You can’t help but notice the number of subscription services available these days. It seems like you can get anything and everything through a subscription. In fact, subscription retailers’ sales increased 45 times over between 2011 and 2016, expanding the industry to $2.6 billion a year. Retailers aren’t offering subscriptions as a gimmicky side-hustle; they’re seeing them as a vital part of their business and one with many advantages. 

Subscription e-commerce isn’t limited to food parcels and razor blades, either; there are lots of innovative ways you can harness it, no matter what industry you’re in. 

If you can successfully implement subscription e-commerce into your business, there are many great benefits to be had. 

Less Churn 

Churn refers to the percentage of customers who stop interacting with your company over a given period. A high churn means that customers are buying from you and then quickly leaving, meaning you don’t benefit from their repeat business. 

You put a lot of effort into acquiring customers, so you want to keep them coming back to you as often as possible. A subscription ecommerce service is a great way to do this as it keeps people constantly engaged with your company, so they will become repeat customers. 

Customer Acquisition Costs

Talking of the effort you put into acquiring customers, all that effort costs money. Businesses spend vast amounts of money on marketing and advertising to acquire customers, but if those customers aren’t returning, then return on those costs is diminished. 

Subscription services help companies establish a regular flow of income by turning a customer into repeat customers. This allows you to increase customer spend over time and boost your ROI on acquisition costs. 

Building Relationships 

Subscription e-commerce gives you an excellent opportunity to build strong relationships with your customers. The more interactions you have with a customer, the more chances you have to provide them with a top-rate customer experience and turn them into a brand advocator. These brand advocators can help grow your business through word of mouth, expanding your customer base, and creating more loyal customers. 

Opportunity to Boost Upsells 

You want to maximize the amount of money your customers spend with you, and subscriptions give you an excellent opportunity to do this. 

When you form a strong relationship with the customer like you do with a subscription, then you open up channels through which you can communicate with them. From here, you can perfect your upselling, increasing your average revenue per user. 

Predictability 

Subscription e-commerce can help with budgeting and inventory planning because it gives you a good idea of what sales you have in the pipeline. If you have 10,000 subscribers and you have a growth rate of 0.5%, then you know roughly what numbers you are going to do each month. 

This allows you to plan your budget, manage stock, and protect against sudden changes. Of course, you need to keep providing your customers with a high-quality service, but as long as you do that, then the subscription service can give you a little bit more predictability.