How to elevate your growth strategy with subscriber insights
Customer insights are a powerful way to ensure a data-driven, subscriber-centric approach across your business. These insights result from thorough analysis and interpretation of valuable information in consumer interactions and channels.
According to Microsoft, companies that leverage their customer behavior data to generate insights outperform competitors by 85%. Luckily, subscription-based businesses throw a lot of data for every step of the customer journey. Unluckily, this data is useless if you don’t interpret it.
Data may record a churned subscriber, but insights reveal that consumers tend to cancel their subscription service after six months of use. Giving you more detail on their thoughts, feelings, and motivations behind every decision they make.
Let’s review three key insights you can start with to define a robust subscription growth strategy.
Discover what converts subscribers
When the art and science of subscriber acquisition come to play, free trials, promotions and discounts, and gift subscriptions are valuable tools. Identify which is more appealing to your subscribers and more cost-convenient to your business.Â
Trials: Trial periods allow cautious customers to try before they buy. Test and analyze trial lengths and billing information requirements, then compare retention rates and lifetime value (LTV) of subscribers acquired via a trial versus those who weren’t.
Recurly Analytics allows you to track the conversion rate for trial subscriptions converted to paid, as well as the current state of subscriptions that started as trials, with detailed performance status.
Trial Conversion Rate report in Recurly Analytics
Trial Performance Subscription Status report in Recurly Analytics dashboard
Promotions, discounts, and gift cards: Consumers are always looking for new experiences, especially in subscriptions–making coupons, discounts, and gift cards a great way to drive more revenue.
Test different promotional tactics, then evaluate the retention rate and LTV of these subscribers versus those not acquired through promotions.
Review the success of your promotion campaigns with Recurly Analytics. Our data exports compile which promotion codes and gifts have more redemptions to help drive your acquisition efforts. Â
Read now: A breakdown of common acquisition strategies such as free trials, coupons and promotions, gift cards, and gift subscriptions and how they’ve evolved over time.
Analyze what makes your subscribers stay
Subscriber retention requires a deep grasp of your consumers' motivations and preferences–and your ability to deliver a compelling, personalized customer experience.
Evaluate active subscribers and customer engagement over time to identify high-profitable plans, detect behavior trends, and understand your business growth trajectory. Recurly supplies you with the necessary insights and analytics dashboards for strategic decision-making subscriber behavior and preferences:
Customers section in Recurly Analytics
Subscription preferences section in Recurly Analytics
Consider the products your audience is most interested in to design an effective upsell and cross-sell strategy. Both are effective promotion tactics that increase revenue from both new and existing subscribers.Â
Upsells and cross-sells suggest to your customers other subscription plan options that better suit their needs or add-ons that would improve their experience.Â
A great upsell opportunity happens at the end of a trial period. For example, if a customer tried your freemium plan, you can upsell them with a more advanced option plan at the conversion time. Cross-sells happen similarly at checkout or conversion points with an item that complements the purchased plan.Â
Identify what makes subscribers cancel (and prevent it)
In subscriptions, renewals are key to driving stable revenue growth and profitability. Any friction during the renewal journey can trigger customer satisfaction and trickle down your bottom line.Â
Customers can cancel their service voluntarily or involuntarily. Voluntary churn results from subscribers actively canceling their service. There are several reasons why consumers may wish to end their membership:
Price increases and inflationary concerns
The subscription is no longer of use
Consumers found a better competitor offering
Involuntary churn, however, means that your subscribers are experiencing billing or payment problems. Some of the most common factors are:
Outdated credit and debit card information
Declined transactions and failed payment retries
Manual or inexistent dunning strategy
Learn more: Get an in-depth look into the impact of the most popular payment methods on subscription churn.Â
Recurly’s churn analysis highlights the reasons behind active and passive cancelations. Analyze the main drivers of churn, and create an action plan to predict and prevent them.
Churn analysis report in Recurly Analytics
Work with your customer success and sales teams to determine the reasons behind voluntary churn and how you can deliver value to subscribers to avoid them hitting cancel.Â
For involuntary churn, leverage a subscription management and recurring billing platform that can support you with the right tech stack for churn prevention.Â
Skyrocket subscription growth with RecurlyÂ
The Recurly Analytics hub has become a trusted source of truth for global subscription brands like Paramount+, Twitch, and FabFitFun.
Take your subscriber data and turn it into actionable insights that enable every part of your business to make customer-centric decisions.
