renewal management process

Making Renewal Management Process Fast and Effortless

Renewal management can be frustrating if done manually. Subscription businesses with significant customer volumes have to deal with a large number of renewals more frequently. If the renewal process is full of friction for customers, it can discourage them from staying committed to a merchant.

This calls for a powerful system that can make the renewal management process fast and seamless. SubscriptionFlow has exactly what businesses need to boost renewals and reduce churn.

It offers advanced features like one-click renewal, one-click reactivation, and early renewal. Businesses can leverage these features to collect payments faster, and keep their customers retained. In this article, let’s explore these features in detail.

Beginning from the basics…

What is The Renewal Management Process?

The renewal management process entails all the steps a business undertakes to ensure that its customers continue their subscription. After all, customer renewals are the key to keep a subscription business thriving. If customers drop out only after their initial subscription cycles, businesses lose a considerable amount of revenue.

These are some of the processes that businesses go through when managing renewals:

  • Tracking customers’ renewal dates
  • Sending renewal reminders that prompt customers to renew timely
  • Processing payments through reliable payment processors
  • Handling failed payments effectively
  • Creating exclusive offers for at-risk customers to encourage them to renew
  • Personalizing customers’ renewal experience for more success in the process

Common Challenges in the Renewal Management Process

Renewal management is important because subscription businesses rely on customer renewals for recurring revenue. In order to maintain steady revenue streams, it is essential to ensure that customers renew each time their subscription is about to expire.

However, businesses encounter a variety of challenges at the time of renewal. These challenges increase the risk of churn, and discourage customers from renewing subscriptions. Some of them are:

  • Manual Reminders

If reminders are not automated, businesses have to create and send them to customers on their own. This makes personalization increasingly difficult as well, as it requires considerable effort. Manually sending renewal reminders is very time taking as well.

If a business has a lot of customers with different renewal dates, then its employees have to dedicate a good chunk of their time to send reminders every day. The best way out of this is to get a smart subscription management software that automates the transfer of reminders.

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  • Card Expiration

Expired cards lead to payment failures, and they in turn lead to involuntary churn. In this kind of churn, customers drop out of their subscription without even realizing it. This creates an obstacle in renewal which cannot be overcome without effective communication.

  • Customer Forgetfulness

Customers can easily forget to pay for renewals, especially if they have a lot of subscriptions, Automated renewals can be a great solution for this issue. However, not all customers feel comfortable with that option.

They prefer being an active part of the payment, rather than passive. In this scenario, personalized renewal reminders are effective to retain subscribers.

  • Friction in Payment Process

Renewals can become cumbersome if customers have to type in their full payment details each time. This makes their payment process slow and difficult.

Moreover, if customers have to log in to their customer portals to pay, or have to go through a complicated checkout process, it holds them back from paying even more.

  • Discount Management

This is yet another challenge that subscription businesses face during renewals. If they have extended different discounts to different customer segments, then they have to calculate those discounts precisely.

This is important because these discounts have to be applied to the total payments of customers, so that renewal only costs them the discounted amount. If discounts are not efficiently managed, it can lead to customer frustration and mistrust.

Moreover, if discount calculation is not precise, it can cost businesses either customer happiness, or profitability. Discount management becomes more complicated if businesses allocate custom discounts to special customers.

Thus personalized pricing in the form of discounts can both be an incentive for customers to renew, but can also become troublesome if not managed well.

  • Subscription Adjustments

If customers have made or requested any adjustments to their plans, then they must be managed before renewal. Subscription renewal must be according to the adjustments made.

Billing amounts must be modified based on the changes too. These modifications should be made without disrupting the customers’ subscription experience.

SubscriptionFlow Offers Powerful Renewal Management Features

SubscriptionFlow offers businesses the best solution to overcome renewal-related challenges. It equips them with both subscription management and billing. Both features help streamline subscription and payment processes, boosting renewal percentage.

Here are some of SubscriptionFlow’s latest renewal features that businesses are leveraging:

  • One-Click Renewals

Businesses can now send renewal links to their customers via email. As soon as customers click on the links, their subscription gets renewed. This feature eliminates the many barriers that commonly appear between customers and their renewals.

These barriers include payment forms, complicated checkouts, login requirements, and more. Customers don’t need to face any of these, as they can simply renew subscription with a single click.

SubscriptionFlow allows businesses to offer this renewal button inside customers’ self-service portals too, in case they miss the email. With one-click renewals, customers are saved from entering their payment information repeatedly.

This makes the renewal process incredibly simple, and maximizes retention. It also lowers the possibility of payment delays, as the one-click link also facilitates automatic payments.

  • One-Click Reactivation

With this feature, SubscriptionFlow takes customer convenience to the next level. One-click reactivation means that customers can resume their cancelled or paused subscriptions with only a single click.

SubscriptionFlow provides businesses with one-click reactivation emails that they can send to their customers. Alternatively, these links can also be sent to the customer’s portals. This advancement ensures that customers don’t have to make an account from scratch when going back to a subscription service.

They also don’t have to go through the checkout process again, or provide payment details in any form. Their original payment details and account information get saved within the system. That is why customers can easily return to where they left off.

This allows businesses to smoothly win back their customers even after they have churned. This feature is especially useful for dormant customers, as they can be re-engaged in their subscription effortlessly.

  • Early Renewal & Advance Payments

This option is for those customers who want flexibility in their subscription renewals. These customers can renew their subscription early for a variety of reasons. For instance, users who want to extend their subscription terms without being bound by a set schedule to do that.

Using early renewals, customers can pay in advance for their upcoming subscription cycles. This makes their subscription experience even more uninterrupted, as they don’t have to worry about paying for a considerable time into the future. This can also help them budget better.

Moreover, early renewals are a great option for those customers that want to avail services at their current prices. It is common for businesses to update their prices in the future, especially if they operate in an unstable economy. Their customers might want to leverage the current, cheaper charges by booking the next subscription cycles in advance.

Additionally, businesses can encourage customers to renew early by giving them special discounts. This not only benefits the customers, but also the businesses as they can secure their customers and recurring revenue in advance.

Offering early renewals also helps those customers who want to consolidate their billing cycles. This means aligning payment cycles with those of the other subscription services in their use.

Early renewal gives a customer the flexibility to pay at an earlier date, so that the system recognizes this new date, and updates their billing cycle. By doing this, they can unify all their billing cycles around the same schedule. This enables them to pay for all their subscriptions on the same date.

So what are you waiting for? Give SubscriptionFlow a try today, and leverage these smart features aimed at boosting your customer retention.

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