Closing the Renewal: Tips for Making Subscription Billing Irresistible to Customers

You can have the best software services in the world, but if you’re not closing the deal on renewals, your SaaS company isn’t doing as well as you thought. Once you’ve built your business with a great product and offered excellent service to your initial customers, follow these tips to make sure they keep paying the renewal fee every month.

Engagement Is Everything

One of the best things you can do to ensure your clients renew their subscription is to make sure that they’re engaged with your product. When the product you’re offering becomes a part of a person’s daily existence, he or she will keep paying for it.

There are different ways to monitor engagement among your clients, so be sure to choose the ones that are the most telling indicators of engagement with your product. Examples include frequency of visits, time spent using the product, and certain core actions.

Set up a system to monitor each client and keep watch. If an indicator shows a substantial drop in the client’s level of engagement, a proactive action should be automatically triggered: Try an automatic email asking for feedback or a follow-up customer service phone call, depending on your business model. Proactive engagement long before renewal time helps get results.

Connect on Email and Social Media

What are the main social channels that your customer base uses? You should be engaging there, both to reach out to your customers and to find out the main topics and concerns of the most relevant industries. As you reach out, ask people what they think of your product. By soliciting feedback, you’ll be showing your clients that you value their opinions while getting some of the most useful information possible. You’ll also stay top-of-mind, making it more likely they’ll hit that renew button.

Surprise and Delight

Send out regular emails that include promotions and deals that will incentivize your customers’ continued support. Even better, have regular giveaways and promotions that show your clients how much you appreciate them. This serves two purposes. First, it keeps your business at the forefront of their minds. Second, it keeps the thought of your business associated with good things and pleasant surprises that make you unique.

By putting these practices into action, you’ll find you no longer have to dread the reports on churn rates. Thanks to your careful groundwork, your customers will renew their subscriptions when the time comes — and you can focus on running your thriving SaaS business.

Want a step-by-step strategy to decrease involuntary churn? Our Retry Strategy guide teaches you exactly how to use data like decline codes to reduce churn and increase your CLV: