Every profession and industry has their annual trade show to find out where the industry is headed and what our colleagues are finding as opportunities and challenges.  As a recurring payments & billing professional, I look forward to meeting with great individuals to stay abreast of new developments in the industry and expand my horizons.

After attending Steve Casco’s CNPExpo in Florida earlier this year, the Direct Response Forum in Boston will be a little different from a traditional trade show.  No booths or exhibit areas that contend for your time in Boston. This Forum will focus on practical information you can implement within your own organization and the exchange of best practices.

The topic’s of interest to our team at BluSynergy are:

• Decipher Interchange and Other Pass-through Fees – We’ve been converting many of our clients from tiered/bundled pricing to Interchange Plus and see that the merchant statements just keep getting more and more complex. This session should provide good insights.
• Innovative Recurring Services can Grow (almost) any Business – we have some interesting/unconventional clients, I’d love to see what other innovators have come up with. It’s been interesting to watch the subscription retail space: Shoedazzle sells womens fashion on a subscription, dollarshaveclub is challenging Gillete’s monopoly with $1 razors, and Citruslane makes it a breeze for parents of new-borns to acquire best-of-breed products for $25/mo.
• Bridging the Gap Between Payment Processing and Marketing – this one is close to our heart. Our forte is our ability to tune our flexible billing platform into a messaging machine, since each statement or receipt represents an opportunity to present a customized marketing message or upsell offer. It will be great to find out what everyone else is doing.
• Social Commerce: Friends With Benefits? – Hmm, I’m not sure what this entails. We’ve been doing some work on closing the referral loop via Facebook, so we are curious about this one.
• React, Return, Recycle - Backend Retry Logic – Yup, if you’re a recurring biller, this is going a make an appreciable difference in your revenue. From account updater, to intelligent recycling of declined payments, to progressive customer messaging, this is one talk you would not want to miss.

Focusing on recurring billing & payments, BluSynergy believes this year's event will provide great info to our colleagues in finding ways to find ways to generate savings, reduce fraud, and manage risks.  As an industry, we have the power to move our industry forward and prevent unnecessary regulations from hindering our work.