The subscription economy is thriving, with subscription based business models now present in virtually every industry conceivable. Companies Netflix, ZipCar, and Dollar Shave Club (and Vtiger!) have employed it to disrupt heavily entrenched industries, and they’ve done so while creating highly predictable revenue streams, and unparalleled customer satisfaction and retention.
These benefits are no doubt attractive, but to effectively scale with a subscription-based model, aside from an appropriate product or service, businesses need a subscription management application that can manage a growing pool of subscribers and subscriptions, while automating transactions and communications.
With these and more features in mind, we’re thrilled to announce Vtiger’s new Subscriptions module. Whether a company has 100, or 100,000 customers, for each one, Vtiger stores subscriptions, sets up periodic billing, and automates payments, billing communication and subscription renewal, while giving businesses tools to analyze customers and subscriptions and improve revenue stream efficiency.
Enroll customers in easy-to-manage subscription plans
Here’s an example to illustrate the Subscriptions module in use: Trendhouse, a weekly fashion magazine, has 50,000 subscribers. All subscriptions require a 1-year commitment, but because Trendhouse’s subscribers have varying abilities to pay, Trendhouse offers payment period options of $12 monthly, $32 quarterly, or $120 annually. Vtiger’s Subscriptions module tracks each of Trendhouse’s subscriptions tagged to each subscriber. Subscription information includes period, amount, start and end dates. Each period throughout a subscriber’s 1-year commitment, subscribers receive an emailed invoice, which can be paid then manually, or subscribers can enroll in auto-pay to make all future payments on time automatically. This ensures that their service is never interrupted, and that Trendhouse can easily manage large subscriber bases with little overhead.
Let customers enroll in auto-pay, or pay periodically online
By following a link in the emailed invoice, customers can manually pay an invoice, or can set up auto-pay to pay this and future periodic invoices from a bank account or credit card. For customers, this ensures on time payment and prevents service disruption late payment penalties. For businesses, this ensures predictable revenue streams, with minimal overhead to manage large subscriber bases and process high volumes of transactions, with mistake-free payment processing.
Manage payments with automatic transaction reattempts, notifications for payment failures, and subscription status updates
For reasons from credit card expiration, to account cancellation, automated payments could fail. Should the cause for failure be temporary, Vtiger can automatically retry charging payment methods up to 3 times. If failures are permanent, Vtiger automatically updates the customer’s subscription status, and sends a customizable payment failure notification to the affected customer. This maximizes the chances of customer retention across every account without human intervention.
Get a bird’s-eye view of expired subscriptions, payment failures, and past due accounts for rapid engagement and remediation
The subscription module also provides complete visibility into customer subscription statuses, so that support can verify that they’re eligible for various support packages. Where subscriptions are about to expire, sales can engage with customers on renewals. And where there have been auto-pay failures, or manual payments are past-due, your subscriptions team can create a list to follow up with customers. All in all leading to more effective subscription management, with less work.
To learn how to start enrolling your customers in subscription plans, and to fully leverage subscriptions through Vtiger, read our documentation, or feel free to ask us for help at [email protected].
