Why Should You Go For eCommerce Subscription Platforms?
A few years ago, the concept of introducing eCommerce Subscription seemed like a strange idea. Not only was it laughed at, but people actually trying it out in their businesses were criticized as well.
This only changed when a few players of the industry made it big and changed the direction of the market. Introducing subscription rundles and subscription boxes to audiences, these businesses took the market by storm.
Users and consumers loved the idea of paying monthly bills in order to get more stuff on a regular basis. Rather than conducting a one-off purchase, users and eCommerce companies found it more convenient to process transactions every month.
While there’s no denying the profitability of the subscription model, there come certain complexities associated with its management. Since almost everything about your business will change with the billing model you choose, you’ll need to evolve accordingly.
From recurring billing processing to marketing for a relatively larger target audience, you’ll have to adapt quickly.
This is why it’s integral that all companies looking to make the endeavor choose an eCommerce subscription platform that helps automate management.
If you’re new to the idea, here’s an overview of the reasons why you should go for a subscription management platform:
Automate Recurring Billing For eCommerce Subscription Platforms
The most important benefit of going for a subscription management platform is seamless processing of recurring billing. It’s no secret that a lot of resources are spent in an organization just to streamline accounting and finance related operations.
There’s a lot to do in terms of generating and processing invoices and ensuring that all of them are cleared on time. Similarly, monitoring and updating the status of every invoice and bill is also crucial in order to minimize revenue leakage.
In addition to this, businesses also have to worry about payment failures and engage in dunning practices just to recover lost revenue.
Reconcile Accounts Easily
Once all these payments are processed and you get a record of all that’s come and gone, eCommerce subscription platforms help you reconcile your payments.
Since payment reconciliation is one of the toughest and most important operations in a business, you can’t risk doing it manually. Even if the practice was continued till now, subscription-based billing will complicate the whole thing.
What this means is that you’ll need accounting tools in your fintech stack in order to streamline your accounting operations. These tools can help identify entries in your statements that reconcile with each other, thereby making reconciliation very easy.
Seamless Integrations
A subscription management software for eCommerce offers companies the chance to integrate all their tools in one simple dashboard. This means you can integrate all the marketing, accounting, and developing tools at your disposal in one cloud interface. Not only will this help your organization in streamlining tasks and improve coordination, but it will also synchronize your efforts while bringing you smart analytics.
Integrations are the specialty of SaaS platforms and in eCommerce, just like plugins, you need integrations in order to outdo competitors. Whether it’s the inclusion of several payment gateways to increase conversions or the integration of marketing tools like HubSpot to increase traffic. There’s a plethora of integrations to choose from and needless to say, all of them are definitely worth it.
Smart Business Analytics
An eCommerce business needs analytical insights in order to improve and increase its sales and marketing strategies.
This is made possible with an eCommerce subscription billing software that can help you track your user behavior in real-time.
What this does is give you a clear oversight of what’s happening in your subscription business while providing you opportunities to improve your strategies at runtime.
For example, some businesses find that some customers engage with a product offer. Even though this offer is different from their currently active subscription, you can double down on your marketing efforts.
That’s because as a marketer, you can observe that this is an opportunity to upsell and cross-sell your other subscriptions.
Overtime, your eCommerce subscription business will yield data that will need to be sorted rather than silo-ed. To avoid data silos, you need to make sure that all your data is being gathered, analyzed and used in the same platform by all relevant departments.
Carefully sorted and organized data can be analyzed by your subscription platform to bring you insights pertaining to metrics such as:
- MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
- ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
- CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) and more!
Takeaway
If you’re an eCommerce business looking to expand your horizons and scale, you need to incorporate a subscription management platform in your tech stack. You’ll need the features and seamless automation in order to focus on other integral operations of your business. So, don’t wait up and get researching on a variety of options in the market now!