In a poll conducted by BLOX Digital on our Trailblazer’s webinar, we asked “What are the biggest challenges your organization faces with respect to your digital subscription program?” The winning response was, ”Retaining and engaging subscribers” with 40% of the votes.
BLOX Digital has been hard at work making retention-related improvements to our dynamic, digital-first subscription audience platform, BLOX Audience+. Here’s an overview of how we can help you measure churn and improve subscriber retention.
How to measure churn
The easiest way to measure churn is to run the ‘Canceled Subscribers’ report. The ‘Canceled Subscribers’ report finds subscribers who are in canceled or disabled states. This includes subscribers who intentionally reached out to cancel, and those who canceled involuntarily due to an issue with their credit card.
To measure churn, follow the directions below.
Navigate to BLOX Subscription (the ‘Subscription’ application in the upper left menu under ‘Community’)
Click the ‘Reports’ button in the upper right
Select ‘Canceled Subscribers’
Select a From and To date range
📝 The date range is relative to the expiration date of a transaction.Click Generate
📝 The report will begin processing immediately but may take several seconds. Once processed, the .CSV export will download automatically.
How to measure subscribers at risk of involuntary churn
The ‘At-Risk Subscribers/In Grace’ report provides a snapshot of subscribers who are at risk of involuntary churn. The ‘At-Risk Subscribers/In Grace’ report finds auto-renewal subscribers who are in Grace and past their natural expiration date, or otherwise failing to renew.
📝 ‘Grace Period’ must be configured on the Subscription service for the ‘At-Risk Subscribers/In Grace’ report to return data. See Setting a grace period on my subscription service for addition on how to configure Grace.
To measure subscribers at risk of involuntary churn, follow the directions below.
Navigate to BLOX Subscription (the ‘Subscription’ application in the upper left menu under ‘Community’)
Click the ‘Reports’ button in the upper right
Select ‘At-Risk Subscribers/In Grace’
Select a From and To date range
📝 The date range is relative to the expiration date of a transaction.Click Generate
📝 The report will begin processing immediately but may take several seconds. Once processed, the .CSV export will download automatically.
What is a good churn rate?
(Lost Subscribers ÷ Total Subscribers at the Start of Time Period) x 100.
Start with the number of canceled subscribers from above, then divide by the number of total active subscribers. You can find that number in Data Insights, the Subscription admin or Statistics / Analytics.
For B2C subscription businesses, a churn rate of 6-8% is considered average. The lower you can get this number, the more your business will grow and the more revenue you’ll make over time.
How to reduce churn
Churn is important to manage throughout the subscriber journey. Starting during onboarding, BLOX Digital provides a number of ways you can nurture subscriber relationships and in turn reduce churn. We recommend you configure Grace Periods and setup Payment Update Alerts to allow additional time to save subscribers at risk of involuntary churn and enable automated subscription emails to notify subscribers of expiring subscriptions and payment failures.
During onboarding
Customer retention begins before checkout, as you build a relationship through your online journey.
Make sure you’re sending welcome emails when a new account is created on your site. You can learn more about this feature and see an example of the email in this article. If you’d like to create a more elaborate email journey, work with your Email Service Provider (ESP) to create an onboarding drip campaign.
Make sure to set up your DKIM so your emails don’t get sent to spam.
Reinforce the benefits of the subscription in payment receipt emails by adding bullet points into the Description of your Subscription Services.
Offer a variety of email newsletters to keep users informed of your latest news. If you need a refresher, here’s a video on how to set them up.
Remind subscribers to download your app and turn on notifications.
Configure Grace Periods and setup Payment Update Alerts
BLOX Audience+ has Grace period options of 7, 14 and 30 days. The purpose of Grace is to allow time to save the subscriber by getting a successful credit card charge.
📝 See Boost retention and increase payment retries with Grace Periods for additional details on Grace period options and how the selected Grace Period affects the number of automatic retries.
When a card is declined, BLOX will automatically reattempt to charge the card during the Grace period you selected.
Configure payment update alerts (grace nags) to notify subscribers in grace to update their payment information. See Setting up Payment Update Alerts for additional information.
During Grace, the subscriber will continue to have access. In addition to the retries, you can conduct outbound communications to attempt to get new credit card details.
Enable automated subscription emails
BLOX Subscription has built-in tools to help you notify subscribers when their credit card isn’t working and/or their subscription is expiring.
To make sure subscribers are notified of any issues, make sure you turn on Recurring Payment Failure, Expiring User, Expired User, and Cancellation Notice emails. There is also an option for administrators to receive emails when a subscriber’s recurring payment has failed.
Turn these options on by opening the Subscription Service, clicking the Email notifications tab, and checking the boxes next to the emails you want.
Check out Subscription Email types to find information and examples of subscription emails.
Nurture subscriber relationships
Good experiences will nurture your subscriber relationships.
Make subscriber experiences better with fewer ads and no pop-up promotions.
Upgrade to the latest version of BLOX Live E-Edition, and make sure segmenting is active for maximum interactivity. The user interface upgrade is FREE if you already have BLOX E-Edition!
Offer special subscriber-only email newsletters with exclusive content.
Premium Credit Card Management
BLOX Digital offers suite of new payment features to help you improve subscriber retention even more.
Reduce involuntary churn and save at-risk subscribers with automatic credit card updates. Fresh expiration dates and numbers collected behind the scenes
Self-serve update payment, easier renewals and saved cards for faster-resubscribing
Add a Card button in the Subscription admin for CSR’s to update subscriptions
More choices for payment gateways, including Authorize.net, Stripe, PayWay and more
On the roadmap: New payment methods including PayPal, Subscribe with Google, and Apple Pay
Premium Credit Card Management requires Audience+ and additional fees apply. To learn more, contact your sales rep or put in a ticket.