Introduction to subscriptions
The ways that consumers are buying is changing, with over 30% of all UK retail sales online it’s never been more important for brands to create and deliver killer ecommerce strategies to stay ahead of the trends. However, with more and more merchants going online - competition is getting stronger and businesses are looking for more ways to reach their customer base.
Subscriptions just keep on growing
Since 2017, subscription eCommerce has grown by 800% - the convenience of not having to keep on re-purchasing products you know and love is clearly the winning recipe. Using the power of platforms such as ReCharge and Shopify allow merchants to deliver subscriptions overnight. Subscription options not only provide purchase convenience but have shown to maximise the lifetime value (LTV) of customers with repeat purchases already mapped out. The reproductive health brand, LOLA, saw a 23% increase in customer lifetime value when rolling out a subscription plan.
What are the benefits of subscriptions?
Subscription offering within a store offer benefits to both customers and merchants. There are plenty of great business reasons to offer subscriptions:
- Repeat customers acquisition costs are much lower meaning you can improve your overall cost-per-customer.
- Minimise sales spikes - subscriptions offer the ability to create a consistent sales flow and not just relying on key times of the year such as Christmas or Black Friday.
- Improve the customer relationship - subscriptions offer the opportunity to really create a great relationship when you offer key communication through each transaction, upsell emails and targeting with tools such as Blueprint SMS.
Keep Your Customers For Longer
One of the biggest challenges with a subscription offering onsite is keeping customers engaged and preventing customers from cancelling their subscription with your store. Put simply, the longer a customer remains subscribed to your products the higher the average lifetime value per customer will be. The rate in which customers cancel their subscription is known as the churn rate, it’s vital to find ways to keep customers loving your product every step of the way.
How do you maximise the lifetime value of subscriptions customers
Now there’s a number of ways to improve the lifetime value of subscriptions is to always provide clear and concise information to prevent any surprises that might trigger a cancellation. This can be done initially from the design and UI of when the customer purchases the subscription, but there is a whole world of opportunity to stay in contact with a customer beyond their initial sign up.
SMS has proven to have up to a 99% open rate compared to 20-30% on emails, therefore why not utilise Blueprint’s native integration with ReCharge to send SMS automated messages at sign up, recurring checkout, upcoming charge and subscription check in.
Why You Should Choose SMS for your Shopify store?
We work with a large number of Shopify merchants and the most common request we see is how can we improve the value of our customers, although SMS is not a new technology - the way we leverage it with an eCommerce strategy most certainly is. Charle, as a Shopify accredited ecommerce agency, based in central London, are so excited to see how SMS is going to transform the future or communicate with online customers.
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