It’s not breaking news to say OTT streamers that apply the Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) model face a constant struggle addressing rising churn rates. What may be surprising is how much impact the ability to turn that around can have on the long-term growth of those businesses. Customer acquisition is important for any business, but in the streaming world especially holding onto the ones you’ve acquired can speak volumes about an organization’s viability for health and prosperity. In a nutshell, customer retention is a derivative of the customer happiness index. Are they enjoying the experience? Is it speaking to their wants and needs? The ability to deliver this experience and retain existing subscribers can be notably improved with strategies and tools that manage churn effectively.
Let’s have some fun with math and your basic conditional statements. If client retention rates go up, then customer trust improves as does subscription revenue. With innovation in user lifecycle management, the subscription model is evolving rapidly. Given these equations, it’s no wonder leaders in the OTT market today view every customer touchpoint as a revenue opportunity.
Companies invest significant time and effort to acquire customers only to lose out on the full revenue potential of those earned patrons if they leave or churn earlier than desired. Subscription businesses with solid client trust grow faster as expressed by industry experts. Customer loyalty is a business’ hidden powerhouse that has the ability to counter the revenue headwinds caused by churn. Hence, customer retention is what differentiates top performers from the competition.
According to a survey conducted by McKinsey, OTT players can improve customer retention by as much as 85% by investing time and effort in retention plans with a well-laid-out strategy. Retention strategies offered by the Evergent Monetization Platform (EMP) are designed to suit any specific needs and growth objectives.
The following are some key areas of change you can consider in order to achieve the much sought-after high subscriber retention rate.
Low-Touch Onboarding
Low-touch experiences are here to stay. Most potential subscribers want the freedom and independence to self-serve to set up their own online environments. A new registrant is more than willing to utilize a customer support portal for bottlenecks encountered during the setup experience but wants to seek ownership of that experience. Subscription businesses should employ this low-touch strategy right from customer onboarding to truly enhance that first customer touchpoint.
Since patrons in these instances set up environments themselves, low-touch onboarding experiences prove to be perfect personalization opportunities. This initial engagement serves as the foundation to build a loyal customer community while also driving revenue growth.
Your Acceptable Churn Rate
SaaS businesses should become aware of what would be considered good churn rate numbers. What is that as you may ask? According to HubSpot, an acceptable churn rate can be anywhere between 2% and 8%. As much as a single point above this range can impact the business’ monthly recurring revenue or MRR. Upgrading to a platform with the capability to predict and mitigate churn - down to that acceptable level - should be a priority not only to achieve higher retention rates, but to improve customer loyalty, and build a credible customer brand.
Differentiated Promotional Offers
Reeling back in those at-risk customers to your revenue cycle is a critical component toward mitigating churn before your revenue takes a hit. Today’s subscription market players need a hyperautomated intelligent subscription management tool that can predict churnable customer cohorts and design personalized promotional campaigns that counter those tendencies and also leave a lasting impression. EMP’s offer management module offers just such a set of features for this type of catered customization.
EMP opens up the ability to dynamically enhance product catalogs to suit client-specific needs and design promotional campaigns driving higher retention rates. With Evergent’s pioneering platform, customers will never slip through the gaps again.
Evergent simplifies customer retention for SVOD streamers with an all-in-one-place single sign-on (SSO) platform. EMP delivers the convenience to access subscriber data at your fingertips, observe customer trends and devise the mechanisms that can positively change your brand perception.
To learn more about how EMP’s churn management functionality complements your growth objectives, book a call with our team of experts.
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