Subscription revenue sounds passive until you’re actually in it.
Churn is real, and you can never hit zero. Subscribers cancel for all sorts of reasons — some within your control, many not.
If churn is inevitable, you can’t ditch subscription acquisition. You NEED to be constantly growing your subscriber base.
This is why my client has been so adamant about driving their continuity offer’s sales. More members joining = more revenue = huge win. And many potential members hide on our email list.
Yet my client has had some churn problems in certain months. Customers seem to lose steam and stop seeing the necessity of the offer.
To fix that, we have to improve the experience and reiterate the benefits and value for existing subscribers…
Or, in other words, sell to them, too.
Below, you’ll learn what I’m doing to drive more people into the subscription program and keep them around for as long as possible.
1. Building a LONG Post-Purchase Sequence
I like to aim for 7-8 Post-Purchase Sequence emails with non-subscription brands and offers. That’s about as much onboarding (and other stuff) as you need to get them integrated and buying again.
But a Post-Purchase Sequence is part of an overall experience. It is NOT an island. It should be as long as it needs to be.
Our program runs forever, but you see “everything there is to see” by day 365, when you look back at your progress…
So our Post-Purchase Sequence is a year long.
More concentrated early on, including the typical onboarding stuff and emails helping them at various milestones (like retesting a few months in).
The flow drops to 1-2 emails a week with successful member stories and/or niche-relevant and/or product-relevant tips.
Such an approach seems like overkill from an internal POV.
But if a customer is getting personalized attention and excellent customer service, a helpful email sequence that keeps you in the loop and creates opportunities for conversation only adds to the “VIP” feel.
2. Adding Retention-Focused Sequences
Slowing subtraction is another way to speed growth.
That’s why my client and I plan on implementing retention-focused flows on the back end to slow subscription churn:
- Subscription Renewal: This reminds subscribers of their upcoming order, reiterates their ability to manage/edit their order, and makes the brand feel open to questions — improving customer satisfaction and reducing churn, meaning a growing subscription base. Also opportunities to cross-sell one-off products here. For us, we’d sell products outside the program, like lesser-known supplements we offer.
- Subscription Winback: Targets those who canceled subscriptions, aiming to win them back. Your goal is to overcome the top objections/reasons for cancellation. Big opportunity for us here.
- Push to Continuity: This flow sells one-off buyers on upgrading to recurring delivery/billing, often after they’ve ordered at least twice. We’ll show that they can automatically, regularly get their product without manual reordering, plus expert help when needed. This is a regular retention flow, yes, but it gets you more subscription customers and shortens the time it takes to get them there.
See what happens when you get all these in place, including the subscription’s Post-Purchase?
- Push to Continuity: More people buying into the subscription.
- Post-Purchase: More people getting, seeing, and feeling results = fewer people churn.
- Subscription Renewal: More people getting help with their subscription and feeling reassured with their choice and our customer service = fewer people churn.
- Subscription Winback: That smaller number of churners? We get back a slice of them, boosting total subscription customers even more.
3. Focusing Engaged Sends On Continuity
We already focused a portion of regular broadcast sends on the continuity offer. And, surprise, that helped us make more sales.
In fact, we averaged 4.31 weekly continuity offer sales despite mailing no more than 3 times weekly. That’s at least ~1.43 sales per email…
So now, when we expand by (likely) at least 1 continuity email per week, there’s a good chance we’ll add another sale in there from email.
Each email I write will address objections, future-pace, and educate readers into seeing why they NEED to become a subscriber. We’ll need to dig for and watch out for fresh angles constantly.
As for who we’re sending to…
We’ll send to ALL engaged. Even “Never-Buyers” — subs who’ve never placed an order with us.
There’s always a chance a “Never-Buyer” wants to jump into a subscription instead of trying one of the one-off product(s) first (part of the offer structure entails regular delivery of the top 2 products to the customer).
May as well maximize the reach, here.
4. Writing More Stories
Story-based emails outperformed every other type of email in Q2 for all our goals — especially “Never-Buyers,” but subscription sales were not far behind.
Customers can see themselves in stories. We can show the benefit (by making them visualize the product doing something real) instead of layer on features or explain how something works.
Customers aren’t skeptical of the product itself at this stage…
But they are uncertain about committing to ongoing payment.
To convert customers to continuity, we must overcome the commitment hesitation. So we wrote stories that showed other customers who were skeptical, but enjoyed results with long-term use.
We also highlight:
- Ease of managing orders
- Strong customer service
- Customers who promise to join the recurring offer in their testimonial (if writing a storymonial)
Speaking of storymonials, that’s what we leaned on heaviest.
These are customer stories with bits of the testimonial woven throughout for a seamless mix of storytelling AND customer language. That social proof element makes them the strongest style for us.
What’s nice is we have TONS of reviews so we never run out of storymonial ideas… and we can keep gathering more from members as they enjoy results.
I did use a few others:
- Parallel Path stories: Tell a story of two individuals who have some relationship (such as friends) taking two paths to solve the problem. The successful individual’s path involves your offer in some way (such as recurring use of X product to solve Y problem).
- Before/After stories: Tell a theoretical/future-pacing story of the customer’s life before and after your offer.
Given the power of story-based emails, we’re also looking into ways to gather more reviews.
More reviews = more storymonial fodder = more sales.
5. Reiterating the Guarantees
One of the biggest barriers to a subscription commitment is the fear of being locked into something that doesn’t deliver.
This brand has two guarantees that directly address that fear:
- A satisfaction guarantee that gives new subscribers 60 days to decide if it’s working for them
- An expert guarantee that promises to adjust their plan until it works — if results don’t show up, the team keeps working on it until they do
Those are strong guarantees, but we only added them to a few emails in the past. Going forward, we want to add them to ALL emails.
Perhaps we’ll do a footer or standardized PS. With some emphasis on it in the occasional continuity send if the commitment objection is that specific email’s target.
Either way, the point:
Risk reversal is one of the most powerful tools in direct response copywriting. When the downside of trying something is effectively eliminated, the decision becomes much easier to make.
Oh so powerful for continuity offers.
6. Reusing and Resending Emails
The cool thing about an email is that once you write it… it exists forever. It doesn’t vanish upon sending.
You can send that email again later.
“But Bradley, won’t they recognize the email?”
Not necessarily:
- People have short memories here. They see hundreds of ads, emails, and other messages a day. Many won’t remember that listicle email you sent last quarter.
- Your actual subscribers have changed. Your list is always in flux. New people join and old people leave as time goes on. From the moment you send an email, the number of people who never even received it grows.
You could resend within as little as 2-3 months and a huge chunk of your list wouldn’t remember it.
But maybe they still do recognize it.
So?
A good email is a good email.
If it got lots of engagement and sales before, that means people liked it.
For instance, if a storymonial did quite well, it must have resonated with your audience. It’ll resonate again.
What, are they going to “call you out” for being “lazy” or something? If so, that’s strange behavior. I’ve never felt the urge to do that when I recognize an email.
“Reuse” doesn’t just go for broadcast → broadcast.
We put some of our top-performing broadcasts into specific email flows (continuity-focused and otherwise) and see solid performance. So we’ll evaluate ways to repurpose emails there.
More Subscribers = More Money Monthly
Everything on this list — the post-purchase sequence, retention flows, continuity-focused broadcasts, stories, reused top performers, and guarantees — supports continuity growth by:
- Adding more NEW subscription customers: Making the subscription feel like the obvious next step for someone seeing results.
- Losing fewer EXISTING subscription customers: Reiterating the value and enhancing the experience.
The results from Q2 suggest we’re moving in the right direction with what we’re doing now.
We did 41 membership sales in Q2, and we want to 1.5x that this quarter, making our goal 62.
We stopped selling a specific high-ticket product as part of our quarterly goals. The effort to sell 4 (twice as many as last quarter) was not worth it. That gives us one extra weekly membership send.
We averaged 3.15 weekly NAD membership sales in Q2 sending 2-3 times weekly, meaning we could potentially make another weekly sale with this extra send.
Assume we do the same things and make the same 41 sales. The new send’s extra 12 puts us at 53 already. 9 more needed over 12 weeks, or just 0.75/week (round up to 1/week), to hit 62.
Nothing but mailing once more weekly does half the work.
That’s what email marketing can do for you.
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