Using customer data to tackle subscription fatigue

During the pandemic there was a boom in meal box subscriptions, however an increasingly competitive market, the cost-of-living crisis and a squeeze on food prices has left consumers evaluating their choices on subscriptions, with meal boxes feeling the pinch. Understanding and addressing customer preferences, behaviours and financial situations is crucial for tackling meal box subscription fatigue, retaining existing customers and attracting new ones. To gain a competitive advantage and drive more income, subscription box companies must utilise their CRM platforms and first-party data (FPD) to craft personalised and tailored subscriptions that align to specific customer needs.

How to harness CRM and FPD to understand customer behaviours and create audience pools

CRM systems serve as a foundational tool for managing customer relationships and tracking interactions with a brand. By segmenting customers using domain knowledge coupled with data science and machine learning, brands can understand distinct customer groups. These groups may be based on data such as purchasing habits, frequency of orders or preferred meal types. They may also include customers with preferences around premium organic ingredients, others around affordability and convenience of meal boxes.

FPD provides valuable insights on customer interactions. By harnessing FPD, brands can understand which meals the most popular, what time of day customers typically buy and which promotions trigger higher conversions. Financial data on customers can even allow brands to craft subscription tiers that play into customer behaviours around spending.

By combining CRM and FPD, brands gain visibility on customer preferences and behaviours, enabling them to create highly targeted messaging and subscriptions that fit customer situations and preferences. For meal box subscriptions, this could look like:

Offering premium organic options for high-spending customers
Budget friendly convenient options for customers that are cost conscious and value convenience
Incentives such as discounts or meal plan customisations for customers that show signs of churn
Based on customer’s past purchases, companies can promote complementary products they believe a segment of customer will like

This data can also be used to segment customers & audiences into distinct audience pools to effectively execute retention and growth strategies. These pools can then be activated to tackle the subscription fatigue head-on with improved engagement and tailored marketing. These customer pools may include:

New subscribers: Engage new customers with educational content about meal planning, promotions for first time buyers or loyalty awards for continued engagement
Loyal customers: Reward frequent buyers with exclusive offers, loyalty discounts or premium subscription upgrades
Churn-risk customers: Identify customers who have paused or cancelled subscriptions and target them with win-back campaigns

Measuring success by tracking KPIs such as customer lifetime value and churn rate, enables companies to see how tailored adjustments to retention and growth strategies have helped. It also enables strategies and messaging to be continually refined and adjusted to have optimal effect.

How MI Media’s data offering can help

MI Media’s Management Intelligence system, MIDAS, gathers and centralises data from a multitude of different sources; including marketing, CRM, competitors, website – the list goes on. As a media agency, we have access to media data, CRM data provided by clients, competitor data through tools such as Ad Intel and website traffic through GA4.

After combining and centralising data, MIDAS harnesses it with both reporting and measurement techniques. One measurement tool, Audience Segmentation, uses machine learning to provide audience segment insight. This process can be semi-automated as new audience data is supplied and ingested.

Going further and coupling techniques such as econometrics with audience segmentation enables MIDAS to provide valuable insight on how specific marketing drives audience KPIs. This may include answering:

Has a specific TV campaign driven new subscribers to buy more?
How has investment into the new media mix driven improved spending into meal box subscriptions?
Has specific tailored marketing and promotions helped prevent churn amongst customers at high risk?

By tracking KPIs using MIDAS reporting services in professional dashboards, companies can understand whether their strategies have had the desired impact. This enables them to adjust and tailor their campaigns proactively.

Meal box subscription brands can develop more tailored and responsive subscriptions that suit customer preferences and behaviour by harnessing their CRM and FPD. Targeted retention and growth are paramount to the success of a business and can be elevated through insights from CRM and FPD. It’s been proven to not only help improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, but also drive sustainable business growth through personalised marketing and promotions. Brands that gain this insight and apply effective tailored marketing and services to customers, will undoubtedly tackle subscription fatigue and ultimately, increase their income.

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