they are going to click the cancel button and then present them with hey, we are canceling, we see that you are about to cancel. Uh, what is the you know top reason? And we can present them with choices. They say, okay, price is too high, then immediately the Platform can then present an offer that is already pre-baked based on your flow sort of flow of what you want to do. If a subscriber is going to cancel, then we can present a discount or we can give them some months free, like various offers you can actually test between different cohorts of subscribers as well. So this is possible in the Ricoli Engage product.

SPEAKER_01

Very interesting. So all that decisioning can happen right there within the platform in real time.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01

In real time. So are those, again, to go even deeper into the technology weeds, are those decisions basically rule-based or can they be uh AI generated on the fly based on all of the growing inputs?

Building An AI Retention Agent

SPEAKER_00

I'm so glad you asked that. Um as of now, it's rule-based, but that is exactly what we are building right now. So we are building a retention agent that will combine the capabilities in the engagement product, in the recurly engaged product with data, the subscriber data that we have, so that the retention agent you can sort of prompt it with, hey, my churn rate, if it goes below X percent, you you can take action and um precede that with, okay, these is the kind of prompt that I want to deploy. And the agent can generate the prompt, right? Um there are like involuntary churn where payment uh failures happen, voluntary churn where they actually go to cancel. And the agent can decide, okay, what type of churn is this, what type of prompt I need to put in front of this. Um and you can set boundaries where, okay, the spend limit for this is for this campaign is X dollars. So the agent can decide, okay, within that spend limit, how do I optimize? Um, that is exactly what we are working on for our upcoming spring release.

SPEAKER_01

Exciting, very exciting. Well, hopefully it doesn't take us another eight months to have that conversation and understand what's what's really happening there. There are there are lots of decisioning platforms out there, and I I would guess that um you know, when this product launches, it will end up replacing that component that lives elsewhere in the stack.

SPEAKER_00

That is our hope.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. That's that's a big deal. So it could all be kind of contained right there within the subscription engine. Very, very cool.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, our our hope is that this sort of sets subscription growth on autopilot for our merchants, uh, where you know they don't need to go hire a growth PM. Now they have these agents within Requili working for them for their business intent.

SPEAKER_01

Very cool. Um if I may, cherry pick a few more items here.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, of course.

Loyalty Drivers: Transparency And Perks

SPEAKER_01

So um there was a whole section in your state of subscriptions report uh dedicated to loyalty. I know that listeners of this podcast will be especially keen to hear um some of those insights. So I'm just going to pick a few of them. Interesting to me that uh as I read through this, there were I would just call them leading loyalty indicators, pre-transaction, maybe, and post uh or call it lagging indicators, yeah, post-transaction. Yeah, um, but um some of this I think falls very consistently with some of the other data that I've been privy to, but there were a few a few items in here that I was kind of surprised by. So let's let's dig in a little bit. Um top factors that motivate loyalty, um, transparent building, billing with no hidden fees.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

I'd call that a lagging loyalty indicator because by the time someone has kind of thought through that, you're already a customer. But but it's nonetheless, it's still a factor in retention.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

We see we see all kinds of programs experiencing decay because uh their billing practices are antiquated, opaque, yeah, bad, you know, just plain terrible. So, so yeah. Um, as a leading, as a leading indicator, exclusive content and features, and that was uh the top factors that motivate lawyers. That was 40% of the people said that. That was a uh a big deal. And I'm wondering if you do you have the ability to, in this conversation, without any prep on this, to break down for us what kinds of things those might be, exclusive content and features, just so listeners can get an idea of what that might look like.

Data Privacy Rises In Importance

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think um some of the aspects that I touched on before, which is the small bonus features, right? Um delighting them with, hey, we've seen that you've you've been a loyal member for 12 months, here is a um discount coupon for you, or we've seen that you've you've been a loyal customer, here is a new um uh capability that we are allowing you to test for free for the next three months or you know, next billing cycle. Um, I think just engaging subscribers with uh teasing them with new capabilities or new content, depending on the vertical that you are in, um that gives you exclusive access that can that can pique their interest, make them feel special, and and then stay loyal to the brand. And if you are um, you know, newly is uh lifestyle brand on our platform, um, you know, if you are a brand like that, um exclusive drops of um that that is not available anywhere else, um, those things can uh sustain interest as well.

Flexibility As A Loyalty Pillar

SPEAKER_01

Very interesting. Um one of the things that um wasn't surprising to me, excellent customer service ranks very high at 40%. Yes. Um, one of the surprising items to me was that strong data privacy and data collection policies ranked so high. Um, my view, and is it's uh uh somewhat anecdotal, I only have seen a little bit of data on this, is that most people will nod in accordance to agreeing with strong data protection and privacy policies, but in reality, they don't really care. It's there, I have to trust you, you're doing a good thing, you look legitimate, great, let's move on. Um your data seems to suggest it really is a genuine aspect of loyalty.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I feel like when you ask people, um, and I I think Apple made this front and center in everybody's mind uh with the ask app not to track requests. When you open any app now for the first time you use it, it pops up right in your face. And then you have to then pause for a moment to think about oh, you know, of course I don't want an app to track my data and sell it and monetize it. Um, so I feel like that has sort of uh induced people or subscribers to think about what it means for brands to have access, not only access to their data, but what are they doing with it? And this then bubbles up to top of mind. Um, if a brand can, you know, strongly emphasize that, hey, your data is not for sale, this is just for us to give you a better experience and prep manage preferences, et cetera, then that builds loyalty and trust.

SPEAKER_01

One of the other uh data points here that was surprising to me, just in terms of its ranking on the rest of this list, is um you call it flexible commitment, easy to pause or switch plans. And we spoke about pausing earlier.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Ethics Vary By Vertical And Demographic

SPEAKER_01

To me personally, again, this is purely anecdotal. I've seen no data because it's the first time I've seen this report, but um to me, that would seem to rank much higher in loyalty. It's it hits one of my values working in and talking with people in loyalty. Um, loyalty programs are almost exclusively built for the benefit of the program sponsor. Uh nothing wrong with that, but um, but there's a lot of rhetoric that goes into framing it as somehow benefiting the customer or or you know, or giving the customer what they want. Yet this idea of giving customers the ability to pause or switch plans with ease really is customer-first approach. It's a it's a customer-first offering. And um seems to me like that would be for me, that would probably be number one on the list. You you seem to actually be caring about how I'm gonna perceive and interact with you and giving me an out if it doesn't go so well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. Um I think data privacy is higher just because you hear constantly um in the media and other product experiences about, you know, how data is getting proliferated, monetized, etc. And so that's top of mind and hence likely what ranked higher. Um, but we are seeing that subscribers do value both the transparency as well as the flexibility in being able to pause and cancel easily. And that's where we advise brands that um not just for compliance or regulatory reasons, you know, just to build that trust, earn that trust, you know, make it easy to pause and cancel.

Final Takeaways And Report Invite

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's a big deal. It's a really big deal. Um, I can't wait to have this conversation with my colleagues and tell them what I've learned. Um, and one other one here, which is not surprising, but I would love to, I think I would love to hear your take on this. Um, ethical and sustainable practices was at the bottom of this particular list at 12%. Ethical and sustainable practices was a huge factor two, three years ago. It was massive. It was, I'm sure it would have ranked much higher on the list than it does today.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, there are cultural reasons and political reasons why that's uh not quite as prominent anymore.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um yet I think that um on the consumer side, it still is a relatively important factor. I'd love to get your take on that, unless it's too sensitive a topic, in which case we don't have to go there.

SPEAKER_00

Um, I can give you my personal take. I think it depends on again the the vertical, the demographic that your subscribers belong to. Um, you know, younger demographic, health and fitness vertical, you will see this ranked higher than you know, older demographic um with say travel, for example. Right. Um, so I do think that, you know, if I'm buying uh a nutritional supplement from you, I do want to know that you know, all the ingredients, etc., you're telling me the truth, there are ethical practices. Um, but if it's a show that I'm paying for for a subscription, I it's not top of mind for me. So that I so my take is it sort of depends on the demographic of the subscriber as well as the vertical.

SPEAKER_01

Fair enough. It's easy for me to to uh assume that my point of view is universal, which it absolutely is not, but I forget that sometimes. Well, Priya, I thank you so much for your you and your team's persistence in getting this scheduled. I'm glad we finally talked. Um, I I want to yeah, and and that again, there's so much more to talk about here. Um, this is literally just the highlights, a few of the highlights. I would encourage um, even if you you don't operate a subscription program per se, take a look at this report because it absolutely informs how consumers are thinking about their relationships with brands right now. There's an awful lot to take away from here. So Priya um Lakshmi Narayanan is chief product officer at Recurly. And um, I can't wait until we can do this again.

SPEAKER_00

Fantastic. You even did better this time pronouncing my last name.

SPEAKER_01

A few more tries, I'll get it just right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, thank you so much, Mike, for having me.

SPEAKER_01

My pleasure.

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Mike Giambattista

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