Customer loyalty is vital for the long-term success of any subscription app. Building a strong, long-lasting relationship with your users can be a deciding factor of whether your app succeeds or not as it helps drive retention and revenue growth. This is where a well-executed Mobile CRM strategy can create magic. It goes beyond just tracking user interactions; it’s a powerful tool to deliver personalised, timely, and meaningful communication that fosters loyalty. From onboarding new users to encouraging upgrades and preventing churn, Mobile CRM allows you to create tailored experiences that resonate with your audience at every stage of their journey.
In this piece, we’ll look at actionable strategies leveraging mobile CRM to build and maintain customer loyalty for subscription apps, helping you turn first-time users into long-term subscribers.
The importance of customer loyalty for subscription apps
Subscription apps rely primarily for their revenues on… subscriptions. So it’s a given that keeping customers loyal is key to generating these recurring revenues. Especially in an age where just about anything you can think of – music, TV, food, clothes, even razors – is available on a subscription basis, and consumers are constantly reassessing which subscriptions they really need and use, and which they can live without.
But generating revenues isn’t the only advantage of creating a loyal customer base. Loyal customers not only lower your churn rate, but can also act as your brand ambassadors, bringing new people to your app organically through word-of-mouth recommendations. Loyalty also leads to increased customer lifetime value, as the bond between your loyal customers and the app increases over time.
So how do you go about generating customer loyalty?
Strategies for building and maintaining customer loyalty
Building customer loyalty for subscription apps begins with the seamless and engaging onboarding process that introduces users to the app’s value and encourages them to take their first meaningful actions. From there, using an in-app analytics tool is crucial to understand user behaviour. The insights that an analytics tool delivers allow you to segment your audience based on their usage patterns & preferences, and tailor your messaging to resonate with each segment. This personalised approach will help you build a stronger connection with your users and encourage long-term retention. To help you understand how this could work in practice, let’s elaborate on each of these aspects.
Use the onboarding process to seed the idea of a paid subscription
A well-crafted onboarding experience is the foundation of customer loyalty. It’s your first opportunity to make a good impression, introduce the app’s core benefits, and guide the users through your app’s value proposition (even if some of the features might be only available to paying subscribers).
Effective onboarding should be seamless, bug-free and informative, with good visuals and a logical flow, so that the users immediately understand the app’s value. From the outset, users should clearly know which features are free and which require payment, setting the right expectations from day one. Many subscription apps introduce the concept of a paywall during the onboarding process, often as part of a walkthrough tutorial highlighting the app’s key features. It is a highly strategic approach, as it allows users to get used to the idea of paying to access the app while they are in the process of learning all about its key features.
Our experience shows that there’s a 7-day window of opportunity to convert new users to subscribers after they download the app, so it’s recommended to introduce them to the concept of a paid subscription early on. Even if they don’t convert at that point, you have sown a seed that you can resurface to the users as they come back into the app over the coming days.
To drive conversions, offer users a taste for the features they will unlock once they subscribe. For example, If the free version of the app is ad-supported, emphasize the ad-free experience for paid subscribers. Or for a language-learning app like Duolingo, it could be that they will no longer be locked out of the app for a time after making a certain number of mistakes.
Also, don’t forget to look at user feedback from paying subscribers to identify the most valued features. Use these insights to craft compelling incentives that encourage free users to upgrade to a paid subscription.
Engender loyalty by understanding user behaviour
To build customer loyalty, you need to understand how your app’s users behave in the app, so that you can segment them and send relevant, targeted communications to each group. An in-app analytics tool, such as MixPanel, Amplitude, CleverTap and Fullstory can provide valuable insight into things like:
- How often users engage with the app
- What features they use and interact with
- What conversion points they have completed, such as registering their details, creating an account or signing up for a free trial of premium features
These data points will help you to craft communications that are designed to drive certain actions. For example, a music streaming app may know that users who listen to more than 20 songs a month are more likely to retain their subscription than those who listen to less than 20 songs. Armed with this information, you can then target users who are close to this threshold with communications via in-app messages, push notifications, text messages and emails, encouraging them to engage further, perhaps by recommending other artists similar to those they currently listen to. Spotify uses artist recommendations to boost user engagement within the app
Personalise messaging based on user behaviour
Armed with insights into how different users behave in the app, you can group them together in different segments, and then create personalised messages for each segment. Here’s what this segmentation could look like for a music learning app:
– Users who have completed registration but not yet signed up for a free trial – your message should encourage them to take up the free trial. For example: “Start your free trial and access exclusive tutorials and exercises” or “Begin your free trial and learn at your own pace.”
– Users who have signed up for a free trial – consider messages that inform users that their free trial is expiring soon and encourage them to subscribe to a premium model. For example: “Continue Your Musical Journey. Upgrade to a premium subscription to unlock unlimited lessons and personalized feedback.”
– Users who have not yet subscribed – the messaging should focus on offers that move them down the path towards taking out a subscription. For example: “Start Your Musical Journey Today. Unlock unlimited lessons and practice tools with a premium subscription.”
– Users who have already subscribed – your messaging should focus on highlighting the app’s features, in order to keep them engaged and more likely to renew their subscription when the time comes. For example: “Explore new challenges and improve your skills with our latest features.”
Remember, though, that this is all dependent on having the data on user behaviour, so make sure you have all your tags set up to track users’ activity in the app so that you know when they first opened the app, how often they use it, and which features they use, so that all this can inform your segmentation and messaging strategy.
Put users in control of messaging frequency and channels
Your app allows you to communicate with your users, but finding the right balance of frequency for your messaging can be tricky. Too many messages can appear spammy and turn people off the app. Too few and you risk them feeling unwanted and forgetting about the app. A great way to get the messaging frequency right is to put users in control by building a Preference Centre within the app where they can choose how often they would like to be contacted, and through which channels. This helps to tailor the experience to the individual user, rather than treating everyone the same.
Congratulate users for their loyalty
People like to be appreciated, and so do your app users. Use push notifications, in-app messages, texts and email to thank people for their loyalty when they hit certain milestones, such as a month/three months/year of using the app. If your app is the type that you want people to use daily, perhaps a fitness or education app, message those users who come back to the app every day to congratulate them and thank them for their loyalty.
You can also enhance engagement by gamifying the experience. For instance, introducing “Streaks” can be a powerful motivator. Celebrate milestones such as 7 days, 30 days, or 100 days with personalized messages or in-app badges. Apps like Headspace, for example, reward users for maintaining a daily meditation practice, while fitness apps like Strava highlight consecutive days of activity to encourage consistency.
Use referrals to attract new users
Many apps overlook the fact that your existing users can be the most successful and cost-effective user acquisition source. Referrals are not just about acquisition – they also foster a sense of loyalty and engagement among your current audience by making them feel like ambassadors for your app.
To implement a successful referral programme, offer your users clear and effective incentives. For instance, you could reward users with discounts on their next subscription payment, free access to premium features for a limited time, or even in-app rewards such as credits or exclusive content when they successfully refer a friend.
Pro Tip
It’s important you make it easy for users to share their referral codes or links directly via email, social media, or messaging apps. Additionally, don’t forget to highlight the program through in-app banners, push notifications, and onboarding messages to ensure that all users are aware of the opportunity. A well-executed referral program will help your users to feel that they are active participants in your app’s growth story.
Mitigating the risk of churn
All apps run the risk of users churning – the point where users stop engaging with the app altogether. For a free app, funded by advertising or in-app purchases, a churned user represents a potential loss of income. For a subscription app, it’s much more serious. The churn translates into an actual loss of revenues, as the user cancels their subscription. This makes mitigating the risk of churn a top priority for subscription apps. Let’s look at some effective strategies that can help you mitigate churn:
Look for churn indicators to focus your efforts
The first step in reducing churn is recognising that it’s going to happen so that you can take preventative action before it does. The warning signs will vary depending on the type of app, but some are consistent across all subscription apps. Here are some of the most common indicators, together with some advice on how to combat them:
Red Flag
The user signs up for a free 7-day trial but cancels immediately to avoid being charged after the end of the trial period.
Solution
Use a paywall design (like the one below) that reminds them how the free trial works, that they won’t be charged until it ends, and that they will be reminded when it is about to end. This will help to build trust and remove any anxiety they may feel about forgetting to cancel. It will also give them time to explore the app more fully before they decide whether to cancel or take out a paid subscription.
Red Flag
A user has not engaged with the app for a predetermined amount of time
Solution
Set this inactive period of time as a trigger to engage with the user to encourage them to come back to the app, either by reminding them of some of the features they are missing out on, or with a discount on their next subscription fee.
Red Flag
The user cancels their subscription.
Solution
Rather than just passively accept the fact the user has churned, build the subscription cancellation confirmation into a messaging flow that offers the user a reduced subscription fee to stay with you for another month. Every user that accepts will generate revenues that would otherwise have been lost, and there is also the possibility that they will retain their subscription in a month’s time.
How to build customer loyalty: Final word
The first stage in making a success of a subscription app is to convince users – most of whom will experience the app as a free service initially – that it’s worth paying for. So think about how you transition your users from free to paid, where in the process you start communicating the benefits of a paid subscription, and how you communicate the benefits in a way that builds trust and removes anxiety.
Once you have them, the key to keeping your subscribed user base engaged, loyal, and most importantly, subscribed, is to understand them as individuals. Understand what they do in the app; how often and by which channels they like to be contacted; and the warning signs that suggest they are about to churn. Once you understand user behaviour, you can segment your users and start talking to each of them more personally and more relevantly, and react when you see those red flags that suggest you’re about to lose them. The more your users feel in control, the more likely it is they’ll stay with you.
