We go through all these updates in the latest Q4 edition of our “What’s new with Recharge” webinar. If you missed it, you can view it on demand now, or catch up on the latest news by reviewing the highlights from the webinar below. 

The main takeaways

Acquire customers & brand ambassadors by gifting subscriptions 

Create holiday campaigns that encourage your subscribers to gift their favorite subscriptions to friends and family, just in time for the holidays. This not only spreads joy but also provides an opportunity to turn new customers into lifelong subscribers.

Grow AOV with no-code cross-selling

Excite your existing subscribers with a seamless way to select add-on products. Additionally, offer a discount on personalized product recommendations directly within their customer portal using the Affinity portal. 

Understand & combat churn with automated tools 

This year, we’ve created more ways for you to understand your customer and product performance. For example, isolate churn behavior with product filters, order trends, and more. Empowered with this information, reduce churn by up to 12% with personalized cancellation offers or A/B test with surprise and delight offers to reduce cancellation attempts altogether.

Get involved & stay in the know with Recharge’s Product Roadmap 

Our product team isn’t slowing down, and you can help us build the features you need by joining Early Adopter programs. You can also see everything we’ve launched this year on the Recharge Product Roadmap.  

Acquire customers & brand ambassadors by gifting subscriptions

With Gift Subscriptions, your customers can gift their favorite subscription product easily using our industry-first approach. 

• Send a gift with just an email. Recipients can enter their address during redemption.
• Include a personalized note and schedule your gift in advance.
• Redeem gift subscription without requiring payment information. 
• Manage a gift subscription without ever contacting the gift sender.

This feature is available at no additional cost to all merchants on the Pro plan or higher. 

Grow your AOV with no-code cross-selling 

At the start of this year, we released the Affinity customer portal that enabled you to seamlessly integrate your website with the customer portal without the need for coding. As we continue to build on that unified experience, the Affinity customer portal now supports the ability to cross-sell products and even set up personalized discount product offers. 

• Cross-sell with a couple of clicks: Your subscribers can add additional products to an upcoming order at any point in time. This feature is available to all merchants using the Affinity customer portal. 

• Use Flows to offer a discount on a personalized product recommendation: Create custom notifications using Flows to target specific customers based on existing subscriptions. This feature is available to merchants on the Pro plan or higher.

Understand & combat churn with automated tools

Retention or churn prevention is a major focus area for a lot of merchants this year. Recharge has invested heavily in tools that allow you to identify the source of your churn, and then configure tools that will automatically target specific customer behavior. 

• Revamped analytics dashboard: This year, Recharge introduced a new view into product and customer data with a revamped analytics dashboard. You can now analyze your data to quickly isolate churn behavior by filtering churn data by product and then analyze the retention by cohort. Within that analysis, you can also visually identify noticeable trends in churn within seconds. 

• A/B test with surprise and delight: Once the churn trend is identified, your marketing team can quickly set up A/B tests to see what incentives prevent a customer from even considering a cancellation, while maximizing revenue. Your team can utilize our Klaviyo integration to ensure that customers are made aware of their incentives. 

• Personalized cancellation offer: For customers who try to cancel anyway, you can now reduce churn by up to 12% by creating custom strategies for each cancellation reason, including the ability to provide personalized offers. For example, offer higher discounts for customers with higher customer lifetime value (LTV).  

Get involved

Throughout this year, we’ve pushed the boundaries of subscriptions by expanding our core foundation without compromising innovation. This includes building a JS SDK, offering multi-currency support, a no-code customer portal, personalized Flows, and so much more. Our goal, as always, is to allow you to differentiate your brand in the market and grow revenue.

To explore all of these offerings in more detail and stay up-to-date on our R&D initiatives, visit our Recharge Product Roadmap. Here, you can review everything we’ve launched and join our Early Adopter programs to get early access to new launches before they are generally available. 

Watch the full recording of the webinar on-demand to hear directly from our team and learn about new opportunities to acquire subscribers, grow AOV, and reduce churn.

The post What’s new with Recharge: Q4 appeared first on Recharge.

In this post, we’ll explore two new ways to leverage the Klaviyo and Recharge integration. 

Understanding metrics & custom properties

Before diving into the strategies, let’s clarify two important terms: metrics and custom properties. In the context of the Klaviyo and Recharge integration, metrics refer to events that are specific to customer actions or the order journey. Think of it as recording every interaction a customer has with your store. 

Custom properties, on the other hand, are unique data points related to individual customers. These can include information such as the products they subscribe to. Custom properties allow for a deeper level of personalization in your marketing efforts.

2 strategies to increase LTV with the Klaviyo + Recharge integration

Metrics and custom properties are your secret weapons when it comes to segmenting your customer base and sending personalized messages. With Klaviyo, you can automate this process and target customers at just the right moment. Now, let’s explore the two ways you can leverage these capabilities to increase LTV.

1. Cross-selling opportunities

Identify customers who are subscribed to one product (let’s call it X) but have never subscribed to another (Y). This presents an opportunity to encourage them to add Y to their subscriptions or make a one-time purchase. For instance, if a customer subscribes to a skincare product (X) but has never tried the matching moisturizer (Y), you can use Klaviyo to trigger an automated email suggesting the moisturizer as a complementary addition to their routine. This not only increases sales but also enhances the overall customer experience.

2. Product swap recommendations

With subscriptions, flexibility is key. Klaviyo and Recharge can help you proactively manage your inventory and upsell by targeting specific customers who are subscribed to one product variant (e.g., a specific color, size, or flavor) but might benefit from switching to another variant.

Upsell purposes

Suppose you have a customer subscribed to a 12 oz daily moisturizer every 6 weeks. The customer would benefit from upgrading to the 18 oz moisturizer to ensure they use the product properly and don’t run out of moisturizer before their next shipment arrives. You can trigger messages encouraging them to upgrade to the higher-value subscription, thus increasing LTV. 

Proactive inventory management

In cases where you anticipate delayed shipping on a particular item or discontinuing a product, you can use Klaviyo to target customers with that subscription. Incentivize them to switch to an alternative product variant that’s readily available. This minimizes disruptions, mitigates churn, and ensures customer satisfaction.

Drive growth & revenue with these tactics

The integration of Klaviyo and Recharge empowers brands to easily realize the power of data-driven marketing. By understanding and implementing strategies like cross-selling and product swap recommendations, you can create personalized experiences that increase customer LTV and drive revenue growth.

At Recharge, we value privacy and handle personal information accordingly. Learn more about how we handle personal information by reviewing our Trust Center.

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Specifically, California recently made some updates to its Automatic Renewal Law (ARL). The law took effect on July 1, 2022 and has implications for companies that offer subscriptions or other services that automatically renew. While the ARL has been in place for many years, this update adds several new requirements.

How the ARL update impacts merchants & subscribers 

In summary, the ARL update is designed to protect California consumers that buy subscriptions by requiring businesses to provide certain notifications to their customers and enable easy online subscription cancellation. If your business sells to customers in California, the ARL applies to you.

ARL requirements aside, clear communication and easy cancellation options are powerful strategies for improving the customer experience. Your subscribers don’t want to be locked into recurring orders they can’t cancel—and if they do, they might leave. 

Beyond ARL—why clear communication & subscription flexibility matter

In general, by making your subscriptions more flexible and communicating with your subscribers about their orders, you pave the way for your customers to return to your business because of the positive experience they’ve had with you.

For your business, that can mean:

• Increased customer lifetime value (LTV)
• Reduced customer churn
• Increased brand loyalty
• Stronger subscriber retention
• Better customer experiences

Recharge updates in response to ARL

In response to the ARL updates, Recharge has made changes to its default settings and added new notifications features to help merchants with their ARL legal obligations.

Note: This blog post should not be considered legal advice.

Easy cancellation within the customer portal: new default settings

Within the customer portal, customers will no longer be required to provide a cancellation reason. However, they will still be able to provide a reason if they would like to.

Merchants who have required their customers to complete a minimum number of charges prior to being able to cancel, or otherwise restricted customers from canceling in their customer portal, will see an update to their settings. Now, this will default to “no restrictions,” meaning customers can cancel at any time in their customer portal, including after the first charge.

New subscriber notifications

In addition to cancellation flexibility, Recharge has also introduced several new notification templates for merchants:

• Subscription activation notification: Recharge offers a new notification template that includes updated verbiage that is compliant with ARL.
• Upcoming charge notification: Recharge offers a new notification template that includes updated verbiage. 
• Upcoming charge notification | Email timing: Merchants can now customize when their upcoming charge notification is sent out in their merchant portal. Previously, merchants had to contact Recharge if they wanted to customize this setting. It can be set anywhere between 1 and 45 days, with a default of 3 days to align with California ARL requirements. 

• Upcoming charge notification | Free trials and promotions: Subscriptions containing a free gift, trial, promotional terms, or discounted pricing require a reminder notice between 3 and 21 days before end of the promotion or trial period. Merchants that leverage Recharge workflows and/or API-based updates for gifts, free trials, and termed promotional pricing can now leverage the new upcoming charge notification template. The new template contains information informing customers of the price of their upcoming charge if the price has changed since the initial charge. 
• 1+ year upcoming charge notification: Subscriptions that renew every 1+ year will now require an upcoming charge notification between 15 and 45 days in advance of the recurring charge. Recharge is providing merchants with the option to enable this additional notification, distinct from upcoming charge notifications for shorter subscription terms. 

Flexibility & communication: The future of subscriptions 

Recharge is excited to share these platform updates driven by California’s ARL. We know merchants take their ARL legal compliance seriously, and by making these updates, we hope to help our merchants in that effort. 

Beyond the ARL updates, we’re thrilled to help our merchants create more flexible and communicative offerings that pave the way for stronger customer loyalty and better subscription experiences.

The post What subscription merchants should know: California’s Automatic Renewal Law appeared first on Recharge.

Here are some highlights and tips to help you efficiently manage your customer relationships. Tip: Before testing these new pages out with a customer on the line, we suggest you play around with the new interfaces so you can get comfortable with them. 

Subscription Details

Easily update subscription product & schedule details

The subscription detail page now has separate sections for managing your subscriptions’ product and order schedules so that you can easily change what you want without sifting through all the stuff you don’t.

Quickly view & manage orders

You’ll see your customers’ three most recent orders, as well as any upcoming scheduled orders, right on the subscription details page. Beyond this transaction data, you can also quickly manage orders using shortcut buttons for common actions, like rescheduling and refunding orders.

Manage every aspect of a subscription without getting overwhelmed

In addition to managing a subscription’s core settings, you can also update the address and associated payment method right from the page. Additional actions (including subscription status updates and advanced tools) are tucked into a helpful Actions menu. Need item IDs for troubleshooting? They’re all available in a single section, together with a quick clipboard copy action.

Order Details

Every order for your business, in every status, now has a dedicated Order Details page! This page can now be accessed either directly from the Orders section, or from the appropriate Subscription Details page.

A unified view

No more bouncing from Orders to Customers and sifting through charge history. The Order Details page now provides a clear and consistent view of any order, in any status, right from the Orders section.

Easily navigate an order

The Order Details page makes it easy to track both charge and order information across all orders—and shortcut links to related items, like an order’s associated customer and subscriptions. This makes it faster than ever to get the information that you need.

Manage any order with just a few clicks

All of your order management tools have been included in the new order detail view in consistent, easy-to-find places. You can quickly refund processed orders, reschedule upcoming orders, or even retry charge errors without having to learn a new view for each.

Create seamless subscription experiences with the merchant portal 

The merchant portal is one of your most important tools for subscription management—which is why we’re constantly seeking to make it the best it can possibly be. By forging deeper relationships with your subscribers, you can not only increase customer lifetime value (LTV) for your store, but also improve customer satisfaction and gain actionable insights that empower you to make smarter business decisions.

The post How to use your new merchant portal to manage customer relationships appeared first on Recharge.

This is just the beginning! Over the next several months, Recharge will continue to focus on making it easier for merchants to manage their subscription business. 

In honor of the launch, we thought it would be fun to sit down with our product designers, Kayla Sawtelle and Jessica Versaw, to hear about their design process and share some tips you can utilize to improve your user experience. Continue reading to learn more!

1. Define the problem

Problems can surface through many different channels—internal conversations, customer feedback, or market and competitive research. Here’s what we discovered during this step in our journey.

Sidebar navigation

Recharge has grown dramatically over the past few years. As we’ve grown, we’ve continued to make our product more and more complex—including new features and tools, acquisitions, and an updated permissions structure. Through customer feedback and internal conversations, we realized we had outgrown our existing architecture and needed to move forward with a reimagined design that could support our future development and our merchants in new ways. For example, our new navigation is accessible on all devices. 

Homepage

This one was a bit different since Recharge didn’t have a homepage. Merchants were just directed to the ‘Orders’ page. The new homepage is our first step in creating a true home that will help merchants get a high-level view of their business and access important information about their subscriptions and our product. 

Merchant tip: Write a succinct statement describing the problem that needs to be solved. Questions you can ask to arrive at this statement are:

• Who is affected by the problem?
• What is the problem?
• Where does this problem occur?
• When does the problem occur?
• Why does the problem occur? 
• Why is the problem important?

2. Brainstorm ideas & develop different concepts

We always go wild and think big by starting with a lot of notes and sketches. At this step, our designers avoid jumping straight to concrete designs. We spend time researching and capturing best practices from other apps and user experiences that we admire. 

Sidebar navigation

There were many items to organize into a sidebar and multiple ways to do this. Should we keep the navigation at the top of the portal? Where should the store switcher live? Should the navigation be collapsible? How should it function on mobile? How should we display administrator info? 

We looked at best practices inside and outside of the ecommerce space. Our designers started with pen and paper concepts and then moved to wireframes, which are a useful tool for looping stakeholders into early conversations and receiving valuable feedback without getting too wrapped up in small details. 

Homepage

Since we didn’t have anything to work from yet, our designers started their research externally. They looked at various homepages and analytics pages. What kind of layouts were common and intuitive to the user? What information seemed useful? Similar to the navigation bar, they started with sketches around the main ideas and flow of the page, without worrying about fonts or colors. All sketches are interspersed with notes, questions, and assumptions to test out. 

Merchant tip: When beginning a new project, it’s helpful to brainstorm without having to make something look nice. Have an idea? Grab a piece of paper and a pencil and get started. 

3. Obtain feedback 

Feedback is extremely critical to the design process. Before beginning outreach, our designers gathered a list of guiding questions to use during this step. They also interviewed both internal team members and external users (customers). 

Sidebar navigation

For the navigation feedback, our designers conducted a card sorting exercise. They gave a list of navigation items to participants and told them to sort the items into categories, then name them.  

Homepage

The designers worked with various internal team members to define different assumptions they had about customers’ needs and tested those assumptions during interviews. 

Common methods of getting feedback

Short surveys: Create short surveys with a mix of questions (short answer, ranking, long answer, or open-ended) and send them to internal and external users. Always have someone take the survey before sharing it more widely to ensure it makes sense. 

User interviews: Set up feedback conversations. This can be done 1:1 or in a panel format. 

User testing: There are sites like usertesting.com where you can have users try out your designs. We haven’t used this website at Recharge, but we have observed merchants using our products and had them talk through what they like and dislike, which is even better because we know we’re getting feedback from our specific audience.

Merchant Tip: Interview customers with specific questions. Take time to first clearly define what you’re trying to learn. While you don’t want to read from a script, you do want to reflect on what questions you want answered. Create a bank with questions that will help you learn or confirm your assumptions. Do dry runs of your questions with internal team members or people you trust. 

Structure your feedback so that your assumptions or ideas about what’s “right” won’t sway your feedback in one direction or another. Your own bias can steer feedback if you’re not careful. 

Design is an ongoing process

At Recharge, we continue to solicit feedback from our users after we’ve shipped the “final” product. We’re a startup and ship quickly, but always work to make improvements as we get feedback. 

Merchant Tip: Keep ego out of the process and get collaborative! Ask others for feedback and ideas. Most importantly, avoid thinking that there’s one clear solution, because the right solution is always whatever best solves the user’s needs. Lastly, be willing to pivot and make changes as you go. 

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You may be familiar with the ‘subscribe and save’ subscription model, which lets you offer standard products as subscriptions at a reduced price. This is a great way to lure customers to set up recurring subscriptions by saving them money on the products they know they always need. Here’s an example: 

Vegamour offers a 15% discounted price on their best-selling Gro Hair Serum if customers subscribe. Now customers can receive the product they need every month at a discounted rate, without ever having to think about reordering.

While the ‘subscribe and save’ model is a convenient way to provide customers with a discount, there are many other ways you can customize and offer discounts. These discounts are in addition to ‘subscribe & save’ and play a role in increasing customer loyalty and building relationships with your customers. 

Here are five ways Recharge merchants use discounts: 

1. Event and seasonal discounts

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest holidays in the ecommerce world (especially for the accountants) – there are many opportunities throughout the year to offer discounts. Take a look at the calendar and plan ahead for holidays, seasons and product launches you know will be big days or periods for your business. Consider pairing these events with a dollar amount discount code and encourage customers to save!

For example, if your company sells school supplies, you might consider offering a $15 discount code in August to help those back to school shoppers save while they stock up on your pens and pencils.

Remember, you can configure discounts on specific products or collections and set a start and end date for your discount code through Recharge.

2. First time shopper discounts

We’ve all been there… the big decision: to buy or not to buy. And then a discount code pops up on your screen for 10% off. From experience, you know a small incentive like this can be the deciding factor in making a purchase. 

On Recharge you can limit the discount to just new subscribers to ensure this type of discount is only going to your first time buyers. 

3. Free shipping

Offering free shipping is a great way to reward loyal customers. Make sure you remember, on Recharge the shipping discount code will always discount the entire shipping cost (i.e. Free Shipping). It cannot be applied to specific products or collections.

4. Volume discounts

Incentivize your customers to spend more with you by offering discounts that are based on volume. For example, you could offer 15% off all orders over $100. On Recharge, you can set minimum purchase requirements in your discount settings.  

5. Customer specific discounts 

Consider offering discounts for your customers on their birthday or anniversary of being a customer of yours. Be sure to restrict a discount code application to one time per customer email in your discount settings. 

Are you ready to get started with discounts? Visit our step-by-step guide to setting up discounts on Recharge.

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With the prospective surge in sales fast approaching, we wanted to provide you with our top 5 tips on getting prepared for the holiday season. 

Tip #1: Offer free shipping

For better or worse, customers have become accustomed to free shipping policies. With the advent of Amazon Prime and other services that allow for no shipping costs, it’s important to weigh the option of offering it for your subscribers. In fact, 71% of consumers say free shipping is the biggest motivator in purchasing a product. To enable this, you can set shipping rates to free or a custom rate within Recharge settings. You can also further customize by designating specific products or a cart threshold that customers need to meet in order to qualify.   

Tip #2: Offer expedited shipping

This year, 23% of merchants will offer expedited shipping. With that number so low, offering shipping options to get packages faster will set you apart from your competitors and help you stand out to your customers. To set this up, visit your Recharge settings to adjust your shipping offerings. We also offer third-party integrations for more granular options. 

Tip #3: Position your product for the holidays 

Retailers predict that 58% of consumers will buy more as they travel to see family for the holiday season. Be sure to frame the product conversation around bringing people together through your goods or services. Offering gift-box options or ways for customers’ friends and families to also use your products is a great way to make more than one first impression. Be sure to leverage communication channels such as email, social media and SMS to get in front of your customers more easily. Your website should also reflect the season appropriately and you should highlight your holiday offerings up front to generate excitement.

Tip #4: Bring the in-store experience online

Traditionally, consumers have flocked to brick & mortar retail locations to check off their holiday shopping list. Over the last 18 months, many consumers have found comfort in being able to shop online, versus battle the crowds. According to the Berkeley Research Group, nearly 60% of shoppers will use a mix of online and in-store for the holidays, where almost a quarter of all shoppers (24%) will shop entirely online. One way to bring the in-store experience online is to offer personalized services like virtual shopping appointments. These appointments create an intimate experience where your customer can feel as though they are getting the benefits of both being in-store, but also from the comfort of their homes. Shockingly, only 10% of apparel companies currently offer online appointments which means there is a huge opportunity for your business to offer a differentiated experience. 

Tip #5: Get ahead of the inventory challenge

We all know this year is going to be a bit more challenging from a logistics perspective. With fewer workers, raw material shortages and increased demand, this ultimately leads to higher costs for your business. We recommend getting merchandise closer to the source of demand, communicating shipping delays early and often and allowing for pre-orders. Ensuring customers are aware of the potential delays and sending regular updates helps mitigate concern over not getting their packages on time. If you foresee a cut-off deadline for orders to be in in order for them to be shipped in time for the holidays, indicate that ahead of time, and in the checkout process so your customers can have the information up front. 

Making your list, and checking it twice

Remember, the most important thing to prep for the upcoming holiday season is communication. Giving your customers effective, timely communication is imperative to maintaining an excellent customer experience throughout the entire process. 

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