Subbly automations

At the core of every subscription business is the idea of repetition. A paying customer expects what they ordered at a certain interval, and that’s exactly what they should get. Rinse and repeat, month in, month out. The longer each customer subscribes, the better things are for you as an entrepreneur — obvious, right?

But this idea of repetition exists behind-the-scenes as well, something that’s often overlooked. Running basic processes that your subscription business relies on shouldn’t involve any manual work in 2022. And with that in mind, we’d like to introduce you to a particularly powerful feature: automation.

With our powerful, if/then logic-driven automation tools, your business will run like a well-oiled machine, especially once you start to scale. 

Remember, a successful subscription business isn’t just about the first sale but about developing long-lasting relationships, and tons of processes that help you do this — from sending welcome emails and activating someone’s user profile when they sign up, to offering special deals to avoid customer churn or reward loyal long-term subscribers — can easily be automated.

If you’re already interested in exploring the full power of our automation technology, click here to dive into the full FAQ. Otherwise, here’s 7 contexts our automation technology is perfect for to give you some initial inspiration.

Increase retention

 

  • Send SMS messages to new customers about specific products.
  • Target buyers of one-time products to upsell subscriptions.
  • Keep reminding customers who paused their subscription about your store.
  • Email customers who canceled their subscription.

Build loyalty

  • Send an email when the lifetime value of a customer exceeds a specific threshold.
  • Create a special offer for loyal customers.
  • Delight customers with extra credit after their lifetime value (LTV) reaches a certain amount.

Reduce churn due to failed payments

 

  • Retry renewal during the same day.
  • Send SMS messages to customers whose subscription was canceled due to involuntary churn.
  • Email customers who opened a dispute.

Increase lifetime value

  • Apply a coupon automatically for a customer after a specific number of orders.
  • Send customers a customized email with a special discount once they’ve reached a target LTV, or help them reach that LTV with vouchers sent at predefined intervals.
  • Create upsell opportunities by offering discounts to customers who switch to longer or more expensive plans.

Build complex business models

 

  • Sequential subscriptions that keep things consistent for all new subscribers.
  • Create different SKUs for trial and normal plans.
  • Create different SKUs for different plans.
  • Create a custom cut-off logic for ad-hoc billing cycles.

Automate management and operations

  • Tag customers after they choose to skip to specific products.

Be proactive and keep an eye on those customers who, for whatever reasons, decide to pause their subscription, so you can take care of them in the future. You might have certain products you don’t want this rule to apply to.

  • Add items automatically for customers who applied a certain coupon.
  • Set subscriptions for a particular product to auto-cancel after a specific number of cycles/orders.
  • Tag customers from a specific country.
  • Change a new customer’s user attributes from ‘inactive’ to ‘active’ in your backend once they’ve paid.
  • Send customers an email with their login info or access link.

Testimonials

For us, automations are essential. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to have our subscriptions renewals work the way we want, or have any way to notify customers that it’s coming up on the end of their subscriptions.

Envelope of Awesome, Simon Streatfeild, https://www.envelopeofawesome.com/:

The automations work great. We actually are building a local online marketplace with custom software. To ease our logistics burden as we onboard vendors, we decided to vet them by using the subscription service as a gate to access the marketplace, meaning only subscribers can access the marketplace. This is primarily what we use automation for — informing our marketplace when critical events occur. The automation functionality is pretty crucial to us because we have no desire to write our own subscription box software platform, which has made Subbly an amazing partner.

Farmers Feeding Utah, Jason Buchanan, farmersfeedingutah.com

The automations have been a game changer for us. They have allowed us to become very creative with our customer interactions. We have used them to sell additional products, reduce churn and reward our customers for staying with us for a certain number of months. The control and freedom they give you isn’t something I have witnessed before with a piece of software. If you are on Subbly, I 100% recommend you start using these to improve the experience for your customers.

Busterbox, Liam Brennan, busterbox.com

Read more about specific automation recipes in our knowledge base

By Zaki Gulamani
Editor-In-Chief at Subbly