As media consumption patterns continue to shift from legacy media to a network of digital content/consumer intersections, consumers are embracing the subscription business model as a cost effective and efficient purchasing model. Pressured by a wide variety of time constraints these consumers are seeing great merit in procuring products/services in the “direct to consumer” channel.

Despite this growing trend, subscription marketers continue to struggle to find cost effective and efficient strategies and tactics to acquire new customers.

I’d like to share some cost-efficient strategies for attracting new consumer customers and maximizing lifetime value while minimizing risk in these efforts. 

1.      Engaging Messaging 

Your advertising message is battling with many others for the attention of your prospects. Spend time on developing a series of subject lines and messaging that reinforces your unique selling proposition and entices the viewer/prospect to click thru to learn more. Be in a constant mode of test, optimize, deploy.

2.      Compelling Offer  

Ensure that you are developing landing pages that make it exciting and easy for the prospect to understand the value of your offer and easily move down the path from interest to purchase. Your prospect is seeking value during this process so be sure to have a strong and compelling call to action

3.      Leverage the Pay for Performance channel 

Work with a company that can help you leverage a Cost per Acquisition strategy (CPA) which mitigates your overall media costs when compared to other “reach” based media alternatives. Not all media providers offer this option.

4.      Investigate Emerging channels 

Once you have established your foundation in the pay for performance channel; it is prudent to investigate other digital channels that offer a high concentration of your target audience engaged in consuming relevant content. While these areas may not perform in the same way as CPA efforts, they can be valuable as a component of an integrated digital marketing acquisition strategy. While attractive, it is critical that the marketer establish some bench mark in terms of ROI to avoid wasting time and budget.

5.      Post Conversion Customer Nurturing 

Your prospect has placed his/her first order – Great News!  No time to celebrate just yet. Make sure that you have constructed a customer nurturing and communications process and plan to keep your new customer engaged with your product/service. Too often we see marketers take for granted their newly “minted” customer for lack of engagement post transaction. At Fosina, we can help you construct an ongoing communications strategy that will help with retaining customers and building life time value.

6.      Build & Leverage Customer Advocates

Your customers can actually be your best salespeople and sources for new customers thru a carefully constructed “referral program” Here existing customers share their experiences and advocacy for your products thru social media recommendations, sharing, posting etc. Make sure that you do all that you can to foster an environment that encourages and “rewards” customers for sharing their positive thoughts with their friends, family & colleagues. Forbes magazine article reported recently that an amazing 81% of American’s consumer purchasing decisions are influenced by their friends within the social media sphere.

7.      Reduce  Churn

The biggest challenge subscription marketer’s face is ongoing churn in their “customer” database. You can reduce overall churn rate by an aggressive effort to engage with your customers, post transaction. You have much that you can and should share with your customers about your company, products and the latest news regarding your industry. Don’t miss this opportunity to keep the dialogue moving in the right direction. Don’t be an absentee landlord to your customer file. Worry all the time that if you are not speaking to your existing customers frequently; you can bet your competitor is attempting in every way possible to “steal” your valuable customers. Protect Your House!