Is your team looking for opportunities to increase recurring revenue with existing autoship orders and subscribers? Do your customers love your products but don’t seem to stay subscribed and end up pausing or canceling after just 1 or 2 subscription orders?
In this case study, we’ll take a look at how Cured Nutrition, a wellness brand that creates supplements to support sleep, balance stress, and improve focus, took their Subscribe & Save program to the next level by using Churn Analysis reports in Autoship Cloud powered by QPilot to reveal a specific moment when subscribers were canceling and launch a targeted growth experiment that improved retention over 16% and lifted recurring revenue over 24%.
Identifying the Retention Opportunity with Churn Analysis
Cured Nutrition’s marketing team identified a valuable opportunity when reviewing their Churn Reports in QPilot (learn more about Churn Reporting in our help docs).
Specifically, their chart that tracks Scheduled Orders by Cycles revealed that the highest percentage of subscribers were canceling their Scheduled Orders (their recurring subscription orders) after the 3rd processing cycle.
The number of Scheduled Orders beyond the 4th processing cycle was relatively higher, so this framed a clear opportunity for Cured’s team to test an offer to Subscribers after their 3rd cycle to see if more of them continue to their 4th cycle, 5th, and beyond.
Crafting The Retention Offer For Subscribers
Cured decided to test offering a free gift as a “thank you” to Subscribers after their 3rd processing cycle that would automatically be included in their next (4th) renewal.
The free gift was a one-time item and coupon discount code (to discount the entire cost of the one-time item) that would be added automatically to each Subscriber’s Scheduled Order after the 3rd cycle, and then be removed automatically after the 4th processing cycle.
Cured created a mailer insert (a postcard) that Subscribers would see when unboxing their 3rd subscription delivery: an awesome moment to surprise & delight a loyal customer!
The Result: 16% Increase in Retention After 3 Cycles… and 18% After 6 Cycles!
After launching their retention campaign and gift offer, the number of Scheduled Orders being deleted after 3 cycles was starting to lower, and the Cured team started seeing a significant improvement in their monthly Scheduled Order metrics.
After 7 months of running their offer, Cured’s test turned out to be a clear success: the number of Scheduled Orders processed after their 3rd processing cycle was increased by 16%!
And there were even more increases in retention and revenue including…
- the number of Scheduled Orders processed beyond 6 cycles increased by over 18%
- Subscription Revenue increased 24% compared with the previous quarter
- The number of Scheduled Orders processed overall grew by 19% compared with the previous quarter
Automating the Offer: Lifecycle Marketing Automation with MAPs
Applying an offer based on the cycle or status of a subscriber’s Scheduled Order is known as “Lifecycle Marketing” and Autoship Cloud powered by QPilot makes this easy to do with our no-code automation service, MAPs.
“MAPs” is short for Merchant Automated Programs, and is a no-code solution that makes it easy to create subscriber flows and automate changes to Scheduled Orders. MAPs are built right into QPilot, your hosted service powering Autoship Cloud for Shopify and WooCommerce, so there are no additional plugins or apps to install!
Step 1: Start With an Item and Coupon Discount
First, we identify the Product that will be added as an item to each Scheduled Order for 1 cycle only. This “one-time” item will be free when added to the Scheduled Order along with a one-time coupon.
Second, a coupon is created that applies a discount to make the “one-time” item free.
Both Product and coupon will be added to Scheduled Orders automatically using a MAP (see next step below).
Step 2: Adding the Item and Coupon Automatically Using MAPs
Now, we create a new MAP that will run after the 3rd processing cycle completes and will add the Product coupon and its % discount to make the item free.
The MAP should apply after a Scheduled Order finishes each processing cycle in order to check to see if the cycle count has reached the 4th and then add the product and apply the coupon only when that condition occurs.
- MAP Context: Scheduled Order Process Finish
- Condition:
- Will Apply When: “Scheduled Order Cycles” Equals “3”
- Program Actions:
- Add Product:
- Product = “Gift”
- Quantity = “1”
- Add Coupon: “T7G2024”
- Add Product:
Step 3: Removing the Item and Coupon Automatically Using MAPs
Last, we create another MAP that will automatically remove the Product and Coupon after the 4th cycle completes processing.
- MAP Context: Scheduled Order Process Finish
- Condition:
- Will Apply When: “Scheduled Order Cycles” Equals “4”
- Program Actions:
- Remove Product:
- Product = “Gift”
- Quantity = “1”
- Remove Coupon: “T7G2024”
- Remove Product:
What Else Will You Automate With MAPs?
Check out our YouTube demo featuring multiple examples from basic time-saving automation to help you manage Scheduled Orders to how-to-examples of unique subscription marketing flows inspired by Petco’s Repeat Delivery Offer and Dollar Shave Club’s Subscription Refills.
Jump to:
- (3:01) Petco Autoship Example: Apply Discount to First Repeat Delivery Only
- (5:03) Dollar Shave Club Example: Product Swap from Checkout to Subscription Refill
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