7 Shopify retention marketing secrets that no 9-Figure DTC brand will tell you 🤫

Reducing churn rates is a formidable challenge, yet achievable with the right strategies. Discover seven expert recommendations from 8-9 figure DTC founders and retention leaders to effectively combat churn

Recommendation #1: Understand churn with Exit Surveys

When your subscriber churn is sky high, then as Nik Sharma - founder of Sharma Brands suggests, it’s wise to dive deep into why your subscribers are cancelling.

This is possible with a great customer survey.

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With Loop you can set up an easy cancellation survey and understand the core reasons why your subscribers are cancelling.

You can also embed a Tik-Tok, Insta Reel, GIF or YouTube video to stop your customer from churning.

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Recommendation #2 - Reduce cancellations by offering an alternative option

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We agree with Eli Weiss (former Director of Experience @ Olipop) that skipping is much better than cancelling. Even better is to delay the order by 7 or 14 days.

Loop’s cancellation flow recommends different alternatives for different cancellation reasons.

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• Have too much stock ⇒ Delay, Skip or Pause Subscription
• Not satisfied with product quality ⇒ Offer Product Swap
• Too expensive to continue ⇒ Offer One-Time Discount

Yes, one-time discounts are perfectly possible with Loop. This is how the cancellation flow looks like:

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Recommendation #3 - Dive deep into Cancellation Analytics 

As Natalie Sportelli (Head Of Content @ Thingstesting) shares from her personal experience as a subscriber, the core reason why she cancels her DTC subscription is ⇒ too much stock.

Getting into the intricacies of why your subscribers are churning is the first step towards preventing churn.

With Loop you get a nice and neat dashboard view of insightful subscriber churn data.

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Recommendation #4 - Offer Skip, Delay & Reschedule options in Upcoming Order Emails 

This idea works so well because it’s so preemptive in nature. 

Loop also gives brands this option of sending “Skip”, “Delay” & “Reschedule” CTA buttons in upcoming order emails so that DTC customers can easily just click and edit their subscription before the next delivery.

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Recommendation #5 - Gamify subscriber journeys to Reduce Churn

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DTC retention is all about keeping the customer happy and excited. As Eli Weiss suggests, the idea is to reward subscribers progressively.

So a brand can set up subscriber rewards like a free gift on the second order, a 10% discount on the fifth order, a free product trial on the seventh order, a quick product swap on the tenth order and so on.

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With Loop Flows you can do exactly this.

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You can also show your customer what reward awaits them on the customer portal. 

Gamifying rewards keeps your subscribers excited & engaged. Result ⇒ reduced churn.

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Recommendation #6: Solve involuntary churn due to failed payments

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One thing that’s worse than churn is involuntary churn i.e. churn arising due to failed payments.

A great dunning management system can solve for this by:

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1. Setting up multiple payment retries in 2 different billing cycles to improve success rate

2. Sending automated alerts via email/SMS - 30, 14 and 7 days before an upcoming payment

3. Skipping/Pausing instead of cancelling a subscription after all payment retries fail

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Result ⇒ reduced passive churn.

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Recommendation #7: Are you running any reactivation campaign?

Subscription reactivation campaigns have the highest ROI.

Loop integrates with Klaviyo & Attentive. With this integration, you can get a 1-click export of subscribers, each subscriber tagged with cancellation reason.

Then you can use this export in Attentive & Klaviyo to run personalised reactivation campaigns - and win your old subscribers back.

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There are more strategies to reduce churn such as looking at customer churn as a cohort.

But these 7 tactics are a good starting point and are easily doable for all DTC brands.

How many of them are you currently using as a part of your retention strategy?

Reach out to us and set them all up. Reduce churn and save + software costs 🙂