What can businesses with recurring subscriptions and recurring memberships lookout for this 2021?
No other phenomenon has perhaps changed the business landscape as fast as the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a truly collective experience, felt in equal measure all around the world, from Asia to Africa.
In less than a year, consumer behavior has changed so much that businesses need to take stock and adapt what they can for their business to succeed in 2021. Here are a couple of observations that digital entrepreneurs need to look out for.
Count on Changing Customer Behavior
Every year, there are new trends that pop up. These trends go up and down and sometimes stay to become part of the landscape. Some become mere fads that fade away in time. But the year 2020 is different in a way that it has actually forced a lot of behaviors that were previously not there or not as evident. Shopping online, for example, has increased by 70% in Asia-Pacific, more than doubled in the US, and increased 50% in Europe.
\People are considering buying essentials online more than ever with a focus on bargains as opposed to luxury goods. In the year 2020, it’s all about convenience and the desire to be safe, so home delivery and click-and-collect is needed more than ever. This will likely spill throughout 2021 and the next couple of years. This is a very good opportunity for businesses with recurring physical product subscriptions. If you're not already in it yet, you may start studying this area for growth.
Plan and Prepare
Many were caught flat-footed in the year 2020. Many who succeeded reacted quickly and were able to take advantage of the pandemic. According to the IntelligenceNode study, 82% of shoppers will continue shopping online even when stores reopen. This gives you enough planning time to catch more opportunities. Think about how you can, as a digital entrepreneur, can be better prepared for continuing disruption or for improving your business situation. Create What-if scenarios and plan accordingly.
Beef Up Your Techstack
As digital entrepreneurs are expected to take on more challenges this year, prepare your systems and backend so you can serve your customers better. Speed up your website, make them optimized and compatible with mobile devices (as according to a Paypal study in the third quarter of 2020, nearly three quarters (73%) of shoppers now use mobile devices), and make it easy for your customers to access information.
Perhaps the greatest attention should be put on studying how you can streamline your payment process. Aside from an easier payment system, check your unintentional churn. No one likes updating their data on little screens -which most of your customers use. Dunning and robots make very little success in getting back clients who are looking for fast and easy. Use Gravy to recover failed payments with a combination of tech and personalized human touch.
Explore New Markets
It’s a brave new world. The world has opened up more than ever and this is the time to start exploring more ways to reach your customers. According to OECD.org, cross-border parcels have played a critical role in helping people and firms deal with issues stemming from physical distancing and confinement measures implemented during COVID-19. You may consider reaching out to customers in other countries officially. But don't limit yourself to physical locations -check new marketplaces and platforms that you haven't considered selling to before. Look for the places that best match your products and markets.
Inspire Confidence In Your Business
Building trust begins in being transparent about your business. From your names, location, and company history, everything should be available for checking. The opposite effect of the sudden turn to online marketplaces is the proliferation of scams and frauds. Most buyers are turning to well-known names in order to avoid this. But you can still get a piece of the pie by making sure that information needed by customers is always accessible on your website.
Strengthen Your Client Retention Strategy
You don't need more marketing to offset lost revenue due to lost payments. You can either invest in automation like dunning software platforms (Stunning, Recurly) with a 9-12% recovery rate or consider Gravy with a batting average of recovering as much as 80% of this lost revenue.
We’re proud to say that we employ a human approach that’s bound to increase the lifetime value of your customers. After all, if there’s anything we learned in 2020, it’s that you shouldn't lose the human touch. We soon learned that bots are really ineffective if used on its own. It's impersonal, it lowers your credibility, and hurts your brand in the end.
Gravy isn’t the cheapest option, but it is really cost effective in the end. We do this all day, every day and we have discovered what we call the ‘secret sauce’ to payment recovery. We’d love to help you solve this problem, and I promise you it will be worth it! And if you don’t think it is, we’ll give you your money back!
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