Our Hometown Blog

One huge benefit to taking subscription orders through your website is the ability to enable Auto Renewing (or Recurring) subscriptions with the use of Stripe, our preferred supported payment gateway. Auto Renewing subscriptions are important because they represent predictable revenue that you can depend on being there on a monthly or yearly basis, and serve as a great method of retaining subscribers who might otherwise let their subscriptions lapse.

Once a reader is subscribed to an Auto Renewing membership, they are automatically charged and renewed at the end of each billing cycle, whether that be a monthly or annual plan. Instead of chasing down subscribers with renewal reminders and asking them if they’d like to subscribe for another year, these subscribers are automatically renewed — saving your staff time and effort while also saving the reader the burden of having to remember to renew.

Auto Renewing subscriptions can also be a great way for publications that traditionally offer annual plans to introduce a month-to-month option. A reader may be hesitant to pay for a full-year subscription up front for $100, but if they subscribe to a recurring monthly plan for about $10/mo and end up keeping it for at least a year, you’re pocketing some extra money.

It is also worth noting that although these memberships must be purchased through the website, they do not have to be exclusively digital memberships — you can sell print subscriptions using the auto-renew model as well, as long as orders are placed through the website.

Setting up Auto Renewing Memberships requires a few extra steps compared to setting up a standard membership, but the most important thing to remember is that you should NEVER change an existing One-Time Payment Membership into a Recurring Membership, or vice-versa, as it will cause problems for any existing subscribers. If you’re thinking about trying to auto-renewing memberships for the first time, you’ll want to introduce them as a brand new membership option.

Our-Hometown’s Support Staff is always available should you need help setting up a membership or if you’d just like us to take a look and make sure things are configured properly. Just drop us an e-mail at ops@our-hometown.com and we’ll get back to you ASAP!

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