Tips For Subscription Based Sites

The online subscription has become a growing economy that is shifting the way we see purchases, calculate revenue and issuing in a new era. A relationship marketing dynamic that banks on profitable long-term clientele and driving consistent repeat purchase for continued RIO. Gone are the days of subscriptions being solely used for publications like magazines, software or online media like Netflix. These days you can subscribe to companies who ship weekly or monthly packages of coffee, socks, food, shaving products and just about anything you can think of. Various industries are adopting the model and who knows one of your competitors may be thinking of a way to augment their customer acquisition by adding a subscription business model.

Your success will rely on

1. Brand

Your success as a subscription platform will rely heavily on your brand and branding techniques. Keep the following fundamentals in mind when shaping your brand and its messaging.

• Having a consistent message
• Driving the value proposition
• Associating the service with your brand
• Being a pioneer in the subscription model within your industry

2. Technology / ecosystem

When using a subscription platform your potential customers would like to know the following questions are intuitively answered when using your platform.

• Is it easy to use?
• Is it easy to make a repeat purchase?
• Is it easy to cancel a subscription?
• Is it easy to pause a subscription?
• Does it have flexible payment options?
• Does it have Flexible packages?
• Does it cater for mobile users?
• Does it make it easy to get others involved?

3. 1 2 1 communication strategy

CRM is important to any company but never more so than with a subscription-based business. You will have to keep the following in mind when setting up your CRM plan.

• Identify customer touch points
• Keep communication clear
• Keep communication constant
• Communication should be cross-platform - email, app, site notifications or SMS
• Personalise communication as far as possible

Now that you've got a brand that speaks to customers, a platform that answers clients questions and a CRM strategy that keeps them informed and interested its time to measure the results.

Subscription Model metrics

Marketers especially digital markets live and die by lead generation, driving new users, repeat users, conversion to sales and revenue per channel but have hardly been concerned with customer lifetime value. While these are all important metrics and lead generation should always be a focus of your business a subscription model requires a little more of a deep dive into data, namely:

1. Lifetime customer value
2. Customer retention/churn rates
3. Customer engagement
4. Referrals from existing customers

Learn from your customers, acquire a combination of quantitative and qualitative data and listen to what they have to say. This is a relationship and communication should go both ways. A relationship based on mutual respect, when one talks, the other listens and if you can keep that going you're in for long-term success.

Considering a subscription model?

All businesses are generating revenue from loyal customers, regardless of which channel they use to reach your service. If you're seeing positive movement on:

• Returning users
• A large enough audience of brand loyal customers
• A decent percentage of repeat businesses

Those could all be indicators that you may be primed for a subscription model.

Contact us

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Tags: CRM, How to