Blog/The Perfect Holiday Gift: Giftable Subscriptions with Stay AI
The Perfect Holiday Gift: Giftable Subscriptions with Stay AI
Stay AI Team
Oct 11, 2024
How to Set Up Giftable Subscriptions Ahead of the Holiday Season
As the holiday season approaches, finding the perfect gift can be a challenge. Often overlooked, gifting a subscription to a friend, family member, or someone special can provide a thoughtful yet practical gift from the convenience of your Customer Portal.
Instead of a one-time gift, a subscription delivers value month after month, ensuring your loved ones enjoy something special long after the holidays are over. Even better, your gift may inspire the recipient to continue their own subscription (or pass the gift forward!) after yours runs out.
Whether it’s a wellness product, a favorite snack box, or a niche hobby kit, a giftable subscription provides endless opportunities for personalization. With Stay AI’s powerful subscription management system, gifting subscriptions is a seamless and stress-free process giving subscribers the option to choose from available plans, while recipients have the flexibility to customize their deliveries to match their preferences.
How to Gift a Subscription Using Stay AI
Stay AI offers merchants the ability to implement gifting functionality, meaning that your customers can now both subscribe to your products for themselves or send a set amount of shipments to others.
For instance, if you would like to offer a monthly prepaid subscription as a gift for two shipments, three shipments, and or even shipments, these can all be configured within the Stay AI portal. This enables customers to select an option directly within their Customer Portal to select a prepaid subscription as a gift. The customers will then go through the gifting flow on the Customer Portal.
Some things to consider when setting up giftable subscriptions –
Gifts will be configured directly within the Stay AI merchant portal
Only prepaid selling plans can be configured as gifts
The out-of-the-box gifting option will populate into the buy box, but customizations can be made per by merchant request
Give the Gift of Subscription on Black Friday & Cyber Monday
Black Friday/Cyber Monday is the busiest shopping period of the year for Shopify eCommerce storefronts. This means that your brand should be setting up exclusive promotions for customers and subscribers alike to capture additional recurring revenue this season. Giftable subscriptions are a perfect promotion to run or advertise to subscribers around this time, including setting up a giftable subscription banner ad directly within the Customer Portal.
The holiday season is also a great opportunity to offer new, limited-time bundled products or offer exclusive deals can drive engagement, elevate brand loyalty, and excite new and old subscribers alike. For more about bundles, read more here.
Blog/Stay AI’s Ultimate Black Friday/Cyber Monday Play-by-Play for Boosting Recurring Revenue & LTV
Stay AI’s Ultimate Black Friday/Cyber Monday Play-by-Play for Boosting Recurring Revenue & LTV
Stay AI Team
Oct 11, 2024
Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) is fast approaching, which means Shopify subscription brands are preparing for the busiest eCommerce sales period of the year. With the right strategy and program optimizations, Black Friday/Cyber Monday is an excellent opportunity for your DTC brand to boost sales and increase recurring revenue this holiday season.
To ensure your brand has its best Black Friday/Cyber Monday yet, our team of retention and subscription experts have compiled some of the best strategies from leading eCommerce Shopify stores and brought them together below!
By implementing these strategies, your team can set yourself up for success on the busiest shopping event of the year – and boost AOV and LTV along the way.
Play #1: Optimizing Your Shopify Subscription Program Before Black Friday/Cyber Monday
A successful Black Friday/Cyber Monday comes down to preparation. This means you should optimize every touchpoint for potential new one-time purchasers (OTPs) and subscribers to craft an unparalleled shopping experience.
In this article, our team of experts highlights 4 areas of your Shopify subscription program that could use a refresh ahead of Black Friday/Cyber Monday to optimize your holiday strategies and ensure your brand is prepared for success.
Play #2: Running a Successful Shopify Black Friday/Cyber Monday Campaign to Capture New Subscribers
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are the largest holiday shopping events of the year. During this high-traffic online shopping occasion, Shopify eCommerce brands see an increase in site traffic and sales—that is, with the right acquisition strategy.
Alongside new first-time purchasers, the most effective way to drive revenue growth on Black Friday and Cyber Monday is by running a successful campaign that captures first-time subscribers. By converting new subscribers during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, your brand sets the foundation for recurring revenue throughout the holiday season and into the new year.
Play #3: Creating High-value Black Friday/Cyber Monday Offers for Existing Subscribers
While many brands focus on acquiring first-time customers during BFCM, top-performing Shopify brands will also prioritize offering high-value deals to their existing customers, ensuring strong conversions when the holiday season arrives.
To avoid sale-related churn, ensure that your subscribers – aka your most valuable customers – receive the best deal on your product.
Play #4: Aftercare Strategies to Retain Your New Subscribers & Boost LTV Following BFCM
After months of planning, the last thing you want to see is a high churn rate for those new first-time customers and subscribers you spent months working to acquire.
Unfortunately, churn is inevitable – but with an airtight aftercare strategy, you can reduce holiday-related churn to engage your new customers before they even consider churning.
By setting up aftercare strategies for BFCM early, you can maximize the value of your newest subscribers while preventing your team from playing catch-up after one of the year’s busiest shopping events.
Play #5: Promotion Best Practices for Subscribers During Black Friday/Cyber Monday
During these significant sale periods, it can be challenging to retain subscribers if they see a better deal or one-time sale offered to first-time shoppers or non-subscribers. They may opt to cancel their subscription or, worse, churn altogether.
To combat sitewide sale-related churn and as a best practice from the experts at Stay AI, you should always ensure that your subscribers – your most valuable customers – receive the best deal on your product, no matter the occasion.
Play #6: Top 100 Black Friday Deals and Sales from Stay AI’s Favorite Shopify Brands
We love celebrating and supporting the awesome DTC brands in our community, so we pulled together a list of the top 100 Black Friday DTC sales you can shop from Stay AI merchant brands. Check ’em out here!
Looking for More Black Friday/Cyber Monday Strategies?
Looking for additional Black Friday/Cyber Monday resources to ensure your Shopify subscription brand is ready to scale this year? We’ve got you covered – our team analyzed 300 #Shopify subscription programs to bring you winning BFCM strategies guaranteed to give you the revenue boost you’re looking for this year, all in one convenient (and free) 2024 Ultimate BFCM Playbook.
Blog/8 Strategies to Create High-Value Black Friday/Cyber Monday Offers for Existing Subscribers
8 Strategies to Create High-Value Black Friday/Cyber Monday Offers for Existing Subscribers
Stay AI Team
Oct 11, 2024
During Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM), which happens to be Shopify’s largest eCommerce event of the year, increasing sales from existing customers can be challenging.
While many brands focus on acquiring first-time customers during BFCM, top-performing Shopify brands will also prioritize offering high-value deals to their existing customers, ensuring strong conversions when the holiday season arrives.
In addition, during large sale periods like Black Friday/Cyber Monday, it can be challenging to retain existing customers and subscribers if they see a better deal or one-time sale offered to first-time shoppers or non-subscribers.
To avoid sale-related churn, ensure that your subscribers – aka your most valuable customers – receive the best deal on your product.
In this article, our retention and subscription experts unpack tested, winning strategies guaranteed to increase AOV and LTV from your existing customers and ensure that your eCommerce business has its most successful Black Friday/Cyber Monday yet.
How to Boost Subscriber Retention and LTV During Black Friday/Cyber Monday
#1 – Surprise & Delight with Exclusive Banner Ad Deals
Adding a banner ad directly within the Customer Portal is an excellent way to alert subscribers of upcoming or new product announcements and offers. Here, you can alert customers of new one-time add-ons, such as a cross-sell or upsell, or any other number of discounts, deals, and surprises your team may have up their sleeves.
Reward your most valuable customers with early access to BFCM promotions before they hit the general public. Using the banner ad, feature the products with applicable promotional offers, and make sure to link the most popular product to enable that two-click purchase. Then, optimize your upsell carousel to feature all of the products with a special discount so subscribers can quickly add those to their upcoming orders.
Here are a few strategies and examples from some of our favorite brands that leveraged their banner ads to keep subscribers engaged during BFCM last year:
(A) Offer Early Access, Subscriber-exclusive BFCM Deals
Clean Skin Club ran an awesome subscriber promotion for Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2023, offering their most loyal customers early access to incredible discounts. Each discounted product featured in the banner ad is accessible for a one-click add-on via the upsell carousel.
(B) Offer a VIP Loyalty Discount that’s Better than Your Sitewide Sale
During major market-wide promotional periods like Black Friday/Cyber Monday, your customers are likely browsing offers across multiple brands. To keep them in your corner, it’s up to you to surface the most captivating deal. Last year, UCAN offered subscribers 30% off their next order during the entire month of November – an even juicier discount than the 25% listed on their website.
(C) Show Subscriber Appreciation with a Free Gift – No Purchase Necessary
If you don’t want to provide additional or deeper discounts to subscribers during promo periods, we highly recommend offering a free gift with purchase instead. With this strategy, you can delight your subscribers with something to show appreciation and enhance their brand loyalty. Implementing this tactic during sales seasons will strengthen your connection with your subscribers and foster a sense of community, reinforcing a positive perception of your brand.
Last BFCM, Truvani ran an awesome Black Friday promotion that included a free shaker bottle with each new order. For existing subscribers,no purchase was necessary – they could add-on a free shaker bottle to their upcoming order using the Customer Portal banner ad.
#2 – Promote Exclusive Offers with an Add-on Carousel
Leveraging a dynamic add-on carousel, customers can easily add one-time products to their next shipment, bumping up their AOV and LTV. On Black Friday/Cyber Monday, you can leverage your in-portal Add-on Carousel to feature exclusive deals or limited-time SKUs, and then announce and reinforce these offers with an enticing banner ad announcement.
A) OLIPOP
OLIPOP uses their banner ad to promote the return of their limited-edition, seasonal Crisp Apple flavor. Subscribers could add this limited-time discounted upsell to their next subscription order directly within the Customer Portal in just a few clicks.
This past summer, the Loverboy team implemented some of their summer flavor faves into their Add-on Carousel, including the Spritz Variety Pack, Blueberry Lemon, and more. As a result, the team saw a 248% increase in add-on revenue with these seasonal favorites in the past three months.
#3 – Unlock Higher AOV with Strategic Cross-sells & Upsells
Too often, subscribers are overlooked when it comes to new promotions. If you’re not considering your subscriber cohort for cross-sells and upsells, you’re missing out on a cost-effective, untapped opportunity to maximize AOV and recurring revenue.
Here are a few strategies your brand can utilize to boost AOV this Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Let’s take a look at a few examples from some of our favorite Stay AI merchants –
(A) MoonBrew
MoonBrew delights subscribers across the customer journey with upsell promotions and gifts across orders using Quick Actions and ExperienceEngine. For example, MoonBrew subscribers can receive 20% off on certain add-on items, such as their MoonBrew Hot Cocoa, as a surprise upsell when they enter their Customer Portal. MoonBrew also surprises subscribers with a free tea storage container that appears as a Promotional Offer Email (once eligible) that alerts them of their special offer and directs them to their portal to redeem it.
These surprise and delight tactics keep subscribers engaged, reduce churn, and have the added benefit of reminding customers about the brand every time they’re in their kitchens – building affinity over time. By A/B testing different offers like this and discovering what’s most effective for increasing LTV, MoonBrew quickly identifies which offers and incentives work best across specific subscriber cohorts. Just 30 days after switching from their previous subscription provider, MoonBrew witnessed an impressive 72% increase in recurring revenue.
(B) Lifeboost
Our friends at Lifeboost A/B tested upselling subscribers on two different coffee variants – a pumpkin spice blend and an espresso blend. The promotion was a massive success, with Test B, the espresso option, receiving a 45% higher acceptance rate than Test A.
With an advanced promotions builder like Stay AI’s ExperienceEngine, you can test a wide range of discounts, add-ons, and gifts to your subscriber cohorts – including cross-sell and upsell offers. You can either create these promotions manually within the Merchant Portal or leverage our proprietary AI to A/B test several cross-sell or upsell opportunities. Either way you utilize it, ExperienceEngine is built to help you discover the highest-converting offer to share with your wider audience.
(C) Aura Bora
Here, Aura Bora announced the launch of their new Honey Pumpkin flavor, and gave subscribers an upsell option to add it to an upcoming order with a Quick Action CTA:
By implementing these cross-sell flows – in addition to using other revenue-driving features from Stay AI, the Aura Bora team has seen an incredible 128% growth in monthly subscription revenue.
Pro Tip: If your brand has a large product catalog, you can easily use ExperienceEngine’s smart A/B testing capabilities to test several cross-sell or upsell offers to narrow down which offer converts best with your subscribers – and enhance the subscriber experience. For 8 A/B testing strategies that leverage ExperienceEngine, read more here.
Looking for More Black Friday/Cyber Monday Strategies?
Looking for additional Black Friday/Cyber Monday resources to ensure your Shopify subscription brand is ready to scale this year? We’ve got you covered – our team analyzed 300 #Shopify subscription programs to bring you winning BFCM strategies guaranteed to give you the revenue boost you’re looking for this year, all in one convenient (and free) 2024 Ultimate BFCM Playbook.
Blog/Tackle Passive Churn with Stay AI’s Smart Dunning Tool
Tackle Passive Churn with Stay AI’s Smart Dunning Tool
Stay AI Team
Oct 08, 2024
Tackle Passive Churn with Stay AI’s Smart Dunning Tool
Did you know that recurring card transactions fail approximately 24% of the time? The experts at Stay have observed that out of these failures, over 25% can be attributed to generic card declines, and over 16% come from insufficient funds. Theseare typically recoverable errors—as long as you have the right tools.
To combat passive churn—losing subscribers through payment failures—brands need the most up-to-date payment recovery tools to 1) get a clear and comprehensive view of what is happening with failed payments and 2) know precisely what to do next based on the error code returned on initial payment attempts.
The best brands use the most innovative tools available to manage payment recovery and ensure that no recurring revenue slips away.
Stay AI is thrilled to launch Smart Dunning alongside our new Dunning Analytics Dashboard. Our Dunning Analytics Dashboard shows you an overview of where customers are churning passively and actively during the Dunning process. Now, Smart Dunning, leveraging our proprietary AI, takes all the guesswork out of setting up a successful billing retry schedule.
Take a Deep Dive into the Analytics
When it comes to investigating billing failures, the objective is clear: You need to clearly understand what’s happening to act quickly and recover more payments more successfully. Subscription billing can be confusing and even more complex if a card fails to bill. Stay’s new Dunning Analytics Dashboard makes understanding why payments are failing crystal clear.
This new page in the Stay AI merchant portal shows data around subscriptions currently in dunning, top causes of failed billing, subscription recoveries, and subscriptions canceled from and during dunning.
All of this information allows you to identify billing issues and see where to adjust dunning-related notifications to better meet your customers’ needs as well as your own!
Leverage AI to Know What to Do Next
Recover more subscriptions by utilizing our proprietary machine learning. Traditional models rely on retrying payments every few days using a preset number of retries. Stay AI’s Smart Dunning tool eliminates any guesswork and uses our proprietary AI model to take into account billing failure information to determine the best course of action for a successful billing attempt.
With Smart Dunning, you can manually configure your retry settings or let the AI-driven system take over once “Enable Smart Dunning” is selected.
Interested in Trying Out Smart Dunning?
By using Smart Dunning, you can achieve higher rates of successful payment recovery than traditional models. With so many demands on your time, Smart Dunning can handle your payment recovery to keep significant revenue from slipping through the cracks of passive churn.
Chat with our team today about getting more information on Stay AI’s Smart Dunning tool and our other churn-preventing tools!
Blog/10 Subscriber Acquisition Ideas to Turn Buyers Into Subscribers
10 Subscriber Acquisition Ideas to Turn Buyers Into Subscribers
Stay AI Team
Oct 01, 2024
Acquiring customers isn’t easy, especially with the rising expenses around capturing consumers’ attention where they are. But once you’ve captured a buyer’s interest, how can you move them from their first purchase into a regular subscription?
Great products hook customers, but exceptional experiences make them stay. If you want to improve subscriber conversion, here are some subscriber acquisition ideas and tactics the top revenue-generating brands on Stay AI swear by.
1. Trial or Starter Kits that Rollover to Subscription
Hook customers by offering trial kits that seamlessly roll over into a full subscription, sprinkled with personalized tips and exclusive sneak peeks. Bundle everything your customers need to get started, then leverage a workflow automation to switch buyers to a regular subscription shipment after the trial period ends.
Clevr offers customers the option to order starter kits as a one-time purchase or subscription – but once those one-time buyers have tried a few products, they’re hankering for more each month. Product education via email and SMS goes a long way when upselling customers from a trial starter pack to a recurring subscription.
2. Send Personalized Product Recommendations After First Purchase
Research shows that the likelihood of converting a one-time buyer into a repeat customer, and eventually a subscriber, increases significantly after their second purchase. According to studies, a buyer who makes a second purchase is 27% more likely to return, and this number jumps to 54% after a third purchase.
Consumers are also more likely to consider a subscription if they receive tailored promotions based on their preferences or purchasing behavior. This emphasizes the importance of focusing not just on getting a second purchase, but on offering a subscription model that feels relevant and valuable to the customer’s needs.
3. Send a Free Gift on Subscription Signup
Roll out the red carpet with a warm welcome gift! It’s an instant joy-spreader and a fabulous way to kickstart the subscriber journey. For brands with high same-day or 1-month cancellation rates, offering a bonus on the second order helps ensure subscribers don’t cancel right away, just to take advantage of the initial gift or discount.
Run Gum has a very generous offer for their new subscribers – free gifts with both their first and second recurring order. This not only helps them acquire subscribers, but also introduces new flavors to their customers – flavors they’ll be tempted to add on to their upcoming subscription order, boosting that juicy AOV!
4. Provide an Introductory Discount
Entice shoppers with an irresistible introductory discount. One caveat is that this can increase your number of same-day cancellations, so only use it if “you know that people who try your product have a very good experience and your churn rate is low,” recommends Zach Stuck, Founder of top ecommerce agency Homestead.
Buoy’s introductory discount includes an “eco-friendly” welcome gift on month one, then moves subscribers to a standard shipment of just 3 bottles of product starting on month 2. This is an especially effective tactic, as it helps subscribers to begin building a daily routine with their hydration drops.
5. Provide Bundle & Save Options
Who doesn’t love a bargain? Curated bundle offers can be a total hit, enticing customers to explore more while saving big. Customers are also far more likely to subscribe to a brand when they have the opportunity to build a bundle of just the products they love. See the example from Mad Rabbit below.
Beekeeper’s Naturals offers a variety of curated bundles for both one-time purchase and subscription, enabling custBeekeeper’s Naturals offers a variety of curated bundles for both one-time purchase and subscription, enabling customers to test out products and build the usage routine of their choice.
The Beekeeper’s Naturals team has leveraged a variety of Stay Ai’s out-of-the-box revenue-boosting features, resulting in 62% growth in monthly recurring subscription revenue. Click below to read the full case study.Read Beekeeper’s Naturals Case Study
Another bundle technique: let customers build their own bundle and realize extra savings on exactly the products they want. Mad Rabbit allows customers to shop from a variety of curated bundles, or create a custom order using the Build Your Own Bundle tool. In building a custom bundle, they can watch in real-time as their subscribe & save discount is dynamically calculated.
6. Leverage SMS for Subscription Upsells
If we’re being totally honest, we know our customers’ email inboxes are flooded. SMS alerts stand out in a world swamped with email. A direct nudge can sometimes be all it takes to steer a one-time purchaser toward a subscription.
Kaged strategically texts their one-time-purchase customers after they’ve had some time to use the product, reminding them of the brand’s subscription discounting and promotional offers. A simple nudge like this is quick to set up, extremely effective, and an easy way to get some subscription acquisition wins with little manual effort.
On Graza’s subscription webpage, they highlight a unique subscriber benefit – “goodies from Graza”. Goodies include subscriber-exclusive discounts, and free gifts, such as cookbooks and treats.
8. Implement a Loyalty Program
Turn your customers into fans with a loyalty program that rewards and incentivizes them at every step. Offer subscriber perks and rewards. Keep it personalized and aligned with their preferences for that extra special touch.
In addition to their subscribe & save program, Harmless Harvest has a robust loyalty program for their dedicated customers. The program is free to join, and enables customers to earn “Harvest Coins” with each purchase, which can be cashed in for discounts on future orders.
8. Create Subscriber-Exclusive Perks & Events
Create a buzz with exclusive events and subscriber perks. Your relationship with your subscribers doesn’t have to be about just the products; it’s about fostering a community that thrives on exclusivity and connection.
Surely’s subscription program – aptly named the Wine Club – comes with a variety of unique benefits for customers. Subscribers gain access to virtual wine tastings, an online members-only community, happy hours, drink recipes, and more. Wine Club members also get to vote on the future of a lot of these perks, like new flavors, Surely merch, and upcoming events.
9. Feature Subscriber UGC
Spark conversations and built trust with user-generated content. The purpose? “[Show] the value of your subscription: ‘Here’s why you need this product in your pantry consistently.’” — Jess Cervellon, VP of CX, Feastables
Tenzo places subscriber reviews front-and-center on their homepage, some with more “subliminal” messaging than others. A strategy like this is especially effective for products that work best when used on a regular routine – like supplements, skincare, and so forth. This messaging not only assures the customer that they’ll like what they’re about to purchase, but inspires that “Sounds really good, so I might as well get the discount!” feeling, too.
Mistakes to Avoid
While building a subscriber base is crucial for long-term growth, many brands make mistakes that can hinder this process.
One common misstep is bombarding one-time buyers with overly aggressive sales emails or frequent promotional offers. This can overwhelm potential subscribers, making them feel more like a transaction than a valued customer.
Another mistake is failing to personalize communication. Sending generic content instead of tailored messaging that reflects a buyer’s preferences and purchase history can cause them to lose interest.
Additionally, brands often overlook the importance of providing a seamless, user-friendly subscription process. Complex or confusing sign-up procedures can discourage even the most interested customers from subscribing. Avoid these mistakes as you work on increasing your subscriber conversion.
“One of the most tried and true ways [to turn a one-time buyer into a subscriber] is to make sure they have a really excellent experience with your product that convinces them they need to use it on a continual basis. Most subscriptions offer a thinly veiled promise and don’t give the customer a true reason to ‘keep it coming.’” — Daniel Okon, Founder & CEO, Activ
Pro Tip: Overpromising and underdelivering is a surefire way to boost your churn. Be mindful about your pre-purchase messaging regarding product and customer experience.
Pinpoint the Right Timing
“The best times in the customer lifecycle to send these messages is related to consumption frequency. We have to ask them to buy again at the right time, versus just being greedy and missing the mark.” — Shray Joshi, Founder & CEO, Good Peeps
Pro Tip: Don’t go all willy nilly with your customer communications; leverage the product usage data at your disposal.
Emphasize Subscription Program Benefits
“[Showcase] the benefits of being on subscription: always 30% off, always free shipping, free cancellations, free gifts… I think that’s helped us turn more people into subscribers.” — Ashvin Melwani, Co-Founder and CMO, Obvi
Pro Tip: Just because you know your subscription benefits by heart doesn’t mean your customers do. Don’t be afraid to remind them and boldly highlight benefits on any relevant brand assets.
Looking to acquire more subscribers, or scale up your subscription program’s profit margins? Stay Ai’s out-of-the-box tools are designed to boost your subscription revenue, while delighting your VIP customers.
Supercharge Your Subscription & Retention Strategy with Stay AI
Blog/How to Run a Successful Shopify Black Friday/Cyber Monday Campaign that Captures New, First-time Subscribers
How to Run a Successful Shopify Black Friday/Cyber Monday Campaign that Captures New, First-time Subscribers
Stay AI Team
Sep 30, 2024
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are the largest holiday shopping events of the year. During this high-traffic online shopping occasion, Shopify eCommerce brands see an increase in site traffic and sales—that is, with the right acquisition strategy.
Alongside new first-time purchasers, the most effective way to drive revenue growth on Black Friday and Cyber Monday is by running a successful campaign that captures first-time subscribers. By converting new subscribers during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, your brand sets the foundation for recurring revenue throughout the holiday season and into the new year.
In this article, our retention and subscription experts unpack tested, winning strategies that will help your eCommerce business run a successful Black Friday & Cyber Monday promotion to capture new subscribers and increase your DTC recurring revenue.
Strategies to Successfully Capture New Subscribers during Black Friday/Cyber Monday
Strategy #1: Offer Flexible Bundle Options
Bundles are a great way to increase AOV, especially around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We’ve seen brands succeed using high-priced bundles that include limited-edition products or complimentary add-ons. These entry bundles create high initial orders, and then brands can roll those customers into subscriptions.
But beyond the traditional bundle, we recommend build-your-own bundles that offer increased flexibility, personalization, and value for customers looking to try several new products, and who will appreciate the added small discount for buying multiple products. Increased flexibility in your bundling offers also makes customers much more likely to stick around for a subscription.
Here are a few different bundling strategies we love from Stay merchants –
(1) Trial or Starter Kits that Roll into a Subscription
Hook customers by offering trial kits that seamlessly roll over into a full subscription, sprinkled with personalized tips and exclusive sneak peeks. Bundle everything your customers need to get started, then leverage workflow automation to switch buyers to a regular subscription shipment after the trial period ends.
Tenzo uses a trial-to-subscription offer to ensure first-time matcha makers are fully equipped to make their matcha before rolling into a simpler restock subscription.
(2) Build-Your-Own Bundles
When items are bundled, customers feel like they’re getting a sweet deal, even if the discount isn’t massive. With build-your-own bundles, shoppers can customize their bundle exactly how they want, whether it’s different sizes, flavors, or delivery cadence. The more they can customize, the happier they’ll be — and much less likely to churn.
When customers have different size, flavor, and frequency options, they need a more customizable bundle for exactly the shipment they want — and to easily adjust when their needs change.
Grinds makes it easy for subscribers to choose specific flavors and quantities of their caffeine pouches so that they can create exactly the variety of flavors they want each month. This flexibility contributed to Grinds’ 22% increase in three-month retention rate and 48% surge in subscription revenue.
Pro Tip: Be sure your bundling strategy fits your audience. Large bundles with a high price tag may not be the right call for every brand. While they can increase AOV in the short term, they can also lead to churn if subscribers start feeling like they can’t justify the recurring cost. A bundle-builder can be a good solution since your consumers can create their own bundle with a price point they’re comfortable with. For more strategies around bundling, click here.
Optimizing your welcome offers and buy boxes are just a few of the many ways you can entice new customers to subscribe. By exposing customers to your subscription program’s value at a glance, you can encourage them to opt for recurring orders over a one-time purchase.
Graza, aka DTC’s favorite olive oil brand, is serving a buy box that’s as smart as their internet-loved squeezable bottles. With a subtle nudge toward quantity, Graza arranges their quantity options to make bulk buys extra tempting — marrying free shipping with sweet savings.
The drop-down delivery frequency menu puts options right at their fingertips so they can tailor their delivery schedule to their unique needs.
For 8 additional high-converting buy box examples from top Shopify eCommerce brands, click here.
Strategy #3: Offer an Exclusive, One-time Subscription Discount
The least complicated way to run a successful sitewide sale on Black Friday/Cyber Monday that captures new subscribers is with a boosted subscription offer that increases your usual subscription incentive or discount offer by stacking it with an additional, one-time discount code.
Last year, our friends at Vita Coco leveraged an in-portal banner ad to announce and offer a subscriber-exclusive discount on customers’ upcoming orders during BFCM. Take a look:
For a detailed breakdown of how to create one-time subscription discounts during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, read more here.
Strategy #4: Offer an Exclusive Subscriber Discount by Updating Your Selling Plan
The second approach your brand can take to offer new subscribers a greater deal is to change your Selling Plan to a higher discount (ie. 30% versus your usual 15%), and once the promotion is over, change it back to 15%. The caveat here is that subscribers who first purchased during your sale will be grandfathered into that 30% deal indefinitely.
This option is great if you want to offer new subscribers an indefinite rate at your current promotional discount. However, if you ever intend to switch these subscribers back to your typical subscription discount (ie. 15% off), you would need to implement a workflow or two that could end up being a nightmare depending on the size of your SKU catalog.
For more information on updating your Selling Plan around Black Friday/Cyber Monday, read more here.
Looking for More Black Friday/Cyber Monday Strategies?
Looking for additional Black Friday/Cyber Monday resources to ensure your Shopify subscription brand is ready to scale this year? We’ve got you covered – our team analyzed 300 #Shopify subscription programs to bring you winning BFCM strategies guaranteed to give you the revenue boost you’re looking for this year, all in one convenient (and free) 2024Ultimate BFCM Playbook.
Blog/7 Tips for Effective Customer Cancellation Surveys and Flows
7 Tips for Effective Customer Cancellation Surveys and Flows
Stay AI Team
Sep 23, 2024
One of Stay Ai’s most valuable benefits is the way it enables brands to proactively enhance their subscriber experience with things like discounts, gifts with purchase, exclusive offers, etc. But the fact is, you’re always going to have customers who hit the cancel button.
That’s why your cancellation survey and subsequent flow are two of your most important retention tools. You don’t have to just sit back and watch them go.
That said, we see a lot of brands still making this mistake: creating their customer cancellation flow and then forgetting about it for the next year.
Our rule of thumb is that, with the right subscription cancellation flow, you should save at least 20% of the people who go through it. If you’re not, you probably need to optimize — or you’ll be leaving money on the table.
Let’s dig into seven helpful tips for optimizing your customer cancellation surveys and flows.
Cancellation Survey Best Practices
To clean up the holes in your subscription program, you have to know why your customers are canceling, and how those reasons are trending over time. That’s where the cancellation survey comes in. If cancellations for your product are on the rise and you’re not already using these tactics, it’s time to change up your customer cancellation survey.
1. Optimize Cancellation Reasons Over Time
Begin with a core set of reasons for cancellation then, based on the data, break them down further — only if necessary.
For example, let’s say one of your cancellation reasons is “Price.” That could be an issue on the customer side (“I can’t afford this right now.”) or it could be a brand/value issue (“I don’t believe this is worth the price.”)
If the number of people selecting this as a cancellation reason is relatively low, you might not need to break it down further. But if it’s a large proportion of your answers, it could be valuable to find out if it’s their budget or their perception of value that’s causing the real pain. Lifeboost used Stay Ai’s churn dashboards to improve customer retention from 5% to 27%.
2. Address the “Other” Category
You’ll probably always need “other” as a category, but if it’s being selected more than 5% of the time, that signals a bigger problem. It means you have customers leaving and you don’t know why.
If you encounter this, don’t worry — there are practical steps you can take to address it.
First, gather input from the “Other” comment field and examine responses for recurring patterns or themes. This will provide valuable insights into the areas where customers’ needs might not align with the available response options. After that, temporarily disable the “Other” option, pushing customers to select the next most relevant response from the provided choices.
3. Avoid Recency and Primacy Bias
To ensure unbiased data collection, you need to randomize the order of reasons presented in your cancelation surveys. Why? Recency and primacy bias.
Primacy bias refers to the likelihood that you’ll remember the first items in a list better than the ones in the middle.
Recency bias refers to a greater ability to remember more recent information better than older information.
These biases are why, if you leave all your cancel reasons in the same order, you’ll likely see inflated numbers on the top and bottom reasons. Randomizing the order removes that bias so you get more accurate data.
Subscription Cancellation Flow Examples and Tips
The two biggest things that make a cancel flow effective are personalization and personality. Customers respond to feeling as if something is just for them, coming directly from a real human. These cancellation flow examples demonstrate how to infuse your subscription service with personalization and personality — and retain customers in the process.
1. Acknowledge the Customer’s Patronage
Expressing gratitude for a customer’s loyalty and acknowledging their specific purchase history helps create a personalized connection. The keyword here is “personalized”: customers want to feel like the brand knows and values them.
For example, offering a discount while highlighting their length of subscription can make the customer feel valued. Or if you’re responding to a product issue, you can acknowledge the product they currently subscribe to and offer them an alternative product they might like more.
Bimble used this tactic to decrease subscriber churn by 35% in 3 months. They allow customers to get shipments once every 8 weeks, prioritizing customer preferences.
2. Use Video Treatments
Video messages in a cancellation flow can improve customer retention rate by 40% or more, making them one of the most effective save tactics. Why? It’s personalization, again.
Incorporating video content into cancellation flows can greatly enhance the personalization aspect. By featuring a real person instead of a faceless brand, businesses can establish a human connection and address customer concerns directly.
3. Offer Irregular-Number Discounts
This one frequently surprises people, but we’ve seen it work time and time again. Irregular discounts (e.g., 19% or 22% off) can grab customers’ attention and create a sense of personalization. These offers appear less automated and more tailored to the customer’s unique situation.
4. Incorporate Product Education
If a cancellation reason pertains to product dissatisfaction, you can provide additional information to educate them.
For example, let’s say you have a supplement brand and a customer cancels after 60 days because they don’t think it’s working. You could counter by educating them that subscribers typically start seeing results after 90 days.
Or, if you’re selling a beverage or food item and a customer cancels because they don’t like the flavor, make sure they know how easy it is to try a different one — or even a whole new product.
Leverage Cancellation Surveys and Flows to Keep More Customers, Longer
Don’t fall into the trap of creating your cancel flows only to neglect them for extended periods of time. That approach only undermines your potential to save customers from churning and misses out on opportunities to improve the overall user experience. Effective cancel flows and follow-ups should be dynamic and continuously evolving to meet customer needs.
Stay Ai’s RetentionEngine makes this process near-effortless, eliminating the need for additional work from IT or developers. Find out how Stay Ai can enable your brand to take charge of its cancellation flow and make sure it remains an effective retention strategy for your brand.
Supercharge Your Subscription & Retention Strategy with Stay AI
Blog/4 Strategies to Optimize Your Shopify Subscription Program for Black Friday/Cyber Monday Success
4 Strategies to Optimize Your Shopify Subscription Program for Black Friday/Cyber Monday Success
Stay AI Team
Sep 17, 2024
How to Craft Winning Strategies for Black Friday/Cyber Monday Success
Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) is fast approaching, which means Shopify subscription brands are preparing for the busiest eCommerce sales period of the year. With the right strategy and program optimizations, Black Friday/Cyber Monday is an excellent opportunity for your DTC brand to boost sales and increase recurring revenue this holiday season.
A successful Black Friday/Cyber Monday comes down to preparation. This means you should optimize every touchpoint for potential new one-time purchasers (OTPs) and subscribers to craft an unparalleled shopping experience.
In this article, we’ll highlight 4 areas of your Shopify subscription program that could use a refresh ahead of Black Friday/Cyber Monday to optimize your holiday strategies and ensure your brand is prepared for success.
1. Optimize Your Product Pages (PDPs) and Buy Boxes for Subscription Purchases
One of the most critical places for customers and potential subscribers to learn about your subscription program – and its benefits – is on your product pages (PDPs). Our UI/UX experts put together these four PDP best practices to help nudge your customers toward subscription.
In addition to optimizing your PDPs toward subscription, buy boxes are another way your DTC brand can entice new customers to subscribe. Expose customers to your subscription program’s value at a glance, encouraging them to opt for recurring orders over a one-time purchase.
A well-crafted Customer Portal can provide an unmatched subscriber experience that reduces CX tickets while increasing LTV. With an intuitive design and exclusive access to subscriber discounts, deals, and other surprises, a well-branded Customer Portal enables subscribers to take control of their subscriptions without contacting support.
Here are a few of our favorite Customer Portals from Stay AI merchants to help inspire your own portal customizations – no code required.
3. Implement Subscription-oriented CRO
Subscription-oriented conversion rate optimization (CRO) specifically aims to convert your new holiday shoppers into subscribers.
We sat down with our friend Rand Owens, VP of Marketing at Nostra AI, to unpack the tactical CRO checklist and strategies your brand can use to optimize and scale your program leading up to BFCM. This checklist includes optimization tips for early-stage DTC subscription brands and later-stage DTC subscription brands alike, so regardless of your Shopify revenue, you’ll find value in these subscription-oriented CRO strategies.
4. Remember to A/B Test
A/B testing allows you to make decisions based on real customer data rather than assumptions or gut feelings. By comparing two versions of a campaign, whether split-testing different variants of a PDP, different products as upsells, or testing a free gift with a subscriber’s 2nd (or 4th) order, see which resonates better with your audience in real time.
When it comes to your subscription program, the possibilities are nearly endless when it comes to testing, optimizing, and scaling LTV. Your program should never be a static, set-it-and-forget-it component of your marketing strategy. Instead, leverage subscription as a performance channel that needs constant optimization.
With the help of an advanced promotions builder like ExperienceEngine, you can test a wide range of discounts, add-ons, upsells, and gifts to your subscriber cohorts to uncover what deals actually resonate with shoppers before BFCM hits.
Leveraging advanced AI, ExperienceEngine discovers the highest-converting cross-sells, upsells, and discounts without the need for manual testing – and even better, provides you with in-depth analytics to further inform your strategy. You can also present exclusive promotional offers to subscribers identified as high churn risk, incentivizing them to stick to a subscription before they even consider canceling it.
Did you know that ExperienceEngine automatically tracks over 25 KPIs relevant to your promotion so you can clearly understand how the promotion impacted your program? These include actionable data insights around subscriber churn, including percentage and total subscriptions active/paused versus subscriptions canceled, as well as insights like additional revenue and AOV from accepted and declined experiences.
Looking for More Black Friday/Cyber Monday Strategies?
Looking for additional Black Friday/Cyber Monday resources to ensure your Shopify subscription brand is ready to scale this year? We’ve got you covered –
Blog/4 Effective Ways to Communicate Your Cross-Sells & Upsells to Subscribers (with Examples)
4 Effective Ways to Communicate Your Cross-Sells & Upsells to Subscribers (with Examples)
Stay AI Team
Sep 06, 2024
Once you’ve built a cross-sell or upsell promotion, you’re ready to share it with your subscribers. Using Stay AI’s robust feature set, you can communicate your promotion to your subscriber cohort through several quick and effective channels.
In this article, we’ll break down 4 unique strategies to effectively communicate your cross-sell and upsell offers to your subscribers – and boost your recurring revenue.
1. Deliver a Promotional Offer Email Directly to Subscribers’ Inboxes
Email is one of modern marketers’ best friends, and has truly stood the test of time as one of the most reliable, revenue-generating channels. You can streamline the delivery of your cross-sell and upsell offers with a quick email announcement to ensure your customers not only see your offer, but can engage in just a few clicks.
Our friends at Momofuku utilized Stay’s Drag and Drop Email Builder to create beautifully branded subscription emails and promotion announcements that subscribers can easily apply to their next order by clicking the Quick Action call-to-action directly in the email.
The “Add Product” call-to-action at the bottom of their emails allows customers to quickly redirect to their Customer Portal to accept or decline their offer.
Want to do the same? Suppose your brand wants to run a similar discount promotion directly within a subscriber’s inbox. In that case, you can use Stay’s Email Builder and Quick Actions to successfully fire a promotion email after a subscriber meets the criteria of your offer.
For example, if you’ve set up a cross-sell or upsell promotion for order 2, a customer could receive a Promotion Offer Email after checking out with their initial order, as they are receiving their promotion on their second order.
Note: If you are not using Klaviyo (and instead use another ESP), we strongly recommend enabling Stay AI’s email notifications to effectively send promotional information via email. Otherwise, customers will only be notified of their ExperienceEngine promotional offer in their customer portal.
2. Include a Dynamic Upsell Module Directly Within Subscriber Email or SMS Communications
Transactional emails are some of the most important communications that your subscribers will receive from you – particularly the upcoming order email that lets them know their order is about to ship and that they have a few days to make any changes or add any products.
Lifeboost took their transactional emails to the next level with Stay AI’s Smart Blocks and added an upsell widget. All they had to do was pick a product they wanted to feature, add in a subscriber-specific discount, and drop the module into their “It’s almost that time!” upcoming order email.
Subscribers opened this email to see details and a discount on a product that interested them. From there, all they had to do was click “Add Product,” and it was added to their upcoming order. The inclusion of these modules in transactional emails helped Lifeboost push specific products while contributing to the 50% rise in MoM add-on revenue.
3. Leverage Klaviyo Quick Actions for Seamless One-click Upsells
Klaviyo Quick Actions are URLs that perform specific actions within the Customer Portal when a subscriber clicks on them. With Quick Actions, your brand can apply add-on item promotions like cross-sells and upsells directly within subscribers’ email communications. From there, subscribers can click the Quick Action call-to-action to be redirected to their portal to accept or decline your offer.
Using Stay AI’s Klaviyo integration, Aura Bora segments subscribers who tend to purchase new flavor releases or seasonal flavors and directly markets to those cohorts by sending emails with Quick Actions to announce and cross-sell new products.
Here, Aura Bora announced the launch of their new Honey Pumpkin flavor, and gave subscribers the option to add it to their upcoming order with a Quick Action call-to-action:
By implementing these cross-sell flows – in addition to using a variety of other revenue-driving features from Stay, the Aura Bora team has seen an incredible 128% growth in monthly subscription revenue.
4. Implement an In-Portal Banner Ad to Announce Your New Offer
Adding a banner ad directly within the Customer Portal is another excellent way to alert subscribers of upcoming or new product announcements and offers. Here, you can alert customers of new one-time add-ons, such as a cross-sell or upsell, or any other number of discounts, deals, and surprises your team may have up their sleeves.
OLIPOP used their banner ad to promote the return of their limited-edition, seasonal Crisp Apple flavor. Subscribers could then add this limited-time cross-sell to their next subscription order in just a few clicks.
Delighting Your Subscribers with Timely Add-ons Has Never Been Easier
By communicating your ExperienceEngine cross-sell and upsell offers to subscribers directly via email, SMS, or banner ad messaging, you can streamline the delivery process to ensure your customers not only see your message and offer, but are at the ready to engage and convert in just a few clicks.
Blog/Crafting Winning Cross-sell & Upsell Offers for Your Subscribers: A Step-by-Step Guide
Crafting Winning Cross-sell & Upsell Offers for Your Subscribers: A Step-by-Step Guide
Stay AI Team
Sep 06, 2024
Too often, subscribers are overlooked when it comes to new promotions. If you’re not considering your subscriber cohort for cross-sells and upsells, then you’re missing out on a cost-effective, untapped opportunity to maximize AOV and recurring revenue.
In particular, cross-sells and upsells are an excellent opportunity to boost revenue without the added acquisition costs related to acquiring new customers.
A well-timed cross-sell or upsell can make your subscribers feel like they’re getting even more value from their subscription – building trust, loyalty, and LTV along the way.
In this article, we’ll review everything you need to know about cross-sells and upsells, and how your brand can implement winning add-on offers to boost recurring revenue.
What’s the difference between cross-selling and upselling?
Cross-selling encourages a customer to add a complementary product to their existing subscription order which also increases AOV and LTV. Upselling encourages customers to purchase a more expensive product, service, or feature which quickly increases their AOV.
In the context of your subscription program, cross-sells are more likely to increase AOV as you surprise and delight subscribers with limited-time products, exclusives, or seasonal surprises that enhance the overall subscriber experience. Similarly, upsells offer a chance to increase AOV by offering subscribers a premium or complementary product that will enhance their experience.
Crafting Winning Cross-sells with ExperienceEngine
Stay AI’s ExperienceEngine is our advanced promotions builder that enables you to test a wide range of discounts, add-ons, and gifts to your subscriber cohorts – including cross-sell and upsell offers.
You can either create these promotions within the Merchant Portal manually or leverage our proprietary AI to A/B test several cross-sell or upsell opportunities. Either way, you utilize it, ExperienceEngine is built to help you discover the highest-converting offer to share with your wider audience more easily.
If your brand has a large product catalog, you can use ExperienceEngine’s smart A/B testing capabilities to test multiple cross-sell or upsell offers to narrow down the offer that converts best with your subscribers. For 8 A/B testing strategies that leverage ExperienceEngine and enhance the subscriber experience, click here.
You can also present exclusive promotional offers to subscribers identified as high churn risk, incentivizing them to stick to a subscription before they even consider canceling it.
How does it work? When a subscriber becomes eligible for a promotion built in ExperienceEngine, this offer will become visible in their Customer Portal as a popup modal, which can be accepted or saved for later in the one-time products section. This offer can also be communicated to subscribers via email using Stay’s Email Builder.
A Step-by-Step Checklist for Creating Your Cross-sell or Upsell
Creating an enticing cross-sell or upsell for your subscribers can dramatically boost AOV and LTV without the costs associated with acquiring new customers or top-of-funnel campaigns. Instead, using the toolkit at your disposal in ExperienceEngine, you can create and deliver promotional offers to existing subscribers at no additional cost.
This next section will break down exactly how to create and execute a cross-sell or upsell promotion in Stay’s ExperienceEngine. For specific strategy recommendations to customize your existing cross-sell or upsell promotions, more on that here.
✅ 1. Navigate to ExperienceEngine & Choose Your Promotion Parameters
To create your cross-sell or upsell promotional offer, first navigate to your Merchant Portal and open your ExperienceEngine dashboard. From here, select Create a Promotion and either choose to Use AI or Do It Yourself.
You can let our subscription-trained AI engine run and test one-of-one personalized offers for your customers, or start your test manually to test specific cross-sell or upsell ideas that your team may already have.
Once you’ve selected Create a Promotion, you can easily choose which order parameters to apply this add-on promotion to, as well as whether or not to target your promotion to subscribers identified as high churn risk based on Stay’s predictive AI. If you’re interested in learning more about our AI functionality, you can read more here. Then, in the Apply to Orders section, select the parameters to include in your promotion. This includes order cycle, cohort segmentation, and more.
During the fall season, our friends at Olipop offer their limited-edition Crisp Apple flavor as a cross-sell opportunity for subscribers directly in their Customer Portal:
✅ 2. Choose a Product for your Cross-sell or Upsell
Next, choose a product (or two, or three) for your cross-sell or upsell offer. Using ExperienceEngine, you can test different products as upsells or the same product at varying discount amounts to see which offer is most successful – and then deliver this variation of the promotion to your larger customer cohort.
Our friends at Lifeboost A/B tested upselling subscribers on two different coffee variants – a pumpkin spice blend and an espresso blend. The promotion was a massive success, with Test B, the espresso option, receiving a 45% higher acceptance rate than Test A.
✅ 3. Select your Cross-sell or Upsell Discount Amount(s)
Your cross-sell or upsell offer will be viewed as an add-on product. Select whether to include this item as a percentage discount or a fixed ($) discount.
We recommend testing odd-numbered or unusual discount offers versus the standard 10% to 25% that customers are used to. For example, a 17% or 33% discount upsell may appear more unique and personalized, and, as a result, receive better results.
✅ 4. Select your Promotion Window
Before launching your new campaign, select the date window you’d like to use for your cross-sell or upsell promotion.
Try testing your cross-sell or upsell for at least one order cycle so that subscribers are more likely to see their limited-time offer when entering their Customer Portal.
✅ 5. Pro Tip: A/B Test your Cross-sell or Upsell Promotion(s)
If you’d like to A/B test several products in your cross-sell or upsell offer to see which one converts best, you can add up to 4 products within your promotion and select what percentage of the segment should receive each offer.
Once you’ve finished setting up your new cross-sell or upsell add-on promotion, you can serve this offer to your selected subscriber cohort. To make this offer even more timely, add an email communication or announcement to alert subscribers of this one-time offer waiting for them in their Customer Portal.
Using Stay’s Promotion Offer Email template in our Email Builder, you can quickly create these communications with ease.
To make the most of your subscription data, it’s crucial to comprehend various metrics related to the promotions you are testing. Without understanding and iterating on your tests’ results, you won’t be able to properly build and optimize your promotions.
ExperienceEngine automatically tracks over 25 KPIs relevant to your promotion so you can clearly understand how the promotion impacted your subscription program. These include actionable data insights around subscriber churn, including percentage and total subscriptions active/paused versus subscriptions canceled an experience, as well as insights like additional revenue and AOV from accepted and declined experiences.
By properly reviewing your data and iterating your campaign based on your results, you can effectively continue to grow and scale your subscriber AOV in no time.
Looking for more strategies and examples of cross-sells and upsells?
If you’re interested in specific cross-sell and upsell strategies from some of Shopify’s top brands using Stay AI, check out this article where we dive into subscription-specific cross-sell and upsell strategies, with examples from some of our favorite brands.
