Subscription Marketing

Strategies for Nurturing Customers in a World of Churn

Anne Janzer

• Publisher: Cuesta Park Consulting
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780999624869
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Marketing

Subscriptions are upending industries and reshaping customer expectations. Have you changed your marketing practices to thrive in this new reality?A successful subscription business is built on lasting relationships, not one-time sales.Stop chasing sales and start creating value.The third edition of this ground-breaking book offers updated advice for solopreneurs, small businesses, fast-growing start-ups, and large enterprises alike. You'll find creative practices that will help you build and sustain the customer relationships that lead to long-term success.Whether you already have subscription revenues or you want to build an ongoing relationship with existing customers, you can adopt the practices and mindsets of the most successful subscription businesses.

Part 2

Value-Nurturing Strategies

Chapter 6

Create a Customer Launch Plan

There’s nothing most marketers love more than a good launch. A product launch, a company launch, a book launch—you name it, we’ll launch it. A launch gives us a sense of accomplishment and an excuse for a party.

In all the excitement about the glamorous, high-profile launches, it’s easy to neglect the many small but critical events happening all around you—customer launches. Over time, the cumulative effect of these individual beginnings has a larger impact on your business than any media launch event.

If you’re looking for the low-hanging fruit of value-nurturing strategies, you’ve found it. Something motivated the person to become a customer. Do what you can to guide people to ongoing success before they lose momentum and forget why they signed up.

Creating a customer launch plan makes sense for almost any business and works equally well for subscription-based and traditional business models. There’s almost no excuse not to have a customer launch plan. Plus, there are powerful psychological reasons for taking action right away.

Design the launch plan to get customers working with and realizing value from your solution as quickly as possible. An early success feeds the positive confirmation bias, or our tendency to seek evidence to support the decisions we have already made.

Immediately after making a choice, we look for signs to confirm that the decision was a good one. As behavioral economist Richard Thaler writes in Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, “People have a natural tendency to search for confirming rather than disconfirming evidence.”

We look for those experiences that prove us right in choosing to subscribe. The early days of a subscription are a valuable opportunity to supply that confirming evidence.

That’s why the “customer onboarding” or welcome experience is so critical. The first interactions confirm that we made a sound decision to use the service. Because making decisions takes effort, we’d rather not analyze them repeatedly. If we experience good initial results, we will consider the decision a success and are less likely to churn.

Polish the Virtual Packaging

Have you ever wondered why Apple invests so heavily in packaging design for its products? From the moment you open the box, you sense you are using something special. That perception colors your experience going forward.

You may not be shipping products in a box, but your initial interactions with customers are the metaphorical equivalent. Pay attention to the details of how your customers unwrap and explore the experience.

Treat every email, every transaction, and each bit of communication as an opportunity to reinforce the reasons for choosing your business. Work on the packaging for this new relationship. The customer journey does not end at the sale; rather, the point of sale is where the story gets interesting, at least from the customer’s perspective.

For example, whenever you subscribe to an application or email service, you inevitably see a message like: “Check your email for a confirmation link.” In the United States, this double opt-in ensures that email subscriptions meet anti-spam regulations. It protects the business by validating that the person signing up for the service is associated with the email account being claimed.

What does that opt-in confirmation email look like to subscribers? What is the tone and style? Do you anticipate any problems that people may have? Where do you send them when they click the link to confirm the subscription? What’s the first thing a new customer is likely to want to see?

Walk through the process of signing up as if you were a new customer. Look for every opportunity to create the right impression and guide the customer to the next step.

The Welcome Email or Video

Your launch plan might be as simple as a well-constructed welcome email. You do have one, right?

I must confess: I sometimes sign up for applications in the heat of the moment, and then don’t get started with them. I may forget that I have signed up. A well-written welcome email can save the day.

When I signed up for the Haiku Deck service for creating online presentations, I wasn’t actually working on a presentation. Months later, I needed to use the service. After searching through my email, I found a welcome letter that refreshed my memory and got me started, including:

• How to log on (and how to reset a forgotten password)
• Links to getting started materials and tutorials
• A link to frequently asked questions

Better yet, the email was written in a conversational, friendly style and reminded me why I had signed up for the service. The welcome email can play a critical role for people (like me) who sign up and then wait before taking action.

Another great welcome example comes from Buffer, the social media sharing and scheduling service. Once I signed up for Buffer’s “Awesome” plan, two emails arrived right away.

The first, from the account of cofounder and CEO Joel Gascoigne, welcomed me as a subscriber, setting a personal tone for the ongoing relationship. He also reminded me that I could cancel at any time. Few businesses do that when you first sign up. Simply seeing that statement increased my trust in Buffer.

The second email was a payment receipt, but here too, Buffer made the transaction fun and personal, including a picture of the Buffer team at a work retreat. The email ended with this quote: “We will also do our best to provide great value for you day in and day out.”

Remember what I said about the job of subscription marketing: earning trust and nurturing value? In its two welcome emails, Buffer declared its intention of doing both. Well done.

Video is another great way to welcome new subscribers, since it gives your business a personal face from the start. Seeing an actual person in the video fosters a human connection, which is a great way to start a relationship.

Automated emails and online onboarding are great, but sometimes the best welcome is personal. The more high-tech your solution, the more powerful a personal connection can be—through email, a phone call, a personalized video, or even a handwritten note.

Reduce Barriers to the First Steps

Customer success advocates speak of the 90/10 rule for customer adoption: If a customer doesn’t start using your solution within 90 days, there’s only a 10 percent chance they’ll become a loyal customer. While the precise numbers may vary for your business, the general concept holds true for nearly all subscriptions. If people don’t take action quickly, they may forget why they subscribed.

A solid customer launch plan gets subscribers started, so they realize the value of their subscription right away.

Your launch plan might start with a series of emails with links to videos, commonly requested advice, or other useful resources. What’s the first thing you’d like a new customer to do: Set up a profile? Order a sample? Think of the smallest step and package it in a customer launch plan.

Automated Onboarding Programs

Technology makes it possible to see what your customers are doing with your solutions and spot whether they’re off to a good start. When operating at scale, find ways to automatically track usage and adoption. If it looks like the customer isn’t succeeding, reach out and see if you can help.

Test the onboarding carefully, with people both inside and outside the company.

If you want to see examples of the good, bad, and ugly of user onboarding, check the “teardowns” published by Samuel Hulick on his site, useronboard.com. I guarantee you will learn something and return to look at your own onboarding process with fresh eyes.

Chapter 7

Orchestrate Early Success

The high-end dining business is built on repeat customers and customer referrals. A pricey restaurant cannot succeed unless its customers think that the food and overall experience are worth the investment.

Few restaurants in America...