Whether it’s grocery, automobile, airlines, or live streaming – there are multiple subscription options available for all kinds of products and services.
Moreover, consumers took to the subscription boom and have signed up to more subscriptions than they can manage.
This overdose can cause subscription fatigue. Subscribers get bored or tired of subscription plans. And this can be lethal to subscription businesses.
So, if you’re a subscription business eager to learn how to prevent subscription fatigue, this blog is a must-read for you.
What is subscription fatigue?
Today, there are multiple subscription options for every product or service. For instance, may it be grocery, magazines, music, movies, or automobiles, it’s easy to find subscription options.
People too, have taken to joining subscriptions because they are convenient, offer price benefits, and other benefits. However, studies show that an average millennial has between six and 11 subscription plans.
It’s highly unlikely that people use all their subscriptions on a regular basis. Thus, subscriptions become an expense to them. Besides, there are too many subscription options. And the average consumer is tired of so many options.
This is subscription fatigue — a feeling of being tired, bored, and exhausted of having too many subscriptions. And as an increasing number of brands start subscriptions models, consumers’ fatigue is going to rise.
How does subscription fatigue impact business?
It’s understood that subscription fatigue is not a good thing for businesses. In this section, we look at a few ways in which subscription fatigue can negatively impact businesses.
1. Subscription churn
When subscribers get tired of having too many subscriptions or a subscription plan that stops adding value to their life, the first thing they think about doing is canceling the subscription. Subscription churn can negatively impact businesses, as it would mean loss of business and customers. Moreover, acquiring new subscribers to fill that gap is a cost-intensive activity that can add to business expense.
2. Loss of revenue
Subscription fatigue can either drive customers to leave or they start transacting less with the brand. In both cases, it leads to a loss of revenue. When subscribers leave, it has a direct impact on the business revenue. When subscribers start transacting less or when they shift to a lower tier subscription plan, it leads to a loss of revenue for the business.
3. Loss of touch with customers
Subscription fatigue can also lead to lower engagement levels. When subscribers do not see value in subscription plans, they tend to withdraw and engage less with the brand. For brands, this leads to a loss of touch with customers and decreased opportunities to interact and engage with customers.
4. Poor brand perception
If customers are not happy with your subscription plan, they may talk about it to their friends, family, and colleagues. This can adversely affect your brand perception. Also, it is known that when customers are not happy with something, they tend to be more vocal about it, as opposed to when they have good experiences with brands. Subscription fatigue can have a negative impact on your brand image.
How to prevent subscription fatigue?
For a subscription business to thrive and succeed, it must be able to keep customers engaged year after year. Moreover, the brand must ensure customers do not cancel subscriptions. Here are five best strategies to prevent subscription fatigue for your Shopify subscription business.
1. Focus on value
Gone are the days when customers only looked at low prices when buying from brands. Today, customers want value, convenience, community, and much more from their favorite brands.
One way to prevent subscription fatigue is to focus on value. A McKinsey study shows that 62% of subscribers prioritize value when signing up for subscriptions.
Here are some ways to enhance the value of your subscription plans:
- Personalize subscription plans: When the products and services you add in your subscription boxes are relevant to customers, they would find more value in it, rather than receiving products that aren’t of much use to them
- Community experience: Make your customers feel exclusive by building communities for like minded subscribers. When your subscribers meet others with the same interests, engage in activities and interact with them, they feel like they belong to a community. This enhances their experience and lowers subscription fatigue
- Quality and variety: When it comes to value, the quality of your products and services and the variety you offer are key considerations for customers. For example, food and meal kit subscriptions often promote freshness, nutrition, and a wide range of ingredients to attract subscribers
- Apart from these, flexibility, competitive pricing, efficient customer support, and a seamless app experience are also some factors that enhance the value of subscriptions
Explore Appstle Subscription App for your Shopify subscription business for a seamless experience.
2. Identify market gaps to focus on essentials
Understanding the gaps to fill with your subscription offers is crucial, not only for your success, but for customer satisfaction.
For instance, say you’re a brand that sells automotive parts and accessories. Your research reveals that customers are facing an issue with services related to automotives, such as maintenance, cleaning, timely repairs, hardware upgrades, etc.
The solution: offer service subscriptions with your subscription plans.
When you offer the most essential products and services required by consumers, it’s unlikely that your subscribers would want to cancel or might feel disengaged. That’s because these are essentials that consumers cannot do without.
Here are a few cues to help you get started with filling market gaps and offering essentials:
- Conduct market survey and find out what customers are desperately looking for
- Find the product or service that can help your subscription plan take precedence over your competitors
- Consistently ask your subscribers and customers what more you could offer to them in your inventory
Example: Volvo’s Flexible Car Subscription
3. Prioritize customer retention
Studies show that acquiring new customers can cost five times more than what you’d spend on retaining customers. Not only does retaining subscribers prove to be cost effective, you can even reduce subscription fatigue by focusing on customer retention.
Let’s find out how.
When you focus on customer retention, your customer experience improves. For instance, whatever your customer retention strategies are, you will keep the customers’ needs and preferences at the center. Thus, these strategies will directly impact how customers feel about your brand and how they perceive the subscription experience.
Here’s what you can do to focus on subscriber retention in order to reduce subscription fatigue:
- Create a feedback loop with your subscribers: To ensure your customers continue to be happy and satisfied with your subscription offering, keep asking for their feedback. Run surveys, ask them to join focus feedback groups, consistently collect ratings and reviews to understand subscriber needs
- Provide flexibility: Customers do not want to get into subscriptions where they get stuck. They expect flexibility and freedom. For instance, they may want to pause or skip deliveries, or change delivery addresses and intervals. When you make it easy for them to make these changes, they feel a sense of freedom, enhancing retention rates
- Acknowledgement and rewards: When you acknowledge your subscribers as unique individuals, talk to them, care to understand their needs, they feel good about your brand. Consistently acknowledge and reward customers with incentives, such as discounts, subscriber-only offers, events, etc.
4. Offer competitive pricing
With most brands offering subscription options, across industries, it is extremely important to offer a competitive pricing for your Shopify subscriptions. Poor pricing strategies can single handedly derail your subscription business model.
So what are the pricing related strategies that can help reduce subscription fatigue in customers?
- Reevaluate your pricing strategy from time to time to ensure you’re on track
- Offer rewards and points for multiple actions, such as during sign up, on anniversaries, during sales, etc., so customers see more monetary value
- Conduct subscriber and customer research to understand how your pricing affects customer experience and perception
- Collect data on subscriber behavior, past purchase, etc. to refine your subscription pricing structures
- Tiered pricing structure can enable subscribers to periodically reset their subscription plan to higher or lower tiers based on their needs
5. Provide novelty and variety
Another reason many subscribers continue or cancel subscriptions is the novelty or variety factor. Is your subscription model able to hook customers year after year? Are you introducing new products and new experiences for subscribers?
Consider this: Around 30% of customers say the lack of fun or new experiences is a factor in their decisions to cancel subscriptions. With so many brands offering so many different options of products and services, customers tend to get bored if you fail to offer them something new every now and then.
Here’s what you can do to ensure your subscription plan remains vibrant and exciting for subscribers:
- Conduct market research to see what your competitors are offering via subscriptions
- Use customer feedback, AI, ML, and data to provide tailored subscription experiences
- Ensure you add new products and services in your inventory from time to time
- Collaborate with complementing brands to offer something new to your subscribers
- Include fresh and fun experiences that are enjoyable and engaging for subscribers
Example: Adidas Creators Club creates fun and engaging events for its subscribers
How to prevent subscription fatigue for your Shopify subscriptions
While you may have decided to apply some of the strategies we’ve shared in this blog, you will need to incorporate a subscription tool that can help you prevent churn and fatigue.
Appstle Subscriptions App has in-built features and capabilities to manage and automate tasks that can help you prevent subscription fatigue.
For instance, the app’s churn management system automatically offers incentives to subscribers showing signs of leaving. With its intuitive features that offer discounts and perks to subscribers, you can work on keeping your customers happy while you’re busy with more strategic tasks.
Install Appstle Subscriptions App on your Shopify store today!
