Dose #86: Quick Tips to Grow Subs in 2024

Matt here with your weekly Subscription Prescription 💊

A quick dose to help with planning subscription growth in 2024. We cover a few basics on how subscriptions can grow and where to focus in each area. You can grab links to previous issues to dive deeper, and we have a brand new interview with Chelsie Arvizue, the Director of Ecommerce at Ripple Foods.

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.

This week’s dose is different on the podcast and YouTube! I interview Chelsie Arvizu from Ripple Foods to hear all about their multichannel subscription strategy. Give it a list here:

Or give it a watch here (yes, we have a new YouTube channel):

Three Ways to Grow Subscriptions

This week’s dose is quick and to the point. Like me, you’re probably dealing with a mountain of things this week. Trying to get 2024 off to a strong start.

Let’s review the three key ways you can grow subscriptions:

1. Acquire more subscribers

2. Retain more subscribers

3. Increase the value of each subscriber

Working on all three at once is a bit daunting. I don’t want any brand thinking that they should go all-in on all three, because it’s a moving target. Changing something on acquisition can wreak havoc on retention, for example.

Instead, you should make goals that take the top 1-2 things into account for each area. That kind of plan is easier done, and you can continue to iterate throughout the year.

Acquire More Subscribers

There are a lot of things to be done here, and I always bring up focusing on the offer. Finding better ways to make the subscription more valuable can increase conversions.

Read more about creating a better offer for subscribers in this past dose.

Retain More Subscribers

Retaining subscribers can be done in a myriad of ways, but I always recommend collecting better data to understand what’s happening.

Read more about what data you should collect and what to do with it here.

Here are some best practices for retaining new subscribers.

Increase the Value of Each Subscriber

You can do this at signup - suggesting one-time add-ons for each subscription, selling bundles, or testing offers with a higher AOV.

Without making things too complicated, I’d stick to building a great offer as mentioned above. BUT every brand should build at least one upsell email/sms flow offering your top 2-3 products to every subscriber. You can test this, but I’d recommend the flow triggering after the 2nd renewal hits.

Simple Goals Drive Lasting Success

Focus is the key here, powered by feedback and data from subscribers. Don’t get lost in the million things you could do; instead start targeting a few weak points on retention, build up a better offer, and find ways to sell more to the people that love you.

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

- Matt Holman 🩺

The Subscription Doc