Customer churn is an inevitable challenge of subscription ecommerce. With churn comes decreased customer lifetime value (CLTV), lost revenue, and increased reliance on expensive new customer acquisition. 

By taking steps to reactivate lapsed subscribers (and by making resubscription as easy as possible) you can unlock revenue and make the most out of your acquisition spending.

This article explores how ecommerce marketers can use the Recharge-Klaviyo integration to do just this.

Why is winning back churned customers important?

To start with, let’s consider why reactivating churned customers is so important for subscription brands in the first place. 

• Improving cost efficiency. Customer acquisition typically requires significant time and budget. Since churned subscribers are already familiar with your brand, your products, and the subscription process, the investment needed to win them back is typically much lower than acquiring an entirely new subscriber.

• Maximising CLTV. Reactivating a churned subscriber extends their customer lifecycle, directly contributing to an increase in their CLTV. When scaled across a cohort of subscribers, this can significantly impact your bottom line.

• Strengthening customer relationships. A thoughtful win-back campaign tailored to a customer’s individual circumstances can make them feel understood by your brand. This can help to build more meaningful brand-consumer relationships and encourage loyalty.

• Collecting valuable customer feedback. By asking for feedback from customers who resist any reactivation offers during a win-back campaign, you can identify potential issues with your product or the overall customer experience. This feedback can help you refine your offering and prevent future churn amongst other subscribers.

• Recovering lost revenue. Of course, winning back a lapsed subscriber helps to recapture lost recurring revenue.

Recharge’s Win Backs feature

Win Backs is part of Recharge’s Retain package, a powerful suite of loyalty and retention tools. It allows users to re-engage churned customers with smart incentives for resubscribing. Incentives can make the decision to restart a subscription more appealing, whilst reducing perceived barriers.

For maximum impact, offers can be tailored depending on a customer’s reason for initially cancelling their subscription. This demonstrates that you’ve listened to their feedback, understood their needs and are willing to accommodate them. 

Incentive examples

Recharge enables retailers to offer various types of incentives:

• Consider offering churned subscribers a free gift, like a sample of your latest product, if they reactivate their subscription. Not only does this encourage them to re-engage, it helps to showcase the most recent additions to your product range while creating the perception of extra value.

• Give customers a one-time discount on their first order when they restart a subscription. Lowering the price temporarily can make it easier for consumers to justify giving your brand another try.

• What about offering recurring discount incentives across multiple future orders? This could be particularly compelling for customers who’ve churned from their subscription because of cost.

Win Back landing pages

Win Backs users can promote these incentives on no-code reactivation landing pages, showcasing products, benefits and deals that will resonate most with lapsed subscribers. This is key for making customers feel valued and boosting conversion. 

Win Back landing pages can be shared with customers via a unique link, and they can be A/B tested to find out which have maximum impact.

You can track the performance of your Win Back landing pages using the overview and performance dashboards in Recharge.

A smooth reactivation experience

What’s more, Recharge’s Win Backs functionality includes password-free, one-click resubscription, delivering consumers a frictionless reactivation experience. 

By reducing the barriers to resubscription, retailers are more likely to drive positive results from their win-back strategies.

Using Klaviyo for customised win-back email outreach

The Recharge-Klaviyo integration uses Recharge’s detailed customer and order data to craft branded, personalised emails that grab customers’ attention and drive conversion. 

This includes win-back emails. A reactivation email sent after a subscription is cancelled can be an effective way of tempting a customer back to your store. Win Back landing page URLs can be integrated into Klaviyo flows and campaigns, facilitating effortless resubscription.

Klaviyo flows

Recharge’s pre-built Subscriber Win Back flow in Klaviyo triggers when a subscription is cancelled. This automated flow has been designed to encourage churned customers to return, while gathering feedback from those who choose not to re-engage. This feedback can help you identify pain points and plan improvements.

Retailers can also use the Recharge-Klaviyo integration to create their own custom win-back flow in Klaviyo, using the ‘Subscription cancelled on Recharge’ metric as the flow trigger.

Klaviyo campaigns

Alternatively, you could segment inactive subscribers in Klaviyo using Recharge custom properties, targeting them with a one-time win back campaign.

Win-back email best practices

When creating your own win-back emails in Klaviyo, consider the following best practices:

• Use a personalised subject line that creates a sense of urgency.
• Don’t forget to customise each email’s preview text.
• Ensure your emails are visually interesting and aligned with your brand guidelines.
• Use a customer’s unique shopping history to create a tailored email that resonates with the recipient—including relevant product recommendations and tailored incentives.
• Include a clear call to action linked to a Recharge Win Back landing page, positioned close to the incentive to re-engage.

Summary

In addition to enabling subscription retailers to regain lost revenue, winning back churned customers is an opportunity to strengthen your brand, build better customer relationships, and drive sustainable growth.

Ultimately, you want to make it as easy and compelling as possible for a churned customer to re-subscribe. With the Recharge-Klaviyo integration, retailers are empowered to provide a seamless and effective win back strategy, tailored to individual subscriber needs.

Leverage the Recharge-Klaviyo integration with Swanky’s ecommerce growth team

As a leading Recharge agency in EMEA and an official Klaviyo partner, Swanky is well positioned to help businesses make the most of the Recharge-Klaviyo integration. 

Reach out to our team of ecommerce growth experts today to find out how we can help you leverage these powerful tools to win back churned customers and recover lost revenue.

The post How to win back churned customers with Recharge’s Klaviyo integration appeared first on Recharge.

Convenient, customizable, and cost-effective, food and drink subscriptions have become a much-loved fixture in consumers’ daily lives. In fact, research by Recharge shows that despite the post-pandemic return to in-store shopping, food and beverage subscription brands enjoyed a 51% increase in average monthly subscribers in 2021, as well as 77% growth in monthly recurring revenue.

The importance of trust in online food & beverage sales

Trust is a key ingredient in the recipe for a successful food and beverage subscription website. First-time shoppers might be particularly cautious about purchasing edible products online, especially if they’re committing to a long-term subscription rather than a one-time purchase. 

And it’s not just important when you’re acquiring new subscribers. Trust is something you’ve got to maintain throughout a customer’s relationship with your brand if you want to secure their loyalty and encourage advocacy.

Ultimately, you need to make consumers feel confident signing up for a subscription—and continuing it, too. How? By proving to them that you’re a credible business with quality (and tasty!) products and happy subscribers at your core.

4 trust-building tactics for your food & beverage subscription site

Earning and nurturing trust is the combined result of multiple actions, four of which we’ll explore now.

1. Clear & useful information around products & plans

It’s important to provide detailed information about your products so that potential customers are clued up on exactly what they’re buying. This is particularly crucial in the food and beverage industry, as consumers need clarity around things like allergens, expiry dates, and storage.

You should:

• Clearly list all the ingredients, highlighting any allergens;
• Be transparent around nutritional information;
• Point out recommended portion sizes;
• Include storage, preparation, and cooking instructions, if relevant; and
• Explain how your products will be packaged and shipped (especially important for items that need refrigerating). 

A combination of detailed product descriptions, engaging visuals, and informational videos will enable consumers to make informed decisions based on their personal tastes and dietary needs.

As an example, look how nutritional powdered food brand Huel clearly communicates the nutritional information of a Huel Bar on their product page. Small things like this speak volumes about the brand’s commitment to its customers and its credibility as an established retailer.

It’s not only your products you need to provide details about. It’s crucial that you set customers’ expectations and explain exactly how a subscription from your brand works. Clarity and transparency are key for gaining trust and making consumers feel more secure about their repeat purchase.

Consider creating a subscription landing page that:

• Clearly sets out exactly what’s included in one delivery (don’t forget that all-important “what’s in the box photo” here);
• Clarifies how often a subscriber will receive a delivery;
• Explains how they can edit, pause, skip, or cancel their subscription;
• Details your returns policy;
• Explains how and when subscribers will be charged; and
• Anticipates any questions or concerns (this will put consumers at ease and increase their confidence in signing up for a subscription).

Union Hand-Roasted Coffee uses icons to let consumers know what to expect in each subscription box:

2. High-quality imagery

It goes without saying that high-quality ecommerce photography is a key trust signal on any online store, but especially when you’re selling products that subscribers will be eating and drinking. 

While mediocre images can instantly trigger distrust amongst site visitors and devalue your products, first-rate photography will capture attention, evoke the senses, and leave consumers hungry for more, all while portraying your brand as a credible retailer. 

To achieve this, your photos should:

• Be clear, crisp, and well-lit;
• Be consistently-styled;
• Use freshly prepared food or drinks;
• Include props to add context;
• Showcase multiple angles;
• Identify key ingredients; and
• Be given plenty of real estate across your subscription website.

Global meal kit subscription brand HelloFresh has curated a library of vibrant, mouth-watering, professional ecommerce photographs to build trust with would-be subscribers.

3. Social proof

Social proof—things like reviews, user-generated content (UGC), and third-party endorsements—can be a powerful tool in demonstrating your brand’s worth and building consumers’ trust in your subscription products. 

We humans are wired to trust (and buy from) brands if we can see that other people view them favourably. In fact, analysis by Yotpo found that people who look at UGC convert 161% more than those who don’t. 

Here are a few ideas to help foster trust and turn browsers into buyers:

• Place reviews in a prominent position on your homepage, product pages, and key landing pages;
• Proudly display media mentions and awards on your homepage (have you been featured in any industry magazines, or even endorsed by a celebrity?);
• Include average star ratings for products;
• Feature an on-site gallery of your customers’ culinary creations; and
• Integrate your Instagram feed on your ecommerce store’s homepage and make it shoppable.

One brand who has successfully elevated their ecommerce site with social proof is Australian subscription brand Whisky Loot. Not only do they display an average rating and highlight media mentions, they demonstrate just how popular their subscription is by indicating how many drams of whisky have been delivered and how many subscribers they have—all above the fold on their homepage!

Further down their homepage, they also have a section dedicated to customer reviews:

4. Full control over subscription management

We know that consumers are hungry for flexibility when it comes to their subscriptions. They want options—around product, delivery cadence, payment methods, and so on.

When subscribing to consumables like food and drinks, which don’t get used at a blanket rate, it’s particularly important that customers can quickly and easily edit, skip, pause, and restart their subscription, depending on their needs. 

Giving your subscribers access to an intuitive customer portal that puts the power in their hands shows empathy for your customers and their desire for flexibility and customisation. This will help to build trust and secure loyalty amongst your subscribers, and save your team valuable admin and customer support time.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, you should also make it straightforward for subscribers to cancel a subscription altogether. Knowing that there’s an accessible cancellation option at their fingertips will dispel customers’ fears, making them feel much more comfortable about signing up for the long haul.

Popular pasta recipe box brand Pasta Evangelists has ticked this box by reassuring consumers at various points across their website that they can skip, pause or cancel at anytime, like in this “how it works” visual:

Get the recipe for food & beverage subscription success

This article is based upon an original article on the Swanky blog. To read more, please check out The Key Ingredients of a Successful Food and Beverage Subscription Website. 

Swanky is a leading international ecommerce agency that specialises in designing, building and growing Shopify Plus stores for ambitious enterprise brands. They’re trusted to deliver best-in-class D2C subscription solutions for clients across the globe, with a food and beverage brand portfolio including industry-leading names like HelloFresh, Pasta Evangelists and Huel.

The post How to build trust as an online food & beverage subscription retailer appeared first on Recharge.