Through exchanges with our customers during visits or through our user group meetings, the latter (or the organizations for which they work) seek to develop new products to compensate for the reduction in their subscription portfolio. Part of this product development strategy fits in where customers are already present. And where are they? If they are part of the 99.9% of users, then they will be on the platforms of Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
This can be a controversial move, as what publishers have to give up is now well known when they "partner" with these platforms - whether for revenue or customer data. So why sacrifice so much value?
- There is brand recognition. Customers are likely on these platforms and familiar with them. Access is simple. The buzzword "smooth experience" applies here.
- These platforms have all the necessary infrastructure to join it in a single day: content delivery, payment, mobile format, etc.
- These platforms are sales channels that simply cannot be ignored.
However, there is a flip side to this coin...publishers retrieve very little (if any) key data from customers managed on these platforms.
Is it possible to have both? Yes !
At the beginning of 2018, we were contacted by the American Medical Association (AMA) to develop an integration with the Apple App Store. The AMA was to launch the JAMA Network Listen app , which provides free podcasts of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) articles with the option of a paid subscription to earn Continuing Medical Education (CEMC) credits. A lot of time and effort went into launching the app, both from a product and technical marketing perspective, but WADA also needed to ensure that these new app subscriptions could exist alongside other subscriptions. of a client (JAMA Paper, JAMA Digital, etc.). Fortunately, Advantage hosted these other subscriptions and AdvantageCS had a long history of integrating with other systems.
In broad outline, the flow is simple. In the JAMA Network Listen app, a customer logs in through AMA's single sign-on (SSO). The SSO platform recognizes the customer in Advantage and establishes the "key" link between the platforms. When a customer makes an in-app purchase of a subscription, an intermediary system sends that request to Advantage to process as a digital subscription. Advantage can then receive events from the App Store (eg, cancellation) or it can periodically poll the App Store for all updates for a given subscription.
This integration offers WADA three major benefits:
- Financial Statements – digital subscriptions can be combined with the rest of the reference financial statements, with the objective of accurate subscriber revenue and debt.
- Customer Service – Customer Service Representatives have a complete picture of a customer's activity in Advantage.
- Marketing Opportunities – aggregate subscriber data provides marketers with a more dynamic set of data for promotional campaigns or new product development.
Pour le produit JAMA Network Listen, l'AMA a réussi à atteindre ses principaux objectifs commerciaux et techniques. Elle a lancé un produit de niveau mondial pour son réseau JAMA en utilisant l'une des plus grandes plateformes de distribution au monde tout en conservant la propriété des données clés. AdvantageCS a été ravi de collaborer avec notre partenaire sur ce projet très réussi.
"This new integration between Advantage and the Apple and Google Play stores is an exciting step that the JAMA Network was pleased to take in order to meet our audience where they are - on apps and on their smaller devices." We are pleased that a solution could be found to streamline sales and automate financial statements,” said Paul Gee, Vice President of Digital Product Management and Development at AMA.
Contact us if you need a partner to help you develop innovative solutions that deliver additional revenue without sacrificing data.