Managing Prepaid Quarterly and Yearly Magazine Subscriptions on Shopify

Prepaid subscriptions provide opportunities for recurring predictable income. Shopify sellers offering subscription to magazines benefit from upfront payments and customer loyalty. Although there are various durations that magazine subscriptions follow, quarterly and yearly cycles are particularly popular due to many reasons.

These cycles make billing easy, and serve as a strategic tool for extended customer retention. Shopify, however, is not supportive of these options itself. To fill this gap, merchants need to look for apps that are compatible with Shopify, and facilitate prepaid subscription billing.

In this article, let’s evaluate the significance of quarterly and annual cycles for magazine subscription, and learn how to make them possible with a smart subscription billing application.

Understanding Quarterly and Yearly Magazine Subscriptions

Quarterly and yearly subscriptions are two prepaid subscription types that follow specific schedules. Prepaid subscriptions are those in which customers are required to pay first, in order to get service access. They are a great option for merchants for building stable cash flows based on advanced payments.

In quarterly subscriptions, customers are required to pay at the completion of each quarter, i.e. 3 months. On the other hand, yearly subscriptions require only a single payment that covers the entire year. This payment can be made on the first or last day of the year, or on a custom billing date chosen by the customer.

These billing cycles differ from the monthly plans in their duration, strategy and benefits. Quarterly and yearly plans especially suit magazine subscriptions, as monthly cycles can be too frequent for them. Magazines may not release new issues monthly, making monthly subscription purposeless.

Releases might be irregular, such as every 2 months or might follow a quarterly schedule. In these cases, quarterly and yearly cycles help merchants organize their magazine delivery better.

Examples

For instance, there is a publication selling on Shopify. It releases a new magazine issue every 2 months, meaning a total of 6 issues in a year. Customers can have its yearly subscription where they pay for all the 6 issues in one go. Then the magazines are delivered to them one by one according to their release schedule.

Now let’s take another example to understand the quarterly subscription better. Suppose a company releases magazine issues monthly, but the issue delivery dates don’t stay consistent. Customers sometimes receive a month’s issue at the beginning of the next month. So this company offers quarterly plans to cover these inconsistencies.

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In the quarterly plan, customers receive a magazine every month for three months. Then, they pay for the next quarter, and continue receiving magazines the same way. Even if an issue’s delivery doesn’t become possible in its intended month, it can still be delivered early in the next month. This doesn’t disrupt the subscription schedule, as customers still receive 3 magazines within a quarter.

Why Shopify Alone Isn’t Cut Out for Subscription Management

For managing quarterly and yearly subscriptions, it is necessary for merchants to use a specialized app with Shopify. It is not optional. That’s because Shopify doesn’t facilitate subscription workflows itself. It requires external software assistance.

These are all the functions that form the backbone of any subscription business, but are not supported by Shopify:

Subscription logic and automation

Shopify is more oriented toward one-time sales than subscriptions. It doesn’t support subscription workflow automation on its own. This means that merchants cannot set up recurring billing cadences, collect payments automatically, give their subscribers any cancel or plan change options, etc.

Billing cycle setup

Merchants can only set up products in their store labelled as quarterly or yearly magazine subscription. But, they cannot set up any actual billing cycles following these cadences. So if customers subscribe to any of these plans, merchants have to save their data, such as subscription dates, and plan manually. They also have to bill them manually upon the arrival of their payment dates.

Fulfillment dates tracking

If the magazine subscription is physical, it makes things even more complicated. That’s because merchants have to keep track of every subscriber’s fulfillment date manually, and also have to keep a record of their intended and actual delivery dates. In short, there’s a lot of tracking to do to ensure that their subscription cycles remain intact.

Auto-renewal

Just like payment collection is manual, subscription renewal has to be manual too. There is no built-in subscription renewal mechanism in Shopify. Merchants have to manage customer data the outdated way—using spreadsheets. They manually have to mark subscriptions as renewed after receiving payments. They also have to chase after customers to renew their subscriptions on time.

Using SubscriptionFlow to Enable Quarterly and Yearly Cycles on Shopify

SubscriptionFlow is one smart solution to enable and manage prepaid magazine subscriptions. It can be accessed as an app in Shopify, and smoothly incorporated with its stores. SubscriptionFlow creates quarterly and yearly subscriptions, and sets up their billing cadences in two ways:

1. Via native checkout

The software integrates with your Shopify native checkout. When customers sign up, it collects their data from the checkout, and saves it in its database. Then for each customer, it creates a subscription according to their selected plan.

It allows merchants to set up quarterly and yearly plans, and billing cycles in it beforehand. Merchants can create product plans in SubscriptionFlow first, and then sync them to Shopify so that they are displayed in their store.

On the basis of these pre-configured settings, SubscriptionFlow automates the complete subscription lifecycle of customers. This includes onboarding customers, collecting their payments automatically, giving them access to self-service portals, renewing their subscription, and so on.

Merchants preferring the simplicity of native checkout, and wanting customers to have smooth-flowing payment processes can unlock subscription management using this method.

2. Via custom checkout

SubscriptionFlow also provides custom checkout for additional features that Shopify native checkout does not have. Magazine companies can use the custom checkout, design it as per their requirements, and redirect customers there to complete payments.

The custom checkout is supported by a vast array of payment gateways. So merchants can offer customers a lot of payment method choices. Customers can also access their carts on the checkout page, make changes to cart products (such as switch from a quarterly plan to a yearly one), and get their charges adjusted accordingly.

Once customers complete the checkout process, their subscription runs smoothly and automatically. Merchant don’t need to track payment and fulfillment dates manually.

Streamlining Subscription Management for Both Physical and Digital Magazines

If the magazines are digital, merchants can easily share their access links or PDF attachments in emails with customers. If magazines are to be delivered physically, SubscriptionFlow assists in fulfillment too.

These are some ways how the subscription management of both the magazine types is facilitated:

Billing and fulfillment cycles are aligned

While handling things manually, it is easy to lose the synchronization between billing and fulfillment cycles. For instance, a merchant renewed a customer’s quarterly subscription but forgot to schedule their magazine delivery. Or the merchant started magazine shipments, but forgot to bill for them.

With SubscriptionFlow, such errors are eliminated. When the software bills a customer, it creates a fulfillment task for the merchant automatically. Merchants simply have to follow these tasks and prepare magazine orders accordingly. This ensures that the fulfillment follows the billing closely, and that there are no issues like missed delivery or missed payment.

Self-service portals are enabled

SubscriptionFlow also supports the self-service portal functionality for customers. In these portals, customers can change their plans and payment information. If a customer’s plan is changed, the software registers and implements this change automatically. It also modifies the customer’s billing and fulfillment task accordingly.

Key notifications are automated

Merchants can further improve their magazine subscribers’ experience by keeping them engaged and updated. Quarterly and annual cycles involve long subscription periods. It’s important to keep interacting with subscribers throughout these periods, so that they don’t forget about their subscription.

With SubscriptionFlow, subscribers can be notified of their upcoming payments timely, sent payment confirmation emails, sent shipping updates, offered loyalty discounts, and more. It helps increase engagement, and makes payments more transparent.

Get the SubscriptionFlow app today, and enhance the capabilities of your Shopify store. Manage prepaid quarterly and yearly magazine subscriptions like a pro.