Subscription-based monetization approach is still on the rise in popularity in the app business. While new users are getting expensive to acquire, fully leveraging your current user base and generating higher unit user value would be a more sustainable approach to drive subscription app growth. So, today we want to highlight the importance of CRM in growing subscription revenue.
In this article, we will talk about what CRM is and how to grow in–app subscriptions revenue with CRM.
What is CRM for Subscription Apps？
CRM can really mean a lot for subscription apps. Since subscription-based business requires users to pay periodically, maintaining a good relationship with subscribers is a must for sustainable recurring revenue.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a process or a technology for managing the company’s relationships and interactions with past, present and potential customers.
It often involves collecting customer information from multiple channels, gathering the data on one dashboard, analyzing them and sending targeted information to engage and stay connected with customers.
The main goals of CRM are to stay engaging with the customers, prolong their lifetime value and increase revenue.
As for subscription apps, the big goal is to keep users renewing. In the journey towards achieving this goal, using the right CRM tool can do more with less.
A CRM tool starts tracking users’ journey in your subscription apps when they install your apps and open them.
The CRM system will then empower you to understand subscribers from users' basic profiles to their in-app events and create personalized messages to connect with them.
Now that we have a basic concept about CRM for subscription apps, let’s see how it can help grow your subscription apps.
How CRM Drives Your Subscription Apps Monetization
Get a Unified View of Your User Base
First of all, a CRM tool enables you to see and manage all the app subscribers on one dashboard despite that they may come from different marketing channels.
From the aspect of team collaboration, CRM also offers the team full customer context, allowing them to understand the users well and give timely support, which in a way, can boost user satisfaction.
Dive Deep Into the Single Subscriber Journey
A CRM enables you to understand your subscribers better, both at the individual and cohort levels.
A CRM tool can usually organize user data at the individual level. It creates users’ profiles, manages users’ subscription status and tracks their in-app events.
With each app user profile, you can have a clear idea of who they are, where they come from, what they want, and other important information. By analyzing the in-app events of single subscribers, you can know when they sign up, whether they start free subscription trials, whether they finish the expected actions and when they churn, etc.
By understanding the relationship between the user and your app business, you can decide on the next move with him/her.
You can also understand app subscribers at a cohort level and find out which types of users tend to subscribe to your app services and which is not. This allows you to seek similar prospects and target the right kind of users, which will grow the user base and improve subscription conversion rates.
For example, when you analyze subscribers, you may find a similar user pattern exists: users from certain marketing channels launch the app once and never open the app again, then you may need to re-assess this channel, because you may be targeting the wrong audience.
Personalize User Experience
Once you have a better understanding of your subscribers, it is easy to tailor the personalized user experience for them, making them feel supported, warm and welcomed. A customer relationship management systems help you gather the right information for crafting messages that are most likely to make sense for your subscribers.
For example, when they failed to pay for the subscriptions, you may consider sending them an urgent reminder about that and asking them to pay as soon as possible. Or you may want to send a birthday wish to them on their birthday.
When subscribers feel a sense of belonging and importance, they tend to stick with your services without considering an alternative. Therefore, your retention rate will be improved and subscribers’ lifetime value will be prolonged.
Automate Monetization Test
A CRM tool usually provides automatic monetization test tools, like push notifications and in-app messages in terms of subscription apps, for you to create automatic campaigns to target the right app subscribers. The CRM platform also helps segment users into different groups, so you can select a specific group of subscribers in a certain marketing campaign on the same dashboard.
This frees you from repetitive tasks while sending the right messages to the subscribers at the right time. On the one hand, you don’t have to worry that you may omit some important moments when you need to follow up with your subscribers. On the other hand, subscribers can receive prompt messages so they will feel supported and valued in a timely manner.
How CRM in Appflow.ai Works?
Appflow.ai is a mobile app subscription management and analytics platform that offers a CRM tool for comprehensive user overview.
The CRM tool allows you to get an overview of your user base, access user lists and individual subscriber profiles, monitor their in-app activities, manage feature access, and segment users into different groups for further granular analysis.
Additionally, you can easily customize no-code push notifications targeting specific groups of subscribers directly from the same dashboard, without app release.
User Base Overview
Appflow.ai collects and counts the number of your users by different filters, such as OS, countries, timezone, language, and acquisition channels, and visualizes the data into charts.
This enables you to get a clear overview of your user base: what OS most users are using; which country most of your app users come from; what languages they speak and which acquisition channel brings you the most amount of users.
These data can offer great insights into which group of users needs support priority, which marketing channels to invest more, where your growing opportunity lies, and more.
appflow.ai-user-base-overview(source: appflow.ai)
Access App User Lists
With Appflow.ai, you can access a unified dashboard that provides a comprehensive overview of all your users.
appflow.ai-user-lists(source: appflow.ai)
By filtering users based on elements such as segments, user lists, status, platforms, app, SKU, country, language, and acquisition channel, you can easily view a list of users with similar characteristics.
For example, if you want to find out how many users Apple Search Ads brings in, you can filter the users by choosing acquisition channel>Apple Search Ads, and then you can get the number of the users as well as a list of users who come from Apple Search Ads.
Pro tip: you can also make good use of the funnel analysis to track the post-install events of users from Apple Search Ads.
Understand You Users at an Individual Level
Appflow.ai makes a user profile page for each user so you will be able to know more details about your subscribers. Information includes:
- Subscribers’ status and total revenue: at the left top of the user profile, you can see the current status of the users (new, not active, trial, subscribed, refund, cancel, renewal-off); and also the accumulated revenue from that specific user.
- Subscription details: Take a look at the subscription history of users, which includes information about the SKU to which the user subscribed or is currently subscribing, the expiration date of the subscription, and its renewal status(on or off).
- Subscribers’ basic info: On the profile page, you can find the basic information about each user, such as their name, user ID, app, age, country, and more, located at the bottom left corner.
Appflow.ai-user-profile
- Manage feature access: With Appflow.ai's entitlement feature, you have the ability to grant subscribers access to specific features. This feature comes in handy when you want to upsell a user by allowing them to try out a higher-level feature in your subscription plan. The best part is that you don't need developers to grant access to those users.
To grant a specific user access to certain features, simply go to the user page and click on the┇ icon located next to the user's name. Then, select “Grant promotional access” and specify the access you want to grant to that user. Once you have granted access, the user will be able to use the feature immediately.
Appflow.ai-use-entitlement-to-grant-user-premium-access
- In-app events: Appflow.ai tracks the purchase events of individual users for you by default. If you want to track unique events & KPIs, you can send the custom events to the platform. Appflow.ai will start tracking once the events are activated and show you all the event lists in the event history chronologically at the right side of the user page.
Create Segments for Cohort Analysis and Monetization Experiments
On the “User Segment” interface, you can easily create a segment by choosing different attributes you want to group your users, such as acquisition channels, languages, countries, time zones, etc. And it will include users who meet the segment conditions automatically.
appflow.ai-create-user-segment
After creating segments, they can be utilized as a filter in cohort analysis and monetization experiments.
- Use segments in cohort analysis: by using the Segment feature, you can group users who share similar characteristics. These segments can subsequently be utilized as filters in cohort analysis, allowing you to compare various behaviors across different segments, which are also referred to as cohorts.
Appflow.ai-use-segment-in-cohort-analysis
- Use segments as targeted users in push notifications: to send push notifications to specific users, you can create a segment for those users and use that segment as the target audience in a push notification campaign. Only users within that segment will receive the messages.
Use Appflow.ai’s No-code Tools to Increase Monetization
Apart from offering a wonderful CRM, appflow.ai also empowers you with no-code push notifications and in-app messages so that you don’t have to rely on your developers to send the messages.
Simply select the desired app for your push or in-app message campaign, set the trigger condition, and generate messages - all on one page. Once the campaign is published, it will be automatically activated, and your app users will begin receiving notifications or in-app messages.
Appflow.ai-send-no-code-push-notifications
Conclusion
With a CRM, you can track and follow users’ interaction journeys with your app. Knowing your users better can enhance users' experiences by refining each subscriber touchpoint. If subscribers are satisfied with their experiences in your app and services, they will be more likely to stay for a longer time. Therefore, you can improve retention, increase revenue and finally grow your subscription apps.
How CRM Drives Your Subscription Apps Monetization?
