The main goal of any subscription business is to get as many people paying for a monthly plan for years on end. Bonus points if those people get hooked in young — they’ll have won a lifetime customer.
But enticing those people to sign up? That’s a really hard problem that marketers have spent years trying to solve. They’ve used everything from billboards to podcast ads to influencer marketing to convince consumers to make that first purchase.
Now, there’s a new way to capture prospects’ attention: card-linked offers. And it’s a lot more flexible, precise, and measurable than the strategies of years past.
Keep reading to learn how leading marketers at retail, health and wellness, streaming, and wireless subscription businesses are skyrocketing their growth and maximizing LTV with card-linked offers — with input from our account executive and account management teams.
4 benefits of CLO unique to subscription brands
CLO has benefits for virtually any kind of business. But it works especially well for subscription brands. That’s because CLO campaigns are:
1. Highly flexible
On the surface, card-linked offers seem simple, but there are other nuances that can drive specific results or consumer behavior. For example, you may choose a percentage or flat cashback amount. You may make an offer redeemable one time or many times. You could set minimum and maximum transaction amounts to target specific purchase values.
You might want to A/B test two different campaigns at the same time or optimize for seasonal purchases by setting specific start and end dates. Kard’s transactional data can help you target customers who haven't purchased from the merchant in the last 3 months and give greater incentives to customers who haven't purchased in 12+ months.
“Framing matters, too,” Alyssa Black, Senior Merchant Account Manager at Kard, says. “Many subscription brands like to boost market share, so they only reward customers who are moving away from a competitor.”
Rewards platforms like Kard also make it easy to make campaign adjustments on the fly that maximize a brand’s ROAS.
2. Easy to segment
With a rewards platform like Kard, you can leverage past purchase behavior to target very specific segments of your ideal customer base.
Alyssa notes:
“Nine out of ten subscription brands are most interested in bringing on new customers. Kard’s backend not only allows merchants to exclude anyone who is currently a customer or has been a customer in the past, it also allows them to exclude folks who are purchasing from another brand under their company’s umbrella, avoiding cannibalization.”
Taylor McClendon, Senior Account Manager at Kard, also points out:
“Because transaction data is first-party, subscription brands using CLO know for sure they’re rewarding new subscribers — not wasting their budget on already loyal customers or cancelers.”
3. Relevant across the funnel
While gaining tons and tons of new customers is almost always a subscription brand’s goal, it’s not their only opportunity to give their overall revenue a boost.
Taylor explains:
“Subscription brands should also care about re-engaging past customers. If designed right, a card-linked discount can not only pull them back in but nudge them toward a higher tier plan.”
One of the brands under Taylor’s purview, a well-known cloud storage company, used Kard rewards to incentivize active customers who’d been paying for the lowest tier plan for several months to move to a more expensive annual subscription.
An enterprise streaming service that Mark Benoit, Merchant Sales Director at Kard, brought in continued with Kard post-POC because the big boost they saw in AOV by pushing consumers toward a bundled plan was too good to pass up.
4. Quantifiable
Unlike some other marketing strategies, card-linked offers have a directly measurable cost per action (CPA). You know exactly when someone transacted and what reward incentivized them to act, critically important information for subscription companies that have dedicated a large portion of their ad budget to acquiring new customers.
Mark shares:
“I start my sales calls with the fact that Kard has a guaranteed CPA, and we tend to meet or beat aggressive CPA goals. For other types of businesses, this consistency may not matter as much, but it definitely does for subscription.”
The returns are palpable.
In a recent Kard campaign, a leading wireless carrier hit $1.3M in total sales while meeting aggressive CPA goals. Another Kard campaign for a cloud-based storage provider delivered over $100,000 in subscription revenue at $4.7:1 return on ad spend. And a national meal kit delivery service saw a whopping 81% increase in revenue in just two quarters with Kard CLO.
Kard’s unique benefit: our audience
As we alluded to at the beginning, the name of the game in subscription is getting added to a young professional’s budget. The best way to do that? Get in front of young professionals.
Kard’s issuer partners, like Varo and BMTX, all cater specifically to Gen Z and Millennial audiences.
“These folks are digitally savvy and have a strong need for streaming plans, fashion rentals, mobile plans, transportation passes, meal delivery memberships — virtually every kind of subscription,” Mark says.
With the right discount, reeling in new, high-LTV customers is a breeze. And Kard has the back-end analytics and experienced account management team to help you design offers they can’t refuse.
Want to get your next campaign moving? Get in touch with our team to learn more about how Kard can give your subscription brand a leg up.
