A thriving membership business means constantly acquiring more members, right? Not so fast. While attaining new members is great for your bottom line, the key to sustained and increased revenue lies in keeping your existing members on board. We’ve crunched the numbers. Acquiring a new member can cost four times more than retaining an existing member.
So, how do you keep your members? Payment issues are the leading cause for members jumping ship. Here are four steps to combat failed payments and avoid involuntary churn.
Step 1: Determine Why The Payment Failed
A payment could fail for a myriad of reasons. For example, the account closed, there are insufficient funds, it’s over the limit, the card is expired, invalid, or restricted, etc. Determining the reason is important for how you will handle that specific member moving forward.
Step 2: Payment Rescue Mission
Depending on what we uncovered as the culprit, we then have the intelligence to build a rescue mission to solve the problem. Whether that’s EFT collections or updating card information, we now have the information we need to fix the issue and prevent it from happening in the future.
Step 3: Recover Payment
Now that you have a plan of attack, this is where some people will make the mistake of reaching out to the member, which can trigger cancellation of service. Reduce your risk of losing a member by updating the information without involving them. Even better, implement an automatic account updater to ensure customer data stays up to date to avoid declined payments in the first place. In addition, flexible payment schedules allow you to set the billing cycle around each members lifestyle to ensure the funds are ready & available when it’s time to process the authorized transaction.
Step 4: Increase Average Customer Lifetime = Membership Growth
Preventing a failed payment allows you to increase membership retention by keeping disruptions at bay for you and your member. Another key component of retaining members is by regularly engaging with them at the right time. eCard’s web-based service gives you the tools to stay connected with your subscribers faster and easier with the click of a button via phone, text, or email. Take your pick!
Don’t lose your members due to a payment issue. Increase your revenue by ensuring member card data is up to date and keep your cash flowing.
eCard Transactions specializes in reducing the risk of you losing a customer. Visit ecardtransactions.com to schedule a free demo.
