As a small business, you know it’s critical to remain in your customers’ minds with regular communications. (But not TOO often, or it becomes a bit like stalking). Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often rely on automated email marketing software to send out customized messages either on a regular schedule or set up with a trigger when a customer does something. (Visit a Web page, for example, or watch a video.) For companies that rely on subscriptions for revenue, it’s helpful to look for an email marketing automation solution that has extra tools that can trigger automated personalized communications to subscribers. This way, they can advance the pace of signups, provide more value to subscribers and help customers pay bills on time.

What is Drip Marketing

“Drip marketing,” or “email nurturing marketing,” as it’s sometimes called, is a highly effective and cost-efficient way to improve sales conversions by educating prospects and customers and making connections to your company’s products and services. The automated nature of it also saves you time, according to Janelle Johnson writing for Business2Community.

“Drip marketing makes it possible to send relevant emails, seal the leaks in your sales pipeline, and free up time for other important tasks,” she wrote. “With drip campaigns, you deliver the right information at exactly the right moment. If a prospect watches a video on your website, the automated campaign triggers an email thanking the prospect for checking out that product or service and follows up with something of value.”

Subscription Businesses & E-mail Marketing

For a subscription-based business, the drip campaign could be set up to coincide with subscriber events: the anniversary of a subscription, for example, for more personalization and customization. Subscription DNA offers drip marketing as an add-on feature and allows users to create a series of sequential emails on a schedule relative to the subscriber. Users can control and configure the emails and the filtered audience, frequency or schedule. It’s an ideal way to retain old members and nurture new leads.

As more companies move to subscription-based business as a new source of revenue, they’ll need to tailor their email marketing to the new model. (See, “Why More Companies Are Moving to Subscription Services.”) By using the same tool to keep track of customers and their subscriptions as well as engaging in email nurture marketing, companies can ensure they’re sending the right messages to the right subscribers at the right time.

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While customer relationship management (CRM) has a reputation as an enterprise sales tool, the idea of building a large, multichannel database of prospect and customer information that can be accessed for multiple functions has a place in nearly every business, and subscription management is no exception.

Subscription management has never been more relevant. We’re seeing a major shift from a pay-per-product model to a subscription-based economy. Younger consumers prefer more product ownership flexibility, whether it’s renting designer clothing for an evening out or paying month-to-month for an “all you can watch” movie pass. While the model represents potential new revenue sources, it also requires a shift in customer support. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) membership management platforms help companies manage subscription-based customers without the IT headaches.

“The subscription economy has increased the intimacy between SaaS companies (or software vendors) and their customers,” wrote Kimberly A. Whitler for Forbes. “In the subscription economy, every company must better manage a direct, complex, responsive, multichannel relationship with its customers.”

Through the Customer Lifecycle and Across Channels

Companies attempting to “DIY” subscription management are likely missing the mark on multichannel service (meaning customers can interact with companies via phone, email, or any other channel). Customers have low tolerance for 20^th century customer support problems, including having to repeat their issues to multiple support personnel.

Membership management solutions allow companies to manage and support member-customers through their entire lifecycle with an easy-to-manage flexible Web services API that can be enhanced with tools and connected with other relevant functions. Changes to a customer’s account made by an employee on a chat will immediately be visible to phone-based employees, for example.

Flexibility Means Usability

Users can build a secure framework for interacting with subscribers easily and from multiple perspectives (for billing, marketing, selling and e-commerce solutions). The database can be stratified in different ways, allowing users to drill down to a custom-filtered group result set or individual records (by product, for example, or geographic region). They can also generate filtered reporting results and export result data sets to common formats that help them understand how they’re performing.

Build Process Management into Your Subscriptions

Like with CRM, companies employing Subscription DNA can keep notes and set reminders for groups or specific users, then use these notes to stay organized. “Future action identifiers” can be set to automatically prompt action on the part of company employees or groups, with prompts broadcast to internal users or outside customers in the subscription database.

They’re Customers, Not Debit Cards

The goal of a subscription model is to retain customers and create brand loyalty, not just ensure that a card is billed once a month. This is where many organizations fail on customer service. Don’t think of the subscription approach as a revenue model alone. For the convenience of a subscription, customers expect more: faster service, friendlier live support and proactive account servicing.

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In the past, billing software has been a purchase that was out of reach for most non-profit organizations. It was expensive, it was difficult to implement, and it often caused more troubles than it solved. For this reason, many non-profits have struggled with inefficient home-grown solutions cobbled together years ago out of spreadsheets.

Thankfully, the software-as-a-service model is changing the way non-profits do business. Today, there are affordable, customizable billing and donor management solutions that can be implemented (almost) as easily as downloading an app. An automated, recurrent billing solution can cut down on time spent on administrative tasks and allow non-profits to dedicate more time to their mission.

Manage Your Donors

For non-profits, finding donations takes nearly as much time as their core work. The Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance recommends that nonprofits put at least 65 percent of their total cash intake to their programs and no more than 35 percent to administrative tasks and fundraising. To achieve this, most non-profits need to spend less time managing their donors. The answer is more automation.

Membership management solutions, including billing software, allows non-profits to streamline and even automate tasks associated with fundraising. The result is easier donor management, and less chance that you’ll miss opportunities because you got off-track on your fundraising duties.

Customizable Billing

Donors choose to give in different ways. Some want to make one-time or sporadic donations. Others prefer to be billed weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, or annually. Keeping track of these cycles manually is a recipe for error.

A customizable billing solution can be set to automatically charge donors at the frequency they choose. If the card is rejected or the bank or PayPal account contains insufficient funds, the solution can attempt to charge again at a set time (one week later, for example), or even send out dunning notices automatically.

Add a Shopping Cart

Some donors may arrive on your website in a giving mood. Are you allowing them to make a spontaneous gift easily right on your Web site? Subscription DNA can help you build a shopping cart on your site and allow donors to speed through the process with the built-in virtual terminal for one-time payments.

Keep It Secure

Nothing scares off donors more than news of financial mismanagement. A software platform can enforce permissions by restricting users to the functionality and accounts they need: this not only reduces the chances of user errors, it builds in security and accountability for funds. PCI Compliance ensures that customer financial information will remain secure.

Running a non-profit is perhaps more challenging than running a for-profit business. Tasks associated with staffing, messaging, and simply finding the money you need to accomplish your mission can get in the way of your core function. A good billing software solution can shrink those headaches down to manageable size.

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