Increasing Customer Retention With Subscriptions
Do you have products you wish your customers could buy once and be charged for and shipped automatically going forward? If so, then keep reading! If not, then…. well, you wouldn’t be the first person to ignore me today. Nexternal’s new Subscription feature enables merchants to create true auto-ship products. By specifying both a time interval (i.e. every 10 days, 8 weeks, or every 6 months) and a duration such as 1 year or even indefinitely, customers can now buy an item one time and schedule a recurring order with their desired frequency and be charged and receive that item on an ongoing basis.
Nutritional supplements, pet medications, hair and skin care products, specialty food items, raw materials, office supplies, wine, automotive parts, child care items, and household maintenance products are just some of the industries where this feature could facilitate a whole new shopping experience for your customers. What better way to increase conversion than to allow your customers to commit to a series of ongoing orders? They order once and sit back until their package arrives every month. In a way, it’s much like the existing re-order feature, but taken to a whole new level as it requires no follow through on the customer’s part. You’re even able to incentivize buyers to choose the subscription option by rewarding them with a discount. For example, if you sign up for auto-delivery, maybe you give 5% off, or the product is marked down to a specific price.
By creating a well worded description, you’re able to articulate how the subscription works so your customers fully understand what they’re signing up for. Merchants can even set a Synch Date or predetermined date that the subscriptions work off of, so orders are running off the same calendar starting point in relation to one another. Thus, making fulfillment more efficient. The possibilities this functionality can open up are vast and only just beginning to be explored. For more information on how the Subscription feature can improve your store’s user experience, click here or contact your dedicated account rep.
Chris is a Senior Account Executive at Nexternal and has been with the company since 2005. Before joining Nexternal he worked in the cloud-based educational software industry. Chris enjoys establishing new relationships with online merchants and working closely with those clients as they grow.
