Subscription business model

Subscription Management 101 for Experienced Merchants: Optimizing Your Business

So, you run a subscription business and you’re doing well? That means you know, no matter how well you’re doing, there’re always ways to improve and generate more revenue. And when you want to improve, you’ll need to optimize your business to deliver stellar customer experiences, serve your customers better, and make more sales.

But how do you go about doing this? We’re here to help! In this post, we’ll show you some actionable strategies you can implement to optimize your business.

Maria Fernanda Guerrero

May 20, 2022
4 min to read

But how do you go about doing this? We’re here to help! In this post, we’ll show you some actionable strategies you can implement to optimize your business.

Prioritize Customer Experience

In a competitive market filled with similar subscriptions, both in features, value, and price, it’s imperative that you prioritize the customer experience. For example, when faced with three similarly priced subscription options, customers will almost always choose the product that provides a better overall customer experience.

But the question is: how do you improve customer experience? Simply put, the foundation of providing stellar customer experiences is building and nurturing relationships with your customers. If you start building these relationships, trust and loyalty will soon follow.

Without real engagement you won’t retain your customers and won’t generate recurring revenue. In addition, the customer experience you offer could be what sets you apart from the competition and allows you to attract more customers.

Implement an Omnichannel Approach

Another exceptionally effective tool for optimizing your subscription business is by implementing a truly Omnichannel approach when selling your business model and helping your customers. In fact, omnichannel approaches could be one of the subscription trends that will define 2022.

What exactly is an Omnichannel approach? It’s when you seamlessly interact to sell to and engage with your customers across several channels: from email to social media and your website. A quality Omnichannel strategy makes every new interaction with your customer feel like a continuation of the last.

Ultimately, when you use an Omnichannel approach in your subscription business you’ll build stronger relationships with your customers, which, as mentioned earlier, fosters trust and loyalty and allows you to generate more revenue.

Get Pricing Right

While it’s obvious that you want to get your pricing right, the process behind this can be quite confusing. This is simply because, nowadays, a one-size-fits-all pricing approach doesn’t work. In other words, you can’t use a single, static pricing approach when you price your subscriptions. If you do, you’ll limit your opportunities to upsell or downsell to both new and existing customers.

As such, you should rather consider a dynamic, flexible, and tiered pricing model based on your customers’ needs and demands. This will, for example, enable existing customers to scale down if affordability becomes an issue, or new customers to scale up if they need more of your products.

Keep in mind that your pricing strategy should also be aligned with your goals and objectives. For example, when developing your pricing strategy, you could focus on acquiring new customers by offering lower prices or providing more value at higher prices. No matter what strategy you choose, when you get pricing right, you’ll attract new customers, retain existing ones, and meet their needs better.

Reduce Customer Churn

When you want to optimize your subscription business and generate sustainable recurring income, it’s crucial that you reduce customer churn. As such, you want to retain as many customers as possible and increase the lifetime value of every customer.

Now, improving the customer experience, getting pricing right, and many of the other strategies mentioned here will go a long way in reducing customer churn, but it’s inevitable that customers will cancel their subscriptions. In these cases, you should find out why they’ve canceled.

To do this, you simply need to ask them, and you can do this in a variety of ways including, for example, customer feedback. Once you have this feedback, you’ll have insight into where you can improve your offering to retain more customers.

    Provide More Product Value

    We’ve already mentioned that pricing your subscriptions higher but providing more value can be a valid pricing strategy. Let’s now look at some of the ways you can do this in more detail.

    For one, you can use discounts effectively to make more sales. Keep in mind, though, that you should carefully consider what discounts you implement, as higher discounts are typically associated with more churn while lower discounts are associated with lower churn. So, the discount strategy you implement should also be consistent with your goals.

    Another effective strategy to provide more value is by implementing a loyalty system, where customers will receive points and benefits for making more purchases or referring others to your business. Finally, samples or free products can also be very effective at not only providing more value, but also promoting your subscriptions to new customers.

      Communicate Effectively

      As mentioned earlier, an Omnichannel approach can be a valuable tool to increase engagement with your customers and, in the process, a thought out strategy to build trust and relationships. Turns out 90% of customers expect consistent interactions across channels. Keep in mind, however, that no matter if you use an Omnichannel approach or not, effective communication is a must if you want to optimize your business.

      Simply put, effective communication is an opportunity for you to nurture relationships with your customers and understand their needs and expectations more clearly. Remember, though, to only share valuable content with your customers.

      Optimize Subscription Frequency

      To grow your subscription business, it’s crucial that you optimize your subscription frequency. If not, your customer churn will increase. For example, if a customer’s product runs out before the end of the subscription period, they’ll likely cancel sooner rather than later. At the same time, if customers have too much product left when the next shipment arrives, they’ll also cancel.

      This means you’ll need to analyze how customers consume your product and if your subscription model meets their needs. You may need to offer several subscription options for customers who have different requirements. However, when doing this, always ensure that the default option aligns with what most of your customers’ needs.

      Use Data to Your Advantage

      An often forgotten fact is that, with any business, you’ll gather vast amounts of data, and you can use this data to your advantage. And with subscription businesses, this is no different. But how can you use this data?

      First of all, keep in mind that your data will give you profound insights about what your customers want and expect. These insights represent the true power of data, ‘cause they shine a light into what your next objectives should be, in order to meet your customers’ exact expectations and increase revenue.

       

      It goes further than this, though. By analyzing your data you’ll also learn which of your subscriptions perform best, conversion rates on different products, average order values, and more. This way you’ll know what products you should focus on in your marketing efforts, plus what strategies you can implement to increase your sales and every customer’s lifetime value.

      Ultimately, analyzing your data can be the fuel you need to drive more growth in your subscription business.

      Use the Right Subscription Management Solution

      Finally, to optimize your business, you should choose the right subscription management solution. If you’re already using a solution and not reaching the objectives you’re carefully setting, you may need to evaluate whether your current solution is the right one for your business. If not, you should consider migrating a subscription management that is compatible with the strategies you really need.

      This will typically be the case if you outgrow your current solution, because it no longer provides all the features you need to run your business effectively and efficiently. It could also be something you consider when your partner offers the features you need, but you’re ready for more advanced features in order to take your business to the next level.

      Ultimately, to fully optimize your business, your solution should have all the features and capabilities that will allow you to implement most, if not all, of the strategies mentioned here.

      Isn’t it Time You Optimized Your Subscription Business?

      Hopefully, this post helped illustrate some strategies you can implement to optimize your subscription business. With these strategies in mind, are you ready to boost your sales with a subscription model 100% integrated with your team?

      If you are, we invite you to discover our Subscriptions Cloud service. We offer subscription migrations that allow you to migrate quickly and easily without the time or major efforts. Our platform is one of the best subscription tools for ecommerce, and our team can support you to turn one-time clients into loyal and recurring customers. As well as to create long-term relationships with them and be able to generate consistent revenue.

      To learn more about how we can help you, visit subscriptionscloud.com

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