How to Increase Subscription Sales (12 Ways)

Selling a subscription is not one sale. It is a first sale, then a decision to stay that gets made again every month by somebody who has stopped noticing the charge.

Most advice covers only the first half. The businesses that grow work on both, because replacing a subscriber who leaves in month three costs more than they ever paid you.

Below are twelve ways to win more subscribers, what to do about the ones who cancel, and what changes when you sell subscriptions on Shopify.

How to Increase Subscription Sales

Twelve ways, roughly in order of what they return. If you are still working out where the traffic comes from first, our customer acquisition examples cover that side.

1. Nobody wants to go first

Handing a monthly charge to a company you have never used is a bigger ask than buying something once. The question in their head is whether people stay, and a pricing page never answers it.

• Recent signups, pulled from your own system.
• How many people are on the plan, where the number is worth showing.
• Reviews that mention how long they have subscribed. “Two years in” says something no sales copy can.

Our roundup of social proof examples has the formats, and the social proof statistics cover how far they move a decision.

2. Say what happens if they cancel

The worry is not the price. It is getting stuck, or having to ring somebody to get out.

Put the cancellation terms next to the signup button in plain words. Cancel any time, from your account, no phone call. Make it easy to leave and more people will start. It is the same reason customer experience decides more sales than the product often does.

3. Most free trials go nowhere

People sign up, poke around, and forget. A trial only turns into a subscription if they got somewhere in it.

Decide what they should have done by day three, then build the emails and prompts around getting them there. Warn them before the card is charged, because a surprise charge gets you a refund and a bad review instead of a subscriber. Our guide to converting leads into customers covers the follow-up.

4. Annual plans pay you upfront

Somebody on annual has already committed to a year and the money is in the bank. That is worth a real discount instead of a token one.

Show the yearly saving as a figure rather than a percentage, offer the switch at renewal as well as at signup, and keep the monthly price visible so the comparison is obvious. That lift in order value is worth more here than a one-off shop, as the ecommerce statistics show.

5. Your signup form asks too much

Every field costs you subscribers, and most subscription forms want things nobody needs until later.

Email, password, card. Company size and phone number can wait. There is more in increasing checkout conversion, and the cart abandonment research puts numbers on what each step costs.

6. Three plans sell better than one

A single price is a yes or a no. Three makes it a question of which, and most people take the middle one.

Name the plans after who they are for rather than what size they are. Put the recommended one in the middle and say why you recommend it, because a middle option with nothing on it is only a price. The landing page statistics show how much the layout carries.

7. A fake deadline gets spotted

An introductory price that does end, a cohort that starts, a founding rate that closes at a set number of members. Those move people who have been thinking about it for weeks. A timer that resets when you reload does the opposite.

Be careful with money off on recurring billing. A first month at half price brings in people who leave in month two, and a rate locked in for life is a decision you cannot undo. We have covered where the line sits in creating urgency in sales and in our discount strategies.

8. Say what the button does

“Get started” tells nobody whether a card is about to be taken. Not knowing is what stops the click.

“Start 14 days free, no card” works because it answers the question. Our guide to calls to action covers the wording.

9. Catch people on the way out

Somebody who reached your pricing page and left had a reason. A popup that guesses wrong is an annoyance. One that answers the reason is a subscriber.

Offer the trial rather than money off, because knocking the price down once trains people to wait for it again. There are patterns worth copying in exit intent popup examples.

10. Most signups come from email

Almost nobody subscribes on the first visit. The list is where that visit turns into a signup, weeks later.

Split it by how far they got. Somebody halfway through a trial needs a different email from somebody who only ever looked at the plans. Email marketing optimisation covers the sequencing, and website personalisation does the same job on the page itself.

11. Ask for reviews at six months

Five stars from somebody on day two proves nothing about a subscription. How long people last is what a prospect is trying to work out.

So ask later, once they have stayed a while, and put the tenure in the quote. The online review statistics show what that is worth, and the testimonial examples show what a usable one looks like.

12. Upgrade the people paying you

The cheapest money in a subscription business comes from people who already subscribe, and most companies only ever talk to them when something breaks.

Offer the upgrade the moment they hit a limit, not on a schedule. Somebody who has just run out of something is the one person glad to hear about more of it. There is more in upsell and cross-sell strategies.

How to Improve Subscription Renewal Rates

Winning subscribers is the easy half. Most subscription businesses lose more to people quietly leaving than they ever win from a new campaign.

• Watch the first thirty days. Most people who cancel decided in month one, usually because they never got the thing working.
• Fix failed payments first. A good share of churn is an expired card rather than a decision. Retry, and email before the subscription lapses.
• Look at who stopped logging in. Usage drops weeks before a cancellation, and that is the only warning you get.
• Offer a pause. Somebody going away for three months does not want to leave, they want to come back.
• Ask why, in one question. Nowhere else will people be that honest with you.
• Warn before an annual renewal. A charge nobody expected turns a renewal into a chargeback.

A point of retention is worth more than a point of acquisition, because you get it again every month. The customer retention analytics cover what to measure.

Selling Subscriptions on Shopify

Running subscriptions on a store built for one-off orders brings its own problems, and most of them turn up after the first month.

• Put subscribe and one-off on the same product page. Making people find a separate product loses the ones who were not sure yet.
• Show the per-delivery price, not just the monthly total. People compare it against buying it once.
• Let them change the delivery date. The commonest reason for cancelling a physical subscription is a box turning up too soon.
• Let them swap items. Someone bored of one flavour will go rather than ask.
• Give the customer a portal. Every change they have to email you about is a chance to cancel instead.
• Handle failed cards properly. Whatever app you use, check what it does on a decline. That is where the money goes without anybody noticing.

The product page itself still has to do its job, which is covered in building a page that converts.

How WiserNotify Increases Subscription Sales

Tactic one asks you to show recent signups, subscriber counts and reviews that mention tenure. All three sit in your billing system and none of them appear on your pricing page, because moving them there is a development job nobody has scheduled.

WiserNotify reads that data and puts it on the page, with no code.

• Signup notifications from Stripe, Chargebee, Shopify or your own checkout.
• Subscriber counters over a window you choose, per plan if you want.
• Review notifications pulling your ratings next to the price.
• Display rules so a trial user in week two sees something different from a first-time visitor.

All of it comes from real signups, so a slow month looks like a slow month. A conversion rate optimisation audit will tell you where to put it first.

Wrap Up

Shorten the signup, say plainly how cancelling works, and make sure the trial gets people somewhere. Those three win more subscribers than any campaign.

Then put the same effort into month one, because keeping somebody costs less than going out and finding them twice.

Also check: How to increase sales funnel conversions

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