Subscriptions are everywhere these days, and with them come easier, more regular access to goods and services. Unfortunately, the ease with which consumers can find a subscription to fit their needs makes it more important than ever for brands to develop clear, concise value propositions that separate them from the crowd. This is especially true when you consider how many consumers tend to drop off from a subscription once a promotional period ends and how many fail to even complete their first purchase.
So what can your brand do to differentiate from the masses and incentivize consumers to stay subscribed after their discount or promotional period ends? Here are 3 strategies that can help you get started along with some brands that are successfully using them to increase customer LTV and attract new customers.
Establish Trust From the First Interaction
Every day, brands are spending thousands from their marketing budget to incentivize customers to stay subscribed at least one month past a promotional period, but the biggest tool lacking from their arsenal is an understanding of what consumers are actually getting from the subscription. If a consumer subscribes to a book subscription box, for instance, that value prop could be any number of benefits: from exclusive editions of popular books to the discovery of authors they may not have heard about otherwise. It’s your job as the brand to determine which of those incentives, if any, attracted your consumer in the first place and continue providing it to entice them to stay.
Subscription boxes like Illumicrate, Fairyloot, and Bookish Box do a great job of satisfying their customers’ interests, although their products aren’t without their challenges. Shipping delays, poorly printed products, and miscommunications are just a few of the issues that have contributed to customer churn for these brands in the past.
The brands’ transparency and commitment to quality when faced with these issues have helped mitigate that churn and contribute to better relationships with newer customers and the customers that stayed despite setbacks.
Practice Transparency to Build a Loyal Customer Base
Creating an environment that encourages consumers to trust your brand with their long-term business is easier said than done. The trick is to create a secure, privacy first, intent-based environment for them to engage with from the very first interaction. In doing so, you’ll be better equipped to understand what value they receive from the subscription and to continue delivering it. The brand KnightWeave is a fantastic example of this.
Although KnightWeave is a newer brand that doesn’t offer subscriptions, the way they interact with consumers is something every subscription brand can learn from. After going viral on TikTok, this brand experienced the ultimate setback for any brand and the death knell for many: major shipping delays. Rather than stay silent on the reasons behind the delays, they opened up and made not one, not two, but four videos updating the customers whose orders had been impacted. They also established a sense of community between the consumers within this group by creating an exclusive Discord channel, unique offerings only available to the group, and freebies for every customer whose order was impacted. With each new update and subsequent interaction with consumers, KnightWeave is already well on their way to creating a loyal, long-lasting customer base.
Improve Personalization With Each Interaction
In both subscriptions and business in general, there are two types of personalization: interactions based on an individual consumer’s interactions with your brand and interactions based on that same consumer’s needs outside of their purchase from your brand. Let’s look at KnightWeave again for an example of how a brand can use both.
The delays KnightWeave experienced were with the first 5,000 orders. Although they could have gone the route of following up with each customer on a 1:1 basis using a plaintext email or in bulk with a simple newsletter, they instead used homemade videos directly from the founder, putting a more humanized spin on an otherwise frustrating experience. In doing so, they also established a unique lore for the 5,000 in line with the brand’s established backstory. Immediate results aside, this new community offers tons of opportunities for gathering customer feedback and creating personalized experiences based on each customer’s membership in the 5,000 along with their individual purchases now and moving forward. The private Discord channel also has the potential to offer more insights into KnightWeave’s customer base outside of the purchases they’ve already made than even the most stringent studies can achieve.
Inviting customers to join an exclusive community isn’t new to subscription brands, but KnightWeave’s method for doing so is a great example of what it means to create a community that matters.
Start Increasing Customer LTV
In examining brands like Illumicrate, Bookish Box, and KnightWeave, it becomes apparent that increasing customer LTV requires a multifaceted approach focused on trust, transparency, and personalization. By implementing these strategies, your brand can improve retention rates and foster a loyal customer base. For more insights, check out our article on developing a customer-centric marketing strategy or schedule a demo to learn more about your consumers with our customer preference wallet.