In the last couple of years, especially during the pandemic, we saw the rise of new consumption preferences–personalization is one of these. 

It’s no secret that personalization drives subscription success. According to Forrester, 77% of consumers prefer brands that offer tailored services and experiences, while 66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs. But rather than understanding, foreseeing their demands is crucial. 

Benefits of personalization in ecommerce

Personalization is a strong strategy that benefits both brands and consumers. In the subscription industry, customization lies at the heart of flexibility in choice with dynamic plans, pricing, and communications. 

For companies, personalized experiences translate into brand loyalty and recurring revenue increases. With nearly 80% of shoppers willing to purchase from brands offering customized experiences, it’s an effective approach to reducing churn and increasing subscriber retention. 

Additionally, for consumers, custom-made experiences translate to repeated engagement. It means the platform they’re subscribing to listens, understands, and offers what they need without asking for it.

The challenge with personalization

While personalization is now a basic need among the ecommerce clientele, 78% of businesses struggle with not having enough data about their customers to launch relevant personalization tactics.

Customization is a data-driven strategy, and you need information from every touchpoint along the customer journey to take targeted action. One common mistake businesses make is collecting data from several marketing stacks, rather than relying on a single source of information, making it almost impossible to leverage.

Analytics and delivery automation are essential to increasing efficiency, scaling operations, and guaranteeing successful customer experiences–but evaluating your impact becomes a complex task as customers move along the journey. 

The Recurly platform seamlessly integrates with your marketing automation tools to unleash the power of personalization from trials to cancelations. Recurly Analytics helps you identify data gaps and keep track of your efforts with accurate reports on

  • Subscriber growth: To understand growth trends and monitor the number of new, churned, returning, and total subscribers over time

  • Plan and trial performance: To evaluate subscription volume in each plan, analyze your trials’ performance, monitor conversion rates, and track why customers don’t convert

  • Retention and churn: To understand retention and churn reasons to combat high rates

Subscribers expect businesses to know them on a personal level and reward those that succeed (McKinsey & Company). Allowing users to experience your product how they prefer can only be achieved through data analysis. 

Designing personalized experiences with Recurly

Ecommerce businesses with the ability to connect deeper with their consumers see an increase in sales and loyalty. According to Bloomreach, when mapping out or revamping your personalization strategy, focus on answering three main questions:

1. Where will the personalization occur?

Analyze all your channels, identify the touchpoints your customers most interact with, and establish the moments that could benefit from a personalized experience.

2. What information will you use?

After deciding where personalization takes place, select the tools that could help support each of these moments–your CRM, ERP, or any automation tool. 

3. How will you personalize the experience?

Now, it’s time to bring your channels and insights together to create contextual experiences. As we mentioned earlier, flexibility is the core of subscription ecommerce personalization. Achieve it by enabling:

  • Multiple plans and billing options: Keep your offerings differentiated with flexible plans–prepaid, fixed, tiered, usage-based, or volume-based, across different billing frequencies.

  • Tailored communications and benefits: 52% of customers expect customized offers. Acquire new subscribers and drive loyalty with discount offers, coupons, gift subscriptions, or rewards. 

  • Effortless payment alternatives: Diversify your payment methods for higher checkout completions and revenue lift. Recurly offers more than 20 gateway options for all audiences and geographies. 

Ecommerce personalization is all about targeting the right customer, with the right offer, at the right time. Analyze your buyer’s journey and make the most out of your touchpoint interactions to design unique experiences.

Read next: How FabFitFun Takes a Member-Centric Approach to Growth

Getting a step ahead

The one-size-fits-all approach has stayed in the past. Subscribers are looking for custom experiences, and the brand benefits of personalization in ecommerce are evident–it is one of the most valuable strategies an ecommerce business can offer. We help you deliver one-of-a-kind experiences through reliable data and insights, subscription plan management, billing automation, and frictionless payment methods. 

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