logo
logo
Sign in

Augment Certainty with Subscriptions with Salesforce Commerce Cloud

avatar
lee carl
Augment Certainty with Subscriptions with Salesforce Commerce Cloud

An interesting trend in the present economy is that people are much more open to trusting newer models of buying and selling.

Ecommerce is undoubtedly one such trend. But, people are more or less already convinced about the benefits of ecommerce, which includes both the B2C and B2B ecommerce markets.

The trend that is coming up as one with great promise as long as B2B ecommerce companies can show sustainable, consistent performance is that of subscription selling.

People may argue that subscriptions are already quite popular, with streaming services, toiletry and food boxes, Internet and phone plans, hygiene products, groceries, medicines, and more, being bought the world over through subscriptions. But there is far more potential in this business model.

Conversation of Subscription

In 2017, 15% of online buyers got a subscription for an ecommerce service. This percentage rose (40%) once the pandemic restricted people to their homes.

A personalized experience, convenience, and financial advantage were the main reasons that customers chose subscriptions. Of the three main types of subscriptions, curation services were the most popular by a wide margin (55%), followed by replenishment (32%) and access subscriptions (13%).

However, conversion rates were higher for replenishment subscriptions (65%) than for curation (52%) and access services (51%). On the business side, 70% believe subscriptions to be the key to increasing customer retention and growing revenue.

At least 53% revealed that 40% of the income of their companies come from recurring sources. These numbers are a testament to why the B2B ecommerce subscription business is more than doubling every year.

Why Use a Subscription Management Software?

The B2B ecommerce marketplace sees large-scale interactions, often on a regular basis. Therefore, much B2B ecommerce growth and revenue comes from subscriptions.

Subscriptions are vital in delivering business outcomes quickly to increase revenue growth. But often, sales and marketing personnel often exclude subscription capabilities during B2B ecommerce implementation.

They believe they can wing it. But that is not true. Including subscription in your sales process and B2B ecommerce platform makes a lot of difference in delivering desired business outcomes and facilitating B2B ecommerce development for the following reasons:

  • Subscription services automate renewals, saving the time of both your employees and your customers.

  • Customers can cater to their needs themselves from the B2B ecommerce portal without requiring intervention. Bonus points if you have an omnichannel B2B commerce solution.

  • Subscription functionalities in your B2B ecommerce software and sales dashboard allow you to mine valuable data that you can feed into your analytics machinery for usable pointers.

  • B2B buying behavior shows a strong propensity for tailored services. You can enable personalization in your B2B ecommerce strategy using subscription management software.

  • Your success in closing B2B ecommerce sales deals lies in your ability to guarantee accuracy in the billing process. Using software reduces the chances of silly errors manifold.

  • It is much easier to factor in discounts, deals, overhead charges, refunds, late fees, etc in subsequent bills if you use the right CPQ for B2B subscriptions.

How To Solidify Subscriptions With Salesforce B2B eCommerce

People will not automatically start trusting your subscription products, especially in small business ecommerce solutions.

You must leverage the Salesforce B2B ECommerce features fully to give customers the incentive to click on them.

Here is what you need to do.

1. Make Subscriptions the Hero Of Your Salesforce Storefront

It is easy to refuse temptation once. But when you offer something multiple times, people cannot refuse.

You must take advantage of this psychology too. Mention your subscription packages all over through B2B ecommerce marketing.

They should be on your landing pages, the home page, product pages, and even on checkout pages.

Offer exciting promotional deals to those who sign up. You can even offer interactive guides and benefit lists to buyers to convince them.

2. Mix and Match Your Subscriptions

Personalization can go a long way in facilitating operational outcomes in business; so, you should leverage the customization tools in Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud on subscriptions too.

Offer different types of subscriptions like autoship, box, club, and access, tailor the contents based on the customer, bring together different sets of products to create winning combos, and so on.

You can also offer different subscription formats based on the progress in the buyer journey mapping.

3. Bundle Several Products Together

People often ignore the varied advantages of bundling products. You can use bundles to introduce customers to new products, build perceived product value, sell complementary products, test beta products, attract customers for limited edition products, and even clear out stagnant inventory.

But the main benefit of bundling products into subscription packages is that it helps drive up sales.

When customers buy products one by one, they often have the time to debate the necessity of each and drop a product or two. With bundles, they are tempted to buy all of them.

4. Always Study Data From Subscription Sales

If you want to influence key business outcomes, you must have the input. This comes from studying customer behavior keenly on subscriptions.

The most important information you get from subscription sales is the volume of products to be manufactured, the budget to be fixed, the expenses based on the expected revenue, etc.

Subscriptions can give great insight into customer buying behavior and help influence product demand through it.

You can also find out what triggered your current subscribers to go for it and offer those same triggers to present customers who have not subscribed yet.

How To Create A Subscription Product In CPQ And E-Commerce

Salesforce provides in-built features for subscription billing and management as part of its Q2C and ecommerce solution.

However, you can take advantage of a Salesforce global strategic partner or even a community partner of Salesforce to access more advanced subscription features.

Conclusion

Salesforce is fast advancing from just the top B2B CRM service provider to an all-round B2B business management solution. Therefore, having sufficient features to allow seamless subscription offerings is a must.

You must also know how to leverage those powerful features to create subscription sign-ups and purchases an easy functionality on your ecommerce platform and your sales management software.

If you are interested in learning the right way to do it and are looking for available options and assistance, you can learn more about creating subscription products on the Salesforce platform here.

 

Source: Subscriptions with Salesforce Commerce Cloud

collect
0
avatar
lee carl
guide
Zupyak is the world’s largest content marketing community, with over 400 000 members and 3 million articles. Explore and get your content discovered.
Read more