Three Ways to Combat Subscription Fatigue
As a consumer paying for multiple subscription products and services can add up fast. From subscribing to streaming services (like Netflix) to subscribing to receive a pound of your daily coffee each month to getting your favorite moisturizing lotion as part of a subscription, these costs can add up and make subscriptions feel like an unnecessary cost. And if the brand that you are subscribing to does nothing extra to show you how important their subscription product or service is, it makes it simple for the consumer to become fatigued with the subscription and churn due to little emotional attachment to the subscription product or service.
Add this feeling of subscription fatigue on top of the uncertainty of the macroeconomic climate, consumers have more reason to churn from your subscription product or service than ever. That is unless you give them reason to stay.
While you cannot control what is going on in the overall economy, you can do your best to put your best foot forward to combat subscription fatigue and really showcase the value of your subscription product or service to your subscribers in a way that would make subscribers feel foolish for leaving your subscription program.
Read on to learn three key tips to combat subscription fatigue and keep more of your subscribers just that…subscribers.
Give subscribers more flexibility
It’s never a wise idea to make subscribers feel trapped. You don’t want your subscribers to feel like they have no option but to cancel their subscription. Knowing this, it’s important to give your subscribers the ability to easily add, edit, pause, gift, skip (one time) or change their subscription. This will make subscribers feel like they have more of a choice of simply just canceling the subscription outright. Perhaps they currently have too much product or want a different product shipped to them for their upcoming subscription order.
By making it easier for a subscriber to alter their subscription on their own without needing to write into a customer support team, you will also be subtly making your business more appealing in the eyes of the subscriber. Subscribers crave the ability to make changes on the fly and the flexibility that you offer them (in terms of altering their subscription), the more likely they are to stay with your brand.
Showcase different use-cases for your subscription product through content
If you are a regular subscriber to a certain product or service, odds are that you are using the product or service for the same use case. Perhaps you subscribe to receive a pound of coffee every month and your use case is pretty simple, making your morning coffee. As a consumer, it’s easy to become tired of this routine and use-case and simply cancel your subscription because it is no longer exciting and you are ready to try something new where the commitment may not be as steep.
However, as a brand, you should be serving your subscribers content with different use cases for their subscription on a regular basis. This will help to potentially differentiate your subscription product or service from others while consistently provident your subscribers with additional ways to use their subscription.
For example, going back to our coffee example above, if you are a coffee (or any sort of food or beverage brand) that is selling a monthly coffee subscription you could send your subscribers an email every few weeks with a different coffee themed recipe. This could provide subscribers with a fresh outlook on their subscription and in some cases could actually provide them more of an incentive to purchase more from your business.
Provide special access to subscribers
Make your subscribers feel like they are appreciated and valued by your brand. Perhaps you want to give them access to a special pre-sale or access to new products before they are released to the general public. Although these gestures may seem small, they go a long way in making a subscriber feel special and making a subscriber feel tired of their subscription. In fact, they could do the opposite and enthusiastically energize your subscribers to become more loyal to your subscription service by purchasing more products and or telling their friends and family about how well you are being treated by your brand.
Simply put if you are not putting thought and energy into your subscription offering, you will be giving your subscribers every reason to become stagnant and potentially churn. The more thought and energy that you put into keeping your subscribers will do just that, keep them as subscribers. The above examples don’t take much time to execute and are just some thought starters to help you think through ways to retain more of your subscribers.
Are you ready to learn more about how Upscribe can help you grow more of your retention business? Sign up for a demo to learn more.
