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Grow Your E-commerce Business with Recurring Orders

September 2, 2024

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Recurring orders are a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses. It allows customers to sign up for automatic deliveries regularly, which benefits both the business and the customers.

Let’s start by understanding what recurring orders are. 

What are Recurring Orders and Subscriptions?

Subscriptions and recurring orders are a type of order where a customer signs up to receive products or services at a regular time. This is a great way for eCommerce businesses to generate recurring revenue and build customer loyalty. 

There are many multiple types of recurring orders, such as:

  • Subscription boxes: These boxes contain a selection of products that are delivered to the customer regularly.
  • Meal kits: These kits contain all of the ingredients that a customer needs to prepare a meal at home.
  • Digital subscriptions: These subscriptions usually give subscribers access to digital content, such as movies, music, or software.

Benefits of Recurring Orders for Customers

Some of the most important benefits of recurring orders for customers include: 

  • Convenience - Recurring orders make it easy for customers to get the products they need without reordering them every time.  
  • Discounts - eCommerce businesses usually offer incentives and discounts to their subscribers, this helps customers save money on the products.
  • Curated selection - Subscription boxes provide a curated selection of products by selling them as recurring orders. This helps customers who use these products daily, such as razors or contact lenses. 
  • Personalized experience - some recurring orders provide personalized experiences to their customers. For example, some businesses allow customers to customize their subscriptions according to their preferences.

How to Set Up Recurring Orders

To set up subscriptions for your DTC business, you will need a few things: 

E-commerce platform: This is where your online store is hosted. Some of the Popular platforms are Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix Ecommerce, and WooCommerce. These platforms offer features and app integrations to manage subscriptions.

Subscription management software: While some platforms offer basic subscription management features, dedicated subscription management apps provide a more comprehensive solution. These apps allow you to:

  • Create subscription plans: Create multiple subscription options with different frequencies (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.), product quantities, and pricing structures (fixed or flexible).
  • Manage subscribers: Add, edit, remove subscribers, track their order history, their payments and update their preferences.
  • Process payments: Integrate with secure payment gateways to handle automatic recurring subscription payments.
  • Automate workflows: Automate order fulfilment, inventory management, and communication with subscribers.
  • Offer discounts and promotions: Increase subscribers by offering special incentives such as introductory discounts, bundled products, or loyalty programs.
  • Track and analyze data: Explore valuable insights into subscriber behavior, churn rates, and revenue generated from recurring orders.

Benefits of Recurring Orders for eCommerce Businesses

There are many benefits to using recurring orders for your e-commerce business. Some of the most important benefits include:

  • Increased Customer Loyalty: Subscriptions create a recurring revenue stream for businesses, and they can also help to increase customer loyalty. When customers trust that a business will constantly provide the products they require, they are inclined to remain loyal towards that company. Customers who subscribe to a business’s products have a higher lifetime value than non-subscribers.
  • Predictable Income: Recurring orders can help to create a more predictable income stream for an eCommerce business. You can predict your recurring revenue for each month and can make better financial decisions.
  • Improved Customer Relationships: Recurring orders can help you build a stronger relationship with your subscribers. By providing them with a convenient way to get the products they need, which makes them value your business. 
  • Better Customer Lifetime Value: Customers who subscribe to recurring orders have a higher customer lifetime value (CLTV) than non-subscribers. This is because recurring orders encourage customers to make repeat purchases from your business.

Choosing the right software for recurring orders management

Loop Subscriptions, A leading Shopify Subscriptions App can help you increase your AOV with its comprehensive features, scalability, and integration capabilities with your shopify store. 

Some of the most loved features of Loop Subscriptions include: 

  • Loop Flows - This feature personalizes the subscriber's journey using automated workflows. You can create offers based on subscriber behavior and preferences. Loop Flows lets you transform your bundled offerings into individual subscriptions, giving your customers freedom of choice. 
  • Smart Dunning Management - Loop’s smart logic helps you recover lost revenue from failed payments & declined cards. Loop’s 24/7 smart billing software enables you to 
  1. Recoup Payments
  2. Auto cancel or pause subscriptions
  3. Skip the payment when all the attempts fail

You can easily export subscribers' data associated with failed payments as a CSV file and automate SMS and email campaigns to inform them about their failed payments. You can also access reports and visualizations to make decisions accordingly.  

  • Customer Portal - A seamless customer experience is crucial for your shopify store. Loop Subscriptions empowers you to create a customer portal that reflects your brand identity. With a no-code interface, you can customize everything from background, CTAs, text, sidebars, popups, and upsell cards. You can experiment with styles and layouts and highlight upcoming rewards/incentives to your subscribers through banners inside the customer portal
  • Cancellation flows - Build retention campaigns with interactive custom cancellation flows. Embed videos/GIFs, surveys, and text to motivate subscribers to take alternative actions instead of cancelling the subscription. You can also offer a discount or gift to motivate subscribers to continue with the subscription. You also get a detailed cancellation analytics dashboard to understand the trend of cancellation reasons. 

Recurring orders are a powerful tool for DTC businesses. Shopify stores can build strong customer relationships, loyalty, and recurring revenue streams by implementing subscriptions effectively. 

Ready to see Loop Subscriptions in action? Book a demo here.

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Written by
Emma Johnson
Head of Marketing

Emma Johnson is celebrated for her strategic brilliance and innovative flair. By seamlessly blending creativity with data-driven insights, she has propelled Loop’s brand to new heights, establishing it as a formidable force in the Shopify Subscriptions space.