The OTT Billing Blueprint: 5 Tactics to Boost Revenue and Retention
Mastering effective billing strategies is crucial to boost OTT revenue and retention. As consumer preferences and market dynamics continue to shift, OTT providers must adapt their billing approaches to meet evolving demands and maximise revenue potential.
One of the primary challenges facing OTT platforms is maintaining a balance between generating revenue and retaining subscribers. Effective billing strategies play a central role in achieving this balance by offering flexible options that cater to diverse user preferences while ensuring sustainable monetisation.
Here are our five top tips for mastering effective billing strategies for OTT platforms:
- Understand Your Audience: Analyse user data to gain insights into subscriber preferences and payment habits. Tailor your billing models to align with user expectations, driving higher conversion rates and reducing churn.
- Offer Multiple Payment Options: Provide a variety of payment methods to accommodate diverse user preferences and geographical considerations. A seamless and convenient payment experience enhances customer satisfaction and retention.
- Implement Dynamic Pricing Strategies: Leverage data analytics and machine learning algorithms to segment users into different pricing tiers based on behaviour and consumption patterns. Offer personalised pricing plans tailored to individual preferences and usage levels to increase subscription upgrades and maximise revenue.
- Maintain Transparent Billing Practices: Clearly communicate subscription fees, billing cycles, and any additional charges to build trust and confidence among subscribers. Offer flexible billing options such as monthly, yearly, or pay-per-view plans to empower users to choose the option that best suits their needs.
- Focus on Customer Experience: Prioritise a user-friendly billing experience by providing intuitive billing interfaces, easy-to-understand billing statements, and responsive customer support. Enhancing the overall customer experience fosters satisfaction and loyalty, driving long-term success for your OTT platform.
Mastering effective billing strategies is essential for OTT platforms looking to thrive in today’s competitive landscape. By understanding your audience, offering multiple payment options, implementing dynamic pricing strategies, maintaining transparent billing practices, and focusing on customer experience, you can optimise revenue generation, reduce churn, and ensure long-term success.
Interested in diving deeper into billing strategies? Download our latest white paper, ‘The Profit Playbook,’ for valuable insights into strategies that reduce churn and ensure long-term revenue maximisation. Additionally, explore ‘The Essentials of OTT Monetisation,’ our e-guide that delves into the intricacies of subscription, transactional, and advertising models.
If you’d like to discuss monetisation models further or explore the capabilities of Magine Pro’s advanced billing engine, connect with our experienced team. Visit our blog for more resources and explore our entire collection of white papers available for download. Stay updated with the latest news, events, partnerships, and product announcements by subscribing to the Magine Pro e-newsletter.
Top 5 strategies to improve OTT subscriber retention
Subscriber retention is essential for any business, but especially in OTT, given the choice of services and the propensity of viewers to regularly change or alternate subscriptions.
To grow sustainably, streaming service operators need to focus on converting new customers and retaining existing ones. Fortunately, there are several ways to keep your subscribers happy and engaged, such as offering exclusive content, early access to new features or releases, personalised recommendations, and customer service that goes above and beyond. By implementing a subscriber retention strategy, you can make sure your business grows sustainably for years to come.
With that in mind, we’ve put together our top five strategies to improve subscriber retention:
1. Customer feedback loop
It’s essential to create a space where customers feel heard and their concerns are taken seriously – even if you can’t always immediately resolve the issues they’re experiencing. All feedback is valuable, and negative feedback can be especially useful in identifying areas that need improvement. Ignoring customer feedback or brushing it off will only lead to frustration and eventual retention. Create a strong customer service and retention strategy to ensure your customers always feel like their voices are heard and valued.
2. Leverage your data
The cost of customer acquisition is high, so it’s important to keep your existing customers engaged and coming back for more. And one of the best ways to do that is to understand their viewing habits and cater content around their interests. Fortunately, with today’s data-driven insights, tracking customer behaviour and developing targeted campaigns that resonate with your audience is easier than ever. Leverage your data and gets to know your customers; you can build specific content categories around their interests and personalise comms for select groups to highlight what’s available.
3. Regular and engaging communication
Keep your subscribers engaged and interested in your content to keep them coming back for more. A well-considered communication strategy is essential for achieving this. You can personalise your communication based on data you know about your subscribers, such as their favourite actors or genres, and highlight up-and-coming releases that they might be interested in. Stay top of their minds with regular outreach that is engaging, informative and on brand for your business.
4. Reward loyalty
It costs much less to keep a customer than to acquire a new one, so rewarding loyalty makes good economic sense. There are a number of ways to show appreciation for loyal customers, such as offering discounts, access to exclusive content early or for free, or even a personalised thank-you email. Whatever the method, the goal should be to personalise the user experience as much as possible. After all, happy customers who feel valued and appreciate your brand values are more likely to stick around.
5. Continue to educate
At Magine Pro, we believe customer education should continue long after conversion and onboarding. Continuing to educate customers throughout their journey with your brand is essential. Build educational campaigns around your streaming service, highlighting valuable features such as building Watchlists, Continue Watching, etc. By helping users make the most of their subscriptions, you’re more likely to keep them loyal and engaged. In addition, these campaigns can help to create a more positive customer experience, which is essential for driving long-term growth.
Want to learn more ways to increase subscriber retention and engagement for your streaming service? Our white paper ‘OTT Discovery: How to stand out amongst the crowd‘ features some great insights. You can also check our blog for more practical advice.
If you’re interested in learning more about our flexible OTT platform, our partners, and how we can help you build and launch a successful OTT business, get in touch with us today.