After converting your customers into subscribers, you will need to keep them engaged to reap the rewards of a subscription model. However, your recurring customers may no longer visit your website or app since they already have their order and delivery processes automated. What this means is that when engaging your subscribers, you would need to use methods that are different from how you would typically keep your non-subscribed customers.

For your non-subscribed customers, your strategies are mostly centered around making them repeat buyers, but your subscription customers have signed up to remain shoppers at your store for as long as they remain subscribed. In order to keep your recurring customers engaged, you’ll need to ensure that they keep getting value from their initial investment. Let’s discuss 8 subscriber engagement strategies that will keep your recurring customers glued to your brand.

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TIPS FOR ENGAGING YOUR SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMERS

Build a mobile app for your subscription business

In recent times, the eCommerce industry has been populated with mobile-savvy shoppers. With the increasing number of businesses that have improved user experience via mobile apps, building one for your business is essential for increasing interaction with your customers.

One major benefit of mobile apps is that you can communicate with customers in real-time. When a customer is able to contact your support team instantly via their mobile devices and have their challenges resolved or questions answered quickly, it makes your business look more efficient.

Mobile apps provide user-friendly portals that help customers to manage their subscriptions and deliveries and receive updates on their mobile devices. As a merchant, mobile apps can be synced with other communication channels such as SMS, Messenger, WhatsApp, etc., which can be accessed on mobile devices, helping you improve customer interactions.

However, I only recommend investing in a mobile app if the majority of your customers come from mobile devices.

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Encourage Customers to share feedback

Never underestimate the importance of direct feedback from your customers, especially your subscription customers. While data analysis and product testing are great, real-time feedback from customers who are using your product is one of the most reliable product and service evaluation methods you can adopt. Asking for feedback enables interaction with your customers and potentially reduces churn. Customers who are hesitant to make a complaint have been known to readily give feedback when encouraged. The drawback however is, that they are also most likely to give negative feedback if they have had bad experiences with your products or services in the past.

Asking customers to give you feedback will give you more insight into how they feel and the issues you need to address for an improved customer experience. This strategy will make your customers know that their concerns matter to you, and this can improve their satisfaction. This will significantly reduce the chances of them jumping ship and canceling their subscription.

Collecting feedback should continue even after a customer has canceled their subscription. Their feedback will help you interact with them even after cancelation so that you can understand why they had to cancel, make necessary changes and re-engage them. If customers that canceled don’t resubscribe after you’ve worked on their feedback, do not be alarmed, the changes will ultimately help you prevent future cancellations for the same reason.

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Engage your customers through messages

Subscription offers generally creates opportunities for engagement in the form of notifications, reminders, and updates. There are also situations where customers may want to alter delivery dates, switch products, modify the billing date, alter delivery dates, modify the billing date, or change the quantity, among other things. This is a good time to engage your customers directly through messaging/chat channels like Whatsapp, Messenger, and emails. Doing this can improve your customer service rating since it aids interaction with your customers who are not tech-savvy and may struggle to navigate an app or website.

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Utilize innovative engagement strategies other than sales

Get innovative! You don’t have to directly appear to be selling your product or service every time you interact with your customers. Focus on giving your customers an experience, this way, they never forget your brand and keep coming back.

Some indirect, yet persuasive ways of getting your customers to interact with your brand and keep them engaged, especially your subscribers include:

events and workshops that are centered around what you do and your area of expertise. You want your customers to feel like they are gaining more knowledge about your industry by being loyal to you.

referral programs are an exciting way to drive sales with you doing next to nothing and without hard-selling. Your customers refer people to you for an incentive, more referrals mean more sales, and it’s a win for everyone.

Provide multiple hierarchies of subscription package options so that subscribers who are less engaged or likely to cancel can easily opt for a downgrade or lower plan. That way, they don’t get to pay as much as they would while on the previous package, but you still retain them as returning customers.

Put out informative newsletters, media content, and email campaigns more frequently. This should help keep your subscribers reminded of your brand and provide them with trending information at the same time.

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Offer exclusive deals and incentives to subscribers

Deals and Incentives are a great way to appreciate your subscribers for their loyalty and make them feel special. There are ways you can engage your subscribers exclusively, to make them feel special, add value to them and increase their loyalty to the brand. See examples of deals and incentives you can offer below.

• Exclusive reveals and access to new products.
• Discounted and fast shipping services.
• Gifts and freebies. It doesn’t have to be expensive, something as simple as a handwritten card to let them know how much you value them might suffice. You can add new products or existing products you sell that they may like based on their order history. This will make them more likely to buy and use a wider range of your products.
• Discounts to first-time subscribers and periodical discounts to loyal subscribers to keep them engaged.

Any of these strategies are great, but you can go for more targeted approaches by carrying out personalized surveys to determine what your customers value more before you implement them. Ultimately, you should be working towards informing your customers about the benefits of subscribing.

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Engage your subscribers by using methods like exclusivity and urgency

People react to limited offers and flash sales quickly because they come with a sense of urgency. Urgency and exclusivity are methods that can be used to engage both one-off customers and subscribers.

To maximize this approach, you can:

• create and run discount offers around the time for subscription renewal.
• make your discount and combo offers time-sensitive.
• Create a buzz when you launch a new subscription service or product by holding a contest just for subscribers, a flash sale with a time limit, or both.

let your customers know about these exclusive offers for subscribers only. This would make your one-off customers consider subscriptions so they can participate.

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Upsell offers are great for engagement

Upselling is when you offer a better, more valuable, and more expensive product to customers in place of the one they are currently buying.

Selling the same product repeatedly, no matter how useful the products are can become boring and less interesting to customers. Consider suggesting products/services related to your customer's usual order that will add more value and keep things exciting for them. For example, instead of your customer’s regular household cleaning product package that comes with dishwashing soaps and laundry detergents, you can upsell an equally effective package that comes with all these items and a hand washing soap. That’s an additional item in this new package.

Additional points:

Upsells are not necessarily new products, they can just be items that add extra value to your customer’s current purchase.

Your upsells should either make the customer's life better, solve a problem, keep them happy, or satisfy all of their wants.

While you upsell products that benefit your customers, ensure that the items have a higher monetary value than your customer’s usual purchase.

Although upsells may not always be new products that you sell in your store, upselling new products can get you to influence your customers into trying new things.

Try to identify a broader problem that your customers are facing with their current products and solve it using another product/service that you sell.

Upselling is an easy way to keep your customers engaged and have them looking forward to their next delivery.

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Engage Subscribers with cross-selling offers

Cross-selling involves informing your consumers about additional products that would complement the goods and services they already purchased from your store. Just like Upselling, Cross-selling is another excellent technique to keep your store in your subscribers’ minds and help keep them engaged with your brand. You can improve customer engagement by making cross-sell recommendations that are more relevant and customized.

A practical example is suggesting toothpaste to a customer buying a toothbrush. To make it more enticing you can offer them as a combo at a discounted rate. You can add other dental products to this package, but have in mind that the goal is to add extra value to your customer's purchase with relevant and high targeted products.

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Summary

Converting one-time customers to subscription customers is enough hassle, and this is why you want to keep them engaged after they finally subscribe.

This is also why you want to take advantage of Chargezen's omnichannel feature, loyalty program, Tiazen suit, and other customer-centered features that help you maximize customer data to keep them engaged with your brand throughout their subscription lifecycle.

Click here to learn more.

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