The transition of the traditional marketplace to ecommerce has occurred at an exponential rate. The ecommerce subscription services have fueled the importance of the ecommerce business by bestowing a plethora of boons upon merchants. If implemented in the correct manner, your digital marketplace can experience giant strides. Through research conducted by McKinsey & Company, it was revealed that 15% of online shoppers have signed up for ecommerce subscriptions.
You see, the number is huge enough? There’s still a lot to unleash. And the intention of the article is to help you understand why ecommerce subscriptions are worth it, how it can help you spike sales of your business, and how to get started with them.
If the idea entices you enough, continue reading and garner maximum information that would help your business.
10 Ways eCommerce Subscriptions Can Soar up Your Online Businesses Sales
While ecommerce subscriptions are touching new pinnacles of popularity, here’s why you should consider them adding to your business to grow your online store at full tilt.
1. Encourages High Customer Retention Ratio:
Attracting new customers requires a lot of hard work if compared to retaining the previous ones. Since the marketplace already has a lot to offer, the new customers require extra effort to be convinced. On the other side of the coin, ecommerce subscriptions help you retain your previous clients and foster long term relationships with them. Every time you do not need to spend on marketing but on customer experience. And we believe, that’s a smarter move.
Related: Easy Ways to Make Your eCommerce Website Faster
2. Gather The Biggest Loyal Customer Base:
Ecommerce subscriptions massively contribute to helping you earn the biggest loyal customer base. As you continue to retain clients for a longer time, you reap a good reputation in the industry that returns in robust loyal and repeated buyers. And, do we need to mention that loyal customers are the biggest advocates of the brand? Yes, they are! Hence, subscriptions can ultimately help you gain loyal buyers.
3. Ameliorated Business Predictability:
Connecting with the above point, when your online business possesses loyal buyers, you ultimately begin to understand the buying behaviors and patterns of the buyers. When you are beforehand informed about the buyer’s requirements, needs and buying psyche, it’s not difficult to predict the total revenue that can be generated through the sales. Hence, you can focus on your strategies and plan the budget ahead of time.
4. Manage Inventory Effectively:
Besides planning the finances, having ecommerce subscriptions gives you an upper hand in smartly managing your inventory. You can always keep yourself equipped with the inventory, as you would already know at what point of the month your buyer would purchase a specific product. Right? The inventory can be managed with confidence and you can sleep at peace, in the knowledge that you already have ordered inventory in advance.
5. The Secret Trick of Low Shipping Cost:
Ecommerce subscriptions can help you go thrifty, without neglecting quality or customer experience. It cut downs the biggest chunk of your expenses by helping you adopts cost-effective shipping methods. Business owners hire low-cost and slow shipping ways to deliver the items. Customer cares for on-time delivery only. When they have already subscribed, you can dispatch the orders beforehand so they reach on time to the customer.
6. Embrace the Future of ecommerce:
Let’s take your business game a notch above than rest by helping you embrace the “new normal”. Ecommerce subscription is no more concealed in the lexicon of online businesses. Since buyers want flexibility and comfort in all of their daily chores, these subscription models are a cherry-on-top for them. By adding this cutting edge “new normal” to your online trade, you can stay in line with the modernized business sphere.
7. Improved Retail Margins:
Ecommerce businesses that clasp subscriptions to their bosom have reported a better retail margin in contrast to one-time sales. We agree that the improved retail margins are influenced by several other factors too, but the subscription model stays on top of the reasons. And one of the logical reasons behind that is that when you have a battalion of subscribers, the owner has the leverage to place orders in bulk, which would ultimately have a positive impact on finances.
8. Easier to Introduce New Product Range:
Educating your target market and further attracting them to your brand is a long race, and requires heavy finances. On the other hand, when you already have an audience that knows and trusts your brand, it’s easier for businesses to introduce new product ranges without spending extravagantly. Speaking from the customer’s point of view, not only does it save transportation costs for them, but also keeps them equipped with the brand’s all-new range, at the comfort of their couch.
9. Keep Check on the Health of Your Brand
Having subscription models is a lot more than cutting down costs. It allows the business owners to keep a check on their brand’s health, how it’s performing in the marketplace, and keep and strict eye on AOV and LTV. Moreover, you can immediately be on high alert if you notice the churn rate is escalating. It helps you to immediately identify the problematic areas and can get them resolved to continue acing the industry.
10. Experience of the Customers – The Key to Success
At the end of the day, only the customer experience matters the most. Ecommerce subscription keeps you closer to your audience, helping online businesses to improve their customer service. It goes without mentioning that online businesses lean upon customer experience solely. An ecommerce subscription helps you offer the best client service among the masses.
Let’s get started with ecommerce Subscription
Gartner conducted research and revealed that by the end of 2023, 75% of the DTC brands would be offering subscription experiences. That’s an alarming situation for the online stores that are overlooking its importance of it. If you have missed out on it, and now you are planning to partner with any ecommerce subscription platform, you are on the right track.
We have composed a step-by-step guide, which you can walk through to know how to get started with ecommerce subscriptions:
11. Identify The Gap and Market Fit
Ecommerce subscriptions are surely a big hit, but not for every product or service. For example, products like sanitary napkins are more likely to get replenished regularly as compared to products like power tools. Before jumping on the bandwagon, make sure your product/service would go along it.
Moreover, do not blindly follow the path of your competitors. Understand their strategy and offer a better experience to your customer by putting better deals in the sea. That can happen when you have understood the competitor’s weaknesses and strengths inside-out.
Secret Tip: Offering a personalized experience is key.
12. Determine Business Goals
“What do you wish to achieve with the ecommerce subscriptions?”
Before stringing along, you must be familiar with the answer to the question asked above. Every online business has a separate goal. For example, transactional businesses would adopt this model for establishing D2C relationships with the buyers, so the possibilities of your buyer jumping to another brand are eliminated.
Meanwhile, D2C businesses would select this model for building word of mouth and maintain buyers engaged for a longer time.
13. Create Subscription Programs
Things are getting a little practice now.
A successful subscription program would bank upon securing more profit margins for you. At this stage, you need to grab the calculator and see how much you need to charge subscribers in order to gain a minimum of 40% profit margin. The hack is to craft several plans, to support the varying needs and budgets of the customer.
14. Enrollment Strategy
It’s time to go viral.
Escalate the number of subscriptions by educating your audience via the website. That’s the easiest way because buyers are visiting websites every now and then. The pop up on your website, or the banner ad on your website is surely going to work like a magic.
“SAVE 30% OF YOUR BUDGET!”
Did that grab your attention? It’s surely going to grab the attention of website visitors too. Moreover, the smart merchants have now started offering subscriptions through quick view, the shopping cart of the display page.
You just need to play a little smart, and things will be under your control.
Hack: Go creative with the content
15. Gained Subscribers? Time To Retain Them
Gaining subscribers is half of the battle, and retaining them is another half! Once your subscriptions are the hot topic among your buyers, it’s time to retain the hype. That’s possible in several ways, counting:
- Offer loyalty rewards: Who doesn’t love rewards? Pamper your buyers with exclusive discounts for being a part of your brand for 6 months, 1 year, and so on.
- Product swap: It is recorded that businesses that offer product swaps are able to have 71% more happy clients.
- Skip day: Clients love it when they have a flexible approach toward a brand. Allow them to skip an order, to not overwhelm them with the subscription.
16. Marketing Doesn’t Have to Lag Behind
Your dream is finally off the ground. Its marketing o’clock!
How can you neglect to tell the world about your subscription experience? If you skip that, you would be leaving money on the table. There are several marketing tactics that won’t cost you an arm and leg, but you will achieve the goal.
Following are a few of them:
- Content is the king – right? Get crispy blogs posted on your website that would drive traffic and interest of your audience effortlessly.
- Do you believe email marketing is old school? Rethink! 87% of marketers still use it to make their content popular.
- Pay influencers to spread about your subscriptions.
- If you have an onsite store too, put up the signage and be aware of the localities of the subscriptions.
17. Keep Watch on Your Program
You surely need to have a check on your program to see how it’s performing. You can have a look at it in the ways mentioned below:
- Revenue and Margin: That’s pretty sure; the difference in revenue will give you a clear picture of how your subscription is performing.
- The Number of Conversions: The higher the number of conversions, the better your subscription is performing in the marketplace.
- Retention: Make sure the audience you have managed to win, stays with you and doesn’t give up on the subscription.
We hope, you had a great walk while knowing about ecommerce subscriptions, and how to get started with them. But that’s not all for today; we still have a little more to share. If you made your way here, we are sure, you must be planning to get your hands on one.
Types of ecommerce Subscriptions
There are several types of subscriptions that blossomed, but 3 of them are very popular and mostly consumed by ecommerce businesses. Here’s a little about them:
Replenishment Model:
This type of subscription is suggested for the products that are consumed and purchased on a recurring basis. If you sell products that are a daily use essential, this type of model is the best fit for you.
Discovery Model:
Who doesn’t love surprises? Surprise your audience with a discovery subscription model that caters to the personalized preferences of the buyers. Every time a buyer subscribes, they are surprised with a new product.
Bargain Model:
Everyone loves saving some bucks, right? The bargaining model is for the brands that wish to give leverage to the buyers, of saving some bucks on their shopping. The subscribers of this model can purchase products at a bargain price with a facility to cancel their subscriptions at any time.
Bottom Line
Through the article, we have greatly emphasized the noteworthy fact that ecommerce subscription is the future. And for the ecommerce industry, overlooking it could be the biggest mistake. Every sector of this sphere (be it clothing, accessories, fashion) is making cash out of it.
It’s an ideal time for our readers to make the right move, pick the best suitable model for themselves and propel towards success!
What’s stopping you?
