Picture the scene. Your favourite delivery box is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning, but you’re not going to be in. You rush to log-in and rectify the issue, only to realise you’ve forgotten your password. Cue frustration and panic. Sound familiar?
Along with having too much product, subscription management issues are one of the prime reasons why customers churn. We hear these problems from the DTC brands we work with every day. So, we’ve come up with 5 failsafe solutions to the subscription management dilemma.
Offer more flexibility than yoga moves
Subscriptions tend to work like clockwork, but humans don’t. Life often gets in the way and suddenly, you don’t need that extra bag of espresso beans. Pact Coffee understands this and has introduced subscription management options that “offer more flexibility than yoga moves.”
From re-scheduling, through to sending ASAP, there are a number of manage my subscription options for when life gets in the way.
Solve the frequency issue
As we mentioned earlier, one of the key reasons customers churn is too much product. We’re calling on DTC subscription legends Pact again for a solution to this common problem. The brand has a handy frequency calculator on their website, which lets customers do the math on how many cups of coffee is enough for them per bag and how often they’ll need a new one. This is very easy to implement and a surefire way to avoid buyer’s remorse, leading to churn.
Offer log-in free subscription management
Imagine if you never needed to log-in ever again, and could take control of your subscription in a couple of clicks. Well, we don’t mean to toot our own horn but we’re actually beta testing this right now with our DTC subscription clients. We’ve built a tool that plugs into your existing email and SMS flows and allows customers to skip, pause or add products to their subscription in seconds. It authenticates based on the email or sms and is built for speed and results.
Educate customers
Sometimes, you can offer customers all the flexibility in the world, but if they don’t know about it they’re still likely to get frustrated and churn. When you work at a DTC brand, you know your own subscription management tools like the back of your hand. However, customers themselves aren't necessarily aware of where to find the ‘delay’ button, so often straight up cancel.
Educating customers about DTC subscription management is easier said than done, and we’d advise taking a multi-channel approach. From feeding education into your existing email / sms flows, splashing it on a homepage banner to writing it into your social bios, there are plenty of ways to make noise about subscription management.
Sell the benefits of subscription vs. store
Last but not least, making your value proposition clear to the end customer is crucial for positive subscription engagement and management. Many subscriptions can actually save customers money, such as in the example from Beauty Pie. This DTC beauty brand offers luxury cosmetics and skincare, without the hefty price tag. By cutting out the middleman, Beauty Pie is able to offer customers amazing products at a snip of the usual retail price. The brand is loud in its approach to getting their message heard, and this feeds into the previous point about the importance of education.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are many ways that DTC brands can help customers to manage their subscriptions and take control of their account. To avoid high churn and improve retention, brands need to communicate subscription value through the entire customer lifecycle, make it super easy for customers to manage their subscription, and provide as much communication as possible to give them that agency.
To find out how Blueprint can help you to get customers to order again, try a subscription and stay loyal, why not chat with us today?
