Dose #82: Do This to Keep New Subscribers

Matt here with your weekly Subscription Prescription 💊

This dose is all about what you should focus on with BFCM in the rearview mirror. The most important things include onboarding new customers, upcoming order notifications, and ensuring you retain everyone you’ve just acquired.

There’s an invisible problem plaguing subscription companies: accidental churn. This is when an otherwise happy customer’s legitimate payment is falsely declined by the credit card company, resulting in their subscription getting canceled.

Subscription Prescription has a new partner and sponsor that tackles this very problem: Butter Payments. They focus on reducing accidental or involuntary churn and keeping customers who want to be on their subscription around. The problem with churn like this is that a lot of customers don’t know they are being canceled and don’t want to be canceled.

Butter is able to automatically resolve those failed payments that otherwise would have led to churn and keep your recurring revenue and subscription customers as healthy as possible.

For this week’s dose, I’ve kept the writing shorter and to the point. If you’d like to hear more about how to set yourself up for long-term retention success, check out the podcast. I spend more time and go down a few rabbit holes.

Retention Retention Retention

BFCM is about sales. Acquisition. Hopefully, it went well for you! Now that we’re wading out of the biggest selling days of the year let’s turn to something equally important. Keeping those customers around for the long haul.

I know a million other things are pulling on your attention, including getting fulfillment and any order changes done seamlessly, so this dose is in typical Subscription Prescription fashion: short and to the point.

Getting these few pieces right will go a long way to improving retention for these new customers. Let’s dive in!

Build on the Excitement

We’ve all felt it - that thrill from making a new purchase. Customers hope they’ve found the answer to a big problem or something new and exciting.

Whatever their reason for purchase, let’s lean into that excitement. Are you onboarding new subscribers to their subscription?

I’m sure you send new order emails, but do you email someone explaining how the subscription works? The opportunity here is to remind them what they are getting (fresher pet food, weight loss, deeper sleep, brighter hair…) from a subscription.

You can also explain where customers go to manage their order. This is the safest point in the customer journey to explain where they go to make changes. Remember, we don’t tell people where to cancel but rather where (and how) to make any changes.

The final piece of building excitement comes down to unboxing! How can you make this a bit more special? You don’t need to create an entirely new shipping parcel. Instead, you can use stickers, inserts, and fun materials to enhance the experience.

Beware That First Renewal

Don’t let someone cancel. They’ve made that first purchase, but you need them to make it to the first renewal, and then the second, and on and on.

Instead of thinking about ways to restrict this process, let’s instead lean into what works.

One of the most significant opportunities for subscription brands is how they approach the upcoming order notification, either by email or SMS. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel here, but you should lean harder into two things: your brand and the subscription outcome.

If you have a fun brand, use more of that copy and color in your sends! If you’re buttoned up, this email can also be that way. The point is to reinforce the brand psychology behind the original purchase.

Even more important, however, is reminding subscribers why they subscribed in the first place. You don’t need to over-segment everyone by product here, but there should be some general outcomes all subscribers want. For example, Obvi sells collagen - so telling someone that they have shinier skin on the way is a must.

I love how iHeartDogs tells subscribers how many shelter pets they’re feeding with their next order. That hits hard.

Even if you don’t have a mission-led brand like that, consider what people are excited about with your order!

Retention Begins with Acquisition

All that I’ve said for comes back to this: customers come to you with hopes, expectations, and ideas of how things will work. When you start onboarding them and communicating with them along those lines, you set the stage for better retention.

For anyone struggling with passive or involuntary churn, check out how Butter Payments - our newest sponsor and partner - can help solve that for you.

That’s it for this week’s dose - stay tuned for Dose #83 next Tuesday!

- Matt Holman 🩺

The Subscription Doc