Simplifying Magazine Subscriptions Renewal Automation

Magazine subscriptions have been around for decades. But they have never been as smart as they are now. In the past, magazine businesses used to require manual checks from their subscribers. Subscription was renewed only after the check was mailed to, and received by the business.

But today, things are drastically different. Everything has become cloud-based. It’s not wise for businesses to keep hanging on to the legacy subscription processes. It’s also not wise for them to think about automation as a nice-to-have. In fact, magazine businesses today can’t survive the harsh market climate without automation in place.

Automation is especially essential for subscription renewal. Without it, generating recurring revenue becomes a losing game. Let’s unpack it further.

What Magazine Subscriptions Renewal Automation Really Means?

Automation means zero manual intervention. Especially for renewals. Imagine there’s a popular magazine company with thousands of subscribers. It simply can’t afford to handle each subscriber manually…that would require massive manpower, and still lack perfect coordination and renewal timing precision.

Cloud-based automation solves such problems. With an automated subscription management software, businesses can serve millions of subscribers at the same time, and with minimal manual effort. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be big to need automation. It’s actually the opposite. You need automation to grow big.

With renewal automation, businesses can easily scale their operations, and grow steadily and sustainably. By leaving manual management worries behind, they can focus on future-proofing their business. This is what magazine subscriptions renewal automation entails:

Storing customer data and payment info

This is the initial step, and it’s essential for feeding your billing system with all the required details needed for automation. When businesses onboard new customers, their integrated subscription management or billing software auto-saves their checkout details. This includes the payment methods. Saving payment methods is a requirement for billing customers automatically.

Activating billing cycles

Each subscription plan has its unique characteristics, such as price and billing cycle frequency. These features are tied to it, and get activated upon selection automatically. So if a customer chooses a monthly subscription plan, the billing software creates monthly billing cycles for them on its own. Then, it renews their subscription based on these cycles.

Communicating proactively

For renewals to be successful, it is a great strategy to always keep customers in the loop. Communicating with customers proactively is important to retain them as active subscribers. It ensures that they don’t ‘forget’ about their subscription, which is the downside of too much automation. Communication includes payment reminders that inform customers of their upcoming renewal.

Syncing Renewals with magazine delivery

Magazine access can either be given digitally, or it can be shipped physically. The latter scenario calls for more efficient workflows so that the deliveries are made timely. Automatic renewals in this case don’t just mean a virtual subscription renewal, but also create a physical delivery responsibility for businesses.

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Why Renewal Automation is a Game-Changer for Recurring Revenue?

Subscription renewal and recurring revenue have a close-knit relationship. Renewals are the exact reason why magazine businesses are able to generate revenue from the same customer repeatedly. If renewals are slow and patchy, you can’t expect revenue to land into your account smoothly.

So here’s how automatic renewals polish operations, and make revenue collection smooth:

By making income more stable

With automatic renewals, businesses can calculate and predict the exact amount they are going to make in a month. Based on the number of subscribers they have, and the plans they are subscribed to, businesses can generate revenue every month. The more stable their income is, the more steadily they can grow.

By retaining more customers

Imagine asking a customer in today’s age to fill out lengthy payment forms to pay. No customer would ever want to do that. But they would have to do that if the magazine business isn’t tech savvy, and doesn’t support automation. And they’d most probably cancel fast too.

On the other hand, automatic renewals save customers from putting in any manual effort. They make payments stress-free, encouraging customers to stay subscribed. And retention translates into further revenue stability.

By reducing operational costs

Without modern software, companies rely on their employees to manage renewals. As their subscriber base grows, they need more employees to handle it. The more employees there are, the bigger infrastructure required to accommodate them, and so on. The operational costs are never ending.

But with renewal automation, companies can cut down all these costs. Their subscription management software handles all the mechanical work, and allows them to scale without friction or exaggerated costs. This means that they lose less and gain more, improving profitability.

By managing thousands of subscriptions at the same time

Every new subscription brings in more revenue. Meaning, acquiring more subscribers should always be a welcome thought. Automated systems make it easier to onboard more customers, and then manage all of them simultaneously.

It automates communication, payment processing, renewals, magazine fulfillment, and many other processes for them. So businesses can sit back and relax, and watch how their software takes care of their subscribers itself.

Renewals Feel Tacky? Fuel Them with SubscriptionFlow

If subscription renewals are consuming a lot of your time, it’s time to switch to a better solution. SubscriptionFlow brings automation to all your key processes, unlocking faster renewals and smoother revenue collection.

What’s more, magazine businesses don’t just automate renewals. They improve their renewal success rate, retain more subscribers, and scale revenue. They do this by:

Automating billing by different cycles

Whether its weekly, monthly or quarterly plans, SubscriptionFlow doesn’t let billing lag behind. The software stays ahead of every payment cycle, sends payment reminders, and bills with efficiency. It ensures that no renewal is missed, and no revenue slips through the cracks.

Reducing payment failures with backup options

Payment failures are the number one cause of involuntary churn. Even if renewals are automated, there’s still a risk of failure due to payment method issues. A customer’s payment method can fail due to insufficient funds or expiration.

But with SubscriptionFlow, businesses don’t need to worry about that. That’s because the software supports a number of gateways, and enables the customer to switch to a different payment option easily.

Recovering failed payments automatically

At times, customers aren’t responsive. They may not respond to the messages that ask them to change their payment method. In that case, automatic payment retries help immensely. By charging the failed amount to the given payment method again and again, businesses can increase its chances of recovery.

Employing dunning strategies

There are various other dunning strategies that businesses can employ in case their payments fail. These include sending escalating emails, offering grace periods, using multi-channel messaging, sending one-click payment links, and more. Businesses can use a combination of these strategies to speed up payment recovery.

Aligning billing and fulfillment cycles

SubscriptionFlow also creates fulfillment tasks for you. Whenever it bills a customer, and renews their plan, it creates a fulfillment task for the magazine business. This helps the business prepare and dispatch all magazine orders on time, so that they reach their readers within their current subscription cycle.

Keeping an eye on key metrics

It’s not possible to correct a weakness you don’t know exists. That’s exactly why subscription analytics are so important for businesses. They give them a holistic overview of their performance, and clearly show them where they fall short.

SubscriptionFlow allows you to monitor all your important metrics in real-time. You can keep an eye on your churn and renewal rate, and work on upcoming renewals to make them more successful. You can also check your recurring revenue at any given moment, measure customer lifetime value, identify high value customers, and much more.

Say goodbye to legacy processes, and enter the world of smart renewal automation. Grow your magazine business by partnering with SubscriptionFlow.