The subscription market is rapidly growing, and smart brands are taking advantage of this stream of income, while simultaneously providing customers with convenient shopping solutions and vehicles for discovering new products.
Subscriptions are an increasingly popular way to purchase products or services.
In fact, from 2014 to 2018, the subscription market grew by 890%, and by 2019, 54% of online shoppers said they have at least one subscription.
For many businesses, subscriptions are a new way of meeting customer needs, differentiating their brand, and selling products.
So, when an innovative adult beverage provider examined their customer base, they realized that they needed a more customizable eCommerce solution to manage and scale with their growing subscriptions.
The beverage provider was among the first to offer a monthly subscription service for in-home beer delivery. It quickly grew its customer base by not only providing an avenue to premium beer styles and brands, but also by making it easy for those unique beers to arrive at the homes of subscribers each month.
However, this required more robust logistics and an eCommerce subscription management platform to handle the that could keep pace with their remarkable growth.
The brand immediately recognized that a project of this scope would require a significant investment of budget and personnel.
While they had an existing platform, it wasn’t without its challenges. Processes needed to be updated or in some cases established entirely.
Additionally, they had previously outsourced many of their eCommerce development needs, and had become dependent on outside resources to manage and mature the core of their online presence.
This was no longer a sustainable model.
The Object Edge team helped the beverage company select Oracle Commerce Cloud, and partnered closely with the Oracle subscription management team to develop a stronger eCommerce solution.
Object Edge needed to account for the organization’s ERP, loyalty program, customer review capabilities, and several payment gateways. This required significant customization and integration.
With their new solution, the business was also able to add new subscription management features and functionality, including:
These complex features vastly improved customer experience, giving customers control over their own journey, while decreasing the cost of doing business for the beverage company.
One of the priorities of this project included a request to increase the visibility that the customer service team had into customer activity. New reporting features that were added include: number of new subscribers, number of re-engaged subscribers, and number of cancelled and/or paused subscriptions.
With this insight, the business could better develop sales and marketing strategies, tailoring their approaches thanks to solid customer data.
While all projects have a vision, this project encountered a significant shift right near launch due to the business being acquired by another. The acquisition immediately added more corporate accountability and increased the overall complexity.
Yet the new corporate leadership was so impressed by the new platform that it was actually adopted by the larger, acquiring brand as well, and over 13,000 total subscribers were migrated to the new platform in a seamless transition.
In addition to developing the first subscription module built on top of Oracle Commerce Cloud, we were also able to bring the best of art and technology to the brand’s shopping carts, auto subscription, and ability to display benefit pricing on each product description.
The subscription market is rapidly growing, and smart brands are taking advantage of this stream of income, while simultaneously providing customers with convenient shopping solutions and vehicles for discovering new products.
With the right subscription management software solution, appropriate expertise, and proper support, brands who are considering launching or enhancing subscription services can boost their bottom line and grow a loyal customer base.
Subscriptions are here to stay, and your platform should make managing them simple.
