Subscription Experiences: Grow and Retain overview
Use flows as a tool to build Subscription Experiences for your customers, and offer different incentives and interactions throughout the customer lifecycle to increase customers' total subscription spend and reduce customer churn.
This article covers utilizing flows to build Subscription Experiences, benefits, and instructions on managing the experiences.
- Shopify Checkout Integration
Before you start
- Availability for each Subscription Experience differs depending on the type of experience you are building. Review the guide related to the experience type to learn more about availability, or speak to your Customer Success Manager for eligibility criteria.
Overview
Recharge provides different subscription experiences to enhance the customer journey, allowing for various experiences and customizable incentives at every stage of the customer lifecycle.
Use these tools to tailor and experiment with different methods of acquiring, managing, and retaining customers.
Recharge offers different templates to help you target specific customer journey enhancement. These templates are divided into two groups, Grow and Retain, that fit your business use case: Increase retention by providing customers with proactive incentives, such as free gifts. A/B test those incentives to determine the most effective strategy.
Retain
- Rewards: Proactively address churn with tailored rewards, surpass traditional loyalty solutions with unique credit, free items, and progressive discount combinations, and highlight unused rewards in cancellation flows to re-engage at-risk customers and prompt additional orders.
- Cancellation Prevention: Use customer cohort data and order data to create targeted active churn reduction strategies and present targeted cancellation reasons and win-back strategies.
- Failed Payment Recovery: Engage your customers strategically, delivering tailored messages at the right times throughout the customer’s journey.
- Win Backs: Create tailored landing pages with compelling offers to entice churned customers to re-subscribe. Include the landing page link in your Klaviyo win back campaigns or any other communication method you prefer for reaching your customers.
Grow
- Checkout Upsell: Convert one-time orders to a recurring subscription by displaying a “Subscribe and save” customizable link that can be clicked during the checkout process.
- Checkout Cross-sell: Offer cross-sell products at checkout to your customers. By presenting relevant items just before a transaction is completed, you have an opportunity to encourage customers to add more items to their cart.
- Post-purchase Cross-sell: Encourage customers to add an additional product to their order post-checkout, either as a one-time or on a recurring basis, with Recharge's flow structure to create personalized, time-sensitive offers that align with your brand and enhance the customer experience.
- Upcoming Order Cross-sell: Increase LTV by offering customers a discounted product at specific points in the customer journey.
Nodes
Nodes represent specific actions, or steps, within the flow process. Nodes are the building blocks of the flows architecture and outline the sequence of events in a strategy.
Different nodes represent different available actions when building a flow:
- Trigger - The Trigger node ensures that your Subscription Experiences only apply to specific customers or orders, allowing you to provide customers with a personalized experience. See Understanding the Trigger node for more information.
- A/B Test - A/B test strategies and incentives with a percentage of customers following one path, and the rest following a second path. See Using A/B testing for more information.
- Incentive - An action node that adds a gift or offer to the customer’s account.
- Notification - Personalize your notifications and include dynamic information when building subscription experiences. See Using the Notification node for more information.
- Conditional Branch - Create multiple branches where customers are assigned to a specific branch depending on your specified condition(s). See Understanding the Conditional Branch node for more information.
Each flow starts with the Trigger node, which determines the specific conditions or events that prompt the strategy to begin for customers. The Trigger node differs depending on what flow you create. See Understanding the flows Trigger node for additional details.
You can drag and drop nodes on the flows canvas to build the flow. The available flow nodes depend on the flow you create. Review the guide related to the experience type for build instructions.
Nodes follow a logical sequence, with restrictions, to ensure a positive customer experience. Nodes are available with every flow template and flow type.
Conditions
Use conditions to set specific criteria or rules that customers must meet to initiate the subscription experience. You can use conditions with:
- The Upsell or Surprise and Delight Trigger node
- The Conditional Branch node for all flows
The following table lists the available condition options available for:
Type of condition |
Condition options |
Customer | Number of active subscriptions |
Customer | Subscription AOV |
Customer | Total subscription spend |
Customer | Segment |
Customer | Program |
Customer | Streak count for subscription orders |
Customer | Number of subscription orders processed |
Line item(s) | Variant |
Shipping address | Country |
Shipping address | Zip code |
Benefits
Subscription experiences offer several benefits to help you expand your brand:
- Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty: Provide customers with a targeted and personalized brand experience. Offer the right incentives strategically so your customers have a stronger affinity to your brand.
- Increase LTV: Grow your LTV with tools that quickly iterate and test your retention and growth programs. Choose from pre-made templates to help you get started or create your own.
- Save time: Powerful, no-code implementation. Use these tools to execute impactful marketing strategies and tactics without development resources.
- Optimize touchpoints with advanced data and analytics: Scale effortlessly and quickly deploy A/B tests to obtain comprehensive data and insights that help optimize every touchpoint in your customer journey.
- Connect everything: Use these tools seamlessly with all of Recharge’s product lines and integrations so you can offer rewards through Credits, swap SKUs in Bundles, and much more.
Operational analytics
Operational analytics allow you to review in-line metrics such as the number of customers who entered the strategy, number of emails sent, Average Order Value (AOV), and more. Metrics are updated daily at 10:30 pm PST, though you can manually refresh these metrics by clicking Refresh metrics now at the top of the specific flow's canvas.
The complete subscription experience results are not displayed until all customers who enter the flow have their next charge processed or cancel their next charge. If a customer delays their charge, these metric results are delayed until the charge processes.
For example, if the subscription frequency is monthly, metric results are delayed until the next charge processes in a month.
To access your metrics:
- Select the flow you wish to view metrics for.
- Click the bar graph icon at the top of the flow.
- Metrics for each section are displayed under the card.
Manage flows
Duplicate flow
You can duplicate a flow to configure a strategy without starting from scratch:
To duplicate a flow:
- Navigate to the flow you wish to duplicate.
- In the Your flows section, click the kebab menu on the intended flow and select Duplicate.
- The duplicated flow will display under Your flows with Duplicate next to the title.
Delete flow
To delete a flow:
- Navigate to the flow you wish to delete.
- In the Your flows section, click the kebab menu on an inactive flow and select Delete.
- Confirm deletion by selecting Delete.
Edit flow
You cannot edit a flow after activating it, even if you deactivate the flow.
Settings
Use the manage settings panel to update the following settings related to the specific flow you are creating. Once you activate the flow, you cannot change any of its settings.
Setting |
Purpose |
Availability |
Flow title |
Add a title to your flow so that it is easily recognized. |
|
Flow description |
Provide a flow description so that you and your team understand the purpose of the flow. |
|
Flow duration |
Set the duration of your flow:
|
|
Flow run count limit |
Limit the number of times the flow runs for all customers, and/or limit the number of times a flow runs for a single customer. |
|
Considerations
Consider the following when using Subscription Experiences:
Consideration |
Notes |
Discounts |
Discounts from Rewards and Cancellation Prevention strategies, plus Subscribe and Save discounts and Tiered Discounts, all stack together seamlessly on customers' orders. |
Total subscription spend calculation |
Total subscription spend is calculated based on subscription-related charges and does not consider one-time Shopify checkouts. Recharge calculates the total subscription spend by taking the price of the line items, subtracting any discounts, and then adding taxes and shipping. Refunds are not taken into account for this calculation. |
Creating multiple flows with the same trigger |
If you have multiple flows with the same trigger and a customer meets the trigger conditions for more than one active flow, only the most recently created flow runs. Review all your active flows to identify potential trigger condition conflicts. |
Glossary
See Subscription Experiences glossary of terms for a list of terms and definitions related to building a flow.