In the subscription economy, there is a lot of competition.  While personalization has always been a best practice for top-performing firms, it has now become a requirement for modern businesses, particularly subscription-based enterprises pushing to survive the competition. If personalization is not at the heart of consumer experience in your subscription service — whether you offer beauty boxes or entertainment streaming — you're either losing money or missing out on opportunities. According to a recent analysis by Gartner, businesses might lose up to 39% of their customers owing to poor customization efforts.

Although price point and value are still key factors in how customers spend, they are still giving most of their money to companies that can meet expectations for experiential elements. According to a recent study by Eventbrite, 78% of millennials would prefer to spend money on an experience over purchasing something material.

Personalization is an important component of a high-quality customer experience when it comes to doing business. According to Epsilon research, 800 of 1,000 consumers aged 18 to 64 indicated they are more likely to patronize businesses that deliver tailored or personalized experiences, and 90% of them find personalization appealing overall.

Kelvin Mabley,  senior vice president of strategy and analytics for Epsilon, quoted: "It is required for brands to improve customer experiences and remain competitive.". He added that  "The research findings are further evidence that bringing together customer intelligence and customer experience to drive personalization has a direct impact on a brands' bottom line." 

All subscription businesses should figure out a way to personalize services for their customers, and learn what is required to achieve the aim of providing a tailored, unrivaled consumer experience. Throughout the subscriber's lifespan, there will be numerous opportunities to customize service, and here are a few suggestions:

1. Innovate in Product or Content Curation

In the subscription sector, personalized solutions are taking the lead, such as custom-made scents or monthly boxes with custom-fit garments. The subscription model gives allowance for innovation of services and products.

It's perhaps easier to think about curation as bundling, the conventional technique of combining items that people want and frequently buy together — one famous example is the telecom triple-play bundle of phone, Internet, and cable. It's an easy avenue for subscription merchants to pair up products, update the experience, and customize the effort if consumer data indicates they might appreciate a certain product or service based on their purchasing history or intention.

2. Pay Attention to Online and App Experiences

Customers want to be a part of the process. The ideal approach to achieve this is to provide customers with self-service solutions that allow them to complete part of the process required to personalize their services. Consistent consumer experiences online and via mobile app sessions are critical for keeping the promise of personalization, but if left unmanaged, it can result in costly gaps.

3. Engage Consumers through Outreaches and Personalized Messages

Customers want to hear from the brands they trust and support, but communication must take place on their terms and preference. Companies must tread carefully in their communications to strike the perfect balance between bombardment and genuine interaction.

To personalize marketing effectively, you must leverage the channels of communication that your customers like. These patterns will emerge once more in the data gathered throughout the subscriber relationship. A customer data platform vendor engaged marketers to rank the best channels for personalization and the scale of preference came as follows:

• Email (78%)
• Website (58%)
• In-person (42%)
• Online advertising (35%)
• Mobile app (28%)
• Web app (19%)

If data demonstrate that a consumer uses a specific channel of communication more than others, you know which personalization path to take.

4. Pay Attention to Data

Data is at the heart of every endeavor to personalize services. Throughout the subscriber lifecycle, there are numerous touchpoints, and each encounter generates important data that may be utilized to develop personalized services. Everything you need to know about a customer for personalization purposes is there in the data they generate.

Take, for example, Netflix and the suggestions they provide to their users. Their suggested movies are carefully determined using data gathered from the user's use of the service or most-watched movie category. Data mining can reveal usage rates and patterns, which can be used to inform customization.

On an individual and customer segment level, data analysis is crucial. While using an individual's data to tailor services to them specifically has obvious benefits, pooling and analyzing such data across broader consumer groups and subgroups can aid in the development of customer or buyer personas. These profiles can be used to identify customer expectations for personalization in both new and existing acquisitions.

5. Anticipate Customer’s Needs and Desires

These days, businesses are expected to know what their customers want before they do. That's a difficult order, but predictive analytics, subscription intelligence, and other tools have helped businesses get ahead of the competition. A well-executed outreach, relevant offer, or other engagement can leave a lasting impression on your customer.

As always, data will contain the answers, because anticipating customer needs or desires, or at the very least being hyper-responsive to them, will need a lot of intelligence. Examine both individual and aggregate intelligence sources, such as purchase history and usage rates, such as the geographic market or consumer segment.

If a customer makes a repeat purchase, for instance, you can utilize that information to create a personalized discount and send it out before the next one is due. While this is an ideal situation and one that is difficult to achieve, there are alternative ways to address consumer needs without them explicitly requesting it, such as sending emails or other outreach messages.

Conclusion

Creating personalization in customer experience is the new way to go in the subscription model and if you don’t do it, your competitors will. And this means having a tool that can provide the data to help you meaningfully personalize your customer’s experience is key. This is where Chargezen comes in.

Chargezen is the most advanced Shopify subscription management app that enables brands to sell recurring products, build custom subscription boxes, gain insights into their data, and more to create an incredible experience for their customers!

From CRMs, automation, accounting tools, invoicing to tax management; Chargezen integrates with all the apps you’re currently using and constantly adds support for more. And while merchants who add subscription products typically see a 25% increase in revenue, Chargezen customers also see a 45% decrease in churn, thanks to their churn bursting algorithm.

The best part is; not only does Chargezen have a free plan for you, but Chargezen also charges less than 1% per subscription product unlike their competitors, needless to say, their developers will also take care of the installation process for you.

So, whether you are adopting a subscription app for the first time or looking for a comprehensive upgrade, switching to Chargezen will save you on average 50% in third-party apps spent an overage charge. Your customers will also enjoy free SMS-self service with many other customer-friendly integrations to ease shopping, enable them to edit or cancel a subscription and receive various upsell features so you can spend less on marketing.

Using Chargezen not only guarantees you a comprehensive and secure subscription billing and management solution, but it also offers you deep data insight, and industry expertise to drive personalization, amazing customer experiences, and ultimately the success of your business. If this sounds like what you’re looking for, reach out to Chargezen’s support team or write me at success@trychargezen.com for further assistance.