These days, there’s an endless sea of apps available to merchants who want to build and optimize their subscription business at scale. However, there’s a select handful of functions that many top-performing merchants have in common, and they use them to fuel their subscription growth and build a best-in-class tech stack.
As ecommerce continues to evolve to a variety of new challenges in a post-2020 world, many issues, such as consumer privacy, have become more important than ever. In an already competitive landscape where brands are hungry for consumer attention, the apps we’re featuring here stand out for their ability to help subscription brands adjust to these changes.
Many of today’s leading subscription brands are focused on developing deeper relationships with their customers. How do they do this effectively? Using apps that help them understand their customers enables them to provide customers with the flexibility and proper communication that deliver a great user experience.
Top ecommerce solution integrations to consider
When matched correctly to a business, the following ecommerce integrations can help subscription merchants increase conversions, average order value (AOV), and customer lifetime value (LTV).
Personalization
Utilizing personalization to help create a custom experience for your customers is a great way to stand out from the competition. It also becomes an important retention play, as elements like quizzes and questionnaires ensure your customers are getting the best recommendations for them in a sea of potential products. It removes the analysis paralysis that many consumers are faced with—having too many choices and not enough direction. This in turn lowers the barrier for customers to opt into a subscription while simultaneously collecting valuable customer data for future personalization efforts—especially effective when combined with other apps on this list, such as Klaviyo. Octane AI’s integration allows brands to utilize powerful insights collected by conversational popups. Merchants can also add a deeper level of personalization to the shopping experience with Octane AI’s Shop Quizzes, which helps guide customers to the subscription product that best fits their needs.
Upsells and cross-sells
A great tactic to increase AOV is utilizing strategies for upselling and cross-selling. For upselling, merchants can disclose a value proposition showcasing the “higher level” or “more access” customers can obtain. Cross-selling is a great way to highlight products your customers may need in the moment, either related to their existing purchases, or exclusive opportunities for them to try something new. Solutions like Rebuy allow Recharge merchants to implement intelligent upsells and cross-sells throughout the customer journey. This includes offering customers upsell opportunities at checkout, such as an upgrade to a subscription. Rebuy’s integration also allows merchants to offer both single and multi-variant products through post-checkout upsells, helping increase AOV while optimizing the customer’s subscription experience.
Post-purchase surveys
Building long-term relationships with your customers requires regular feedback opportunities to provide the best customer experience possible. Soliciting feedback can often be a difficult task, as it’s one additional step for your subscribers to take. Utilizing integration solutions like Enquire Labs enables merchants to gain valuable qualitative zero and first-party insights about their customers immediately after a purchase. They also provide insights into referral traffic for different marketing channels, which can help fine-tune merchants’ overall strategy. By aligning their marketing efforts with their retention efforts in this way, brands can reduce churn.
Creating a multitude of opportunities for your customers to engage with your brand, especially as it relates to their subscriptions with you is the key to maintaining higher levels of LTV. Consumers want to feel connected to a brand on more than just a product basis, so giving highly targeted messaging that feels unique to their needs is an ideal way to keep them engaged. Beyond their ability to integrate with other partners on this list (such as Octane AI and Enquire Labs), Klaviyo’s integration with Recharge allows merchants to create highly targeted messaging based on Recharge subscription data. This can help brands communicate directly with their subscribers, provide value beyond their initial purchase, and strengthen customer relationships.
Transactional SMS
According to a survey by Twilio, your customers already wish you were texting them. Transactional SMS is an excellent way to get in front of your customers. In fact, merchants who use transactional SMS to communicate with their customers see an average of 30% higher LTV. The reason being is they create a direct stream of engagement without customers having to remember log-ins to things like a customer portal. RechargeSMS is a transactional SMS tool that lets subscribers manage their subscriptions via text right from their messages app. By leveraging RechargeSMS for convenient subscription management, brands give their customers the flexibility they desire, helping strengthen customer relationships, increase customer lifetime value, and reduce churn.
Loyalty
Loyalty programs are a highly effective way to increase customer lifetime value, drive customer retention, and strengthen customer loyalty. Customers can earn reward points through simple actions, such as making a purchase, creating a customer account, referring a friend, social sharing, and more. Apps like LoyaltyLion and Smile.io enable Recharge merchants to build unique, customized loyalty programs for their subscriptions.
Referrals
Word-of-mouth referrals are often the best type of referral. Consumers want to see that someone they know or trust recommends a product or brand to eliminate the risk of investing in something they may not enjoy. By using referral apps like Refersion or ReferralCandy, merchants can tap into their existing loyal subscribers, allowing them to refer friends and earn rewards for their next order. These strategies can help increase acquisition while simultaneously reducing churn and increasing customer lifetime value.
Passive churn protection
Churn plagues even the most successful of ecommerce merchants. Preventing active churn can take the form of customer experience improvements, conversations, flexible options, etc. But passive churn, or dunning, is often harder to combat, as it’s out of the customer’s control. With apps like Churn Buster, merchants can upgrade their dunning experience. After a customer’s payment fails, Churn Buster can implement seamless campaigns to recover failed payments with enhanced retries, customized emails, SMS, and support team alerts—all while providing the right metrics to keep improving performance.
Helpdesk
Creating an excellent customer experience is all for nothing if support is less-than-desirable. Support for customers is imperative to creating loyal customers that want to continue doing business with you. Still, it can be a huge investment and time-suck to get up and running effectively. Utilizing integrations like Gorgias helps merchants provide lightning-fast customer support by enabling them to edit subscriptions in one click. This allows them to update customer details like payment information, shipping address, subscription products, and cadence with ease.
Optimize your customer journey through your integrations
By pairing well-matched ecommerce solution integrations with your Recharge subscriptions, you can build a best-in-class tech stack that delivers an outstanding experience for your customers. Optimize your brand’s customer journey every step of the way, adding value to your subscribers’ experience, and pave the way for deeper customer relationships with your customers by leveraging more zero and first-party data.
Of course, there are plenty more apps and integrations to choose from that aren’t mentioned on this list. Feel free to browse our Tech Partners page for more information.
