For a decade or so, digital subscriptions have seen tremendous popularity, and both consumers and business owners have equally benefited from them. According to Bloomberg, the subscription-based economy has grown nearly 350% from 2012 to 2019, and the subscription businesses revenue increased by 5%, faster than that of fortune-500 companies at the same time.
Businesses or companies dealing with physical products and services or selling digital products such as educational courses have adapted the subscription business model for securing repeat customers. However, transforming the prospects into long-term clients requires proper planning and execution. How businesses are doing it, and how does subscription marketing differ from traditional marketing or conventional selling models? Let’s check it out.
What is a digital subscription?
A digital subscription is trading products or services to customers on a recurring basis. It is a way of approaching customers where the goal is to acquire and retain them for the long-term so they make repeat purchases.
The challenges involved with the businesses providing subscriptions need to update their features and offerings regularly. They should excite the customers by optimizing their processes often. The user’s transaction history and their response to the product or service promotions matter in getting repeat business and reliable revenue.
4 ways that the subscriptions management software complements your subscription business
Subscriptions are a great way to create a pool of loyal customers as returning visitors, but the real test lies in acquiring or turning them into long-term consumers. So, how can you create a unique subscription model that stands out from the rest?
1. Empower your business with pricing agility
The critical component of success for a subscription business is its pricing strategy. Make a proper pricing plan before bringing your customers on board and ensure you create value for your customers’ money in the plan.
Product pricing can be done in several ways to succeed and meet the market expectations. So, here are some critical questions to consider;
A. What will be the pricing structure?
Decide your pricing structure whether it has,
- Standard pricing – the same price will be attached to any unit
- Tiered pricing – a discount is offered to customers when they buy different units
- Volume pricing – it is similar to tiered pricing, but the unit price would change depending on the number of units when customers reach a certain tier
- Hybrid pricing – recurring pricing model based on any of the three pricing models
B. Offering discounts?
You can offer discounts to your customers at any time during their lifecycle according to the market situation and ongoing offers by your customers. It can be in the form of
- Cost discount (₹200/- off on your next purchase)
- Percentage-based discount (20% off on your next purchase)
- Service term discount (get your next month free)
You can tweak the offers and pricing as your business grows and add more features to the product. Without the right tools like subscription management software, you can’t make quick corrections if you need to make discount offers and pricing changes in your business.
2. Enable tracks changes for the customer and extensive flexibility in a subscription
Flexibility is essential for any subscription-based business. If the contact information of your customer changes such as their credit card expires, or they may decide to upgrade or downgrade the subscription plan, they can easily make changes, track and update the information. The subscription management software allows you to make changes at any point in the customer lifecycle with ease.
For example, in the utility industry and the Internet of Things (IoT) environment, subscriptions may be at the centre of the data, which fluctuates with every billing cycle. Capturing and prorating the data can be problematic to track manually. So, the subscription management software will help you get the job done more efficiently.
3. Empower your customer to make necessary changes
Customers who purchase subscriptions nowadays expect to customize their subscription preferences. They like to make the changes instantly by themselves rather than contacting customer support and loosing their valuable time.
Here, the subscription management software provides the customers with have easy access to their account information. They can make changes to their personal details such as contact information, change their password, update credit card information, view their invoices, upgrade or downgrade subscription plans, or even cancel their subscriptions.
4. Allows seamless integration with other platforms
Subscription businesses that utilize robust subscription management software benefit from seamless integration facilities with other platforms. A comprehensive subscription management platform can be tailored to efficiently interact with other integrations, extract information from other platforms, or remove critical information as needed. For example, customers often couple their subscription management software with SAP, Oracle, Netsuite, salesforce etc.
The subscription-based business landscape is an ever-moving environment with changing trends and customer preferences. The ability to monetize opportunities surrounding the niche requires the right technology. Subscription management software provides your business with the agility to maximize customer experience and recurring revenue potential.
The takeaway
Digital subscriptions bring profits for businesses with recurring revenue. The subscription market is constantly evolving, and it is vital for you to understand your customer needs and how they respond to your offerings. Hence figure out the customer behaviour to thrive in the digital subscription business.
