Managing Magazine Subscriptions Using CiviMember
The Monthly Magazine
Background
The Monthly Magazine wanted to replace it's existing subscription management system with one that could be integrated with their drupal website.
Challenges
The biggest challenges were
- rethinking how to deal with a system that didn't track physical issues of the magazine.
- gift subscriptions. At the time when the Monthly looked at CiviCRM there was no obvious way to manage Gift Subscriptions. The Monthly discussed the best approach to take with the Core Team and agreed to sponsor the functionality for a different person to pay for a subscription into Core for back office transactions. The approach for front end was introduced via a custom module
Solution
Its open source and shares an incredible community of users who have a mutual interest in innovation and remaining relevant.
Its DNA incorporates great campaigning strategy from respected electioneers and fundraisers and it has proven ability to run big supporter databases and to generate revenue from memberships (or subscriptions in the case of a magazine as we will show).
CiviCRM also wins on setup cost.
Many proprietary rivals consider modules such as Mail, Reports and Membership as optional extras but CiviCRM has them built in.
Other CRMs typically need you to develop your website to fit their system (hard work), whereas, CiviCRM gives you a head start because its pages are automatically integrated in Drupal (easy!).
Functionality
The Monthly repurposed CiviMember for Subscription Management
Project images (click to enlarge)
