How to Start Offering Holiday Gift Subscriptions

‘Tis the season! Holidays are truly one of the most wonderful times of the year. They are also one of the busiest times as the online shopping frenzy kicks in.

With the holiday season underway, you might be wondering how to make the best of it for your subscription business — and you should.

Gift subscriptions bring new customers into your fold without having to spend extra dollars. These are also new customers you can upsell and cross-sell more of your product offerings to. The opportunities are endless!

Gifting subscriptions is also widely popular among the well-planned as well as the last-minute (ahem, we’ve all been there) shoppers. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Google Trends for the term “gift subscriptions” show. Notice the spike that occurs every year around the holiday season?

The popularity is not surprising. After all, a subscription makes a great gift because it is truly a gift that keeps on giving! Moreover, online shopping saw a record-breaking spike of 45% YoY growth in 2020, with no signs of slowing down. eCommerce subscriptions also reported a growth of 12% despite the downturn in 2020.

So how can you grab this opportunity and boost your growth with subscriptions? Let’s dig in.

Starting a Holiday Subscription: What Do You Need?

Although it may seem like a monumental task to launch a new holiday gift subscription, with the right tech stack and some planning, you can get it done in a matter of a few minutes.

Here are the things you must consider before launching a holiday gift subscription:

A Clean Gifting Workflow

Make holiday gifting a frictionless and memorable experience for the shoppers. Ensure that you don’t make them jump through too many hoops and reduce the number of steps before checkout by providing flexible payment options and validated forms.

You can also simplify the gift recipient’s experience by automating welcome emails, reminders and discount offers.

Personalization

Today we have a wide variety of personalized gifting options such as hobby kits or even a masterclass membership. From packaging to personalized messages, there are so many possibilities for personalized gifting! Customers may want to schedule the delivery on a particular date and add personal messages for special occasions. Your billing engine needs to accommodate these specific use cases smoothly.

Billing Flexibility

Subscriptions are known for their flexibility. Your customers need to have the flexibility to change the billing frequency as per their needs, which can be anything from monthly, quarterly, or annually. Accordingly, your invoicing can also be automated to be in sync with the billing. Customers also need to have the flexibility to decide the date when the gift is delivered, if required. Check out how Chargebee makes it possible within a few clicks:

Discounts and Coupons

I think we can all agree that holiday shopping is incomplete without huge discounts! Why should your holiday subscription be any different? That said, giving too many discounts can eat away your bottom line. You need to measure the effectiveness of the discount campaigns and experiment accordingly. A subscription management platform like Chargebee makes it easy to manage limited/long-term discounts along with invoicing. You can also analyze the usage patterns of customers and offer discounts at the perfect moment to lure them in for renewals.

Manage Orders Efficiently

Stay on top of the post-purchase operations, such as shipment and inventory. Instead of juggling too many tools, your billing management system can be the one source of truth for end-to-end order management from “gifted” to “received” using the power of integrations with fulfillment platforms.

Seamless Checkout with Multiple Payment Options

Checkout is the ultimate moment of truth for online shopping so make your checkout experience as frictionless as possible. Allow one-time shoppers to checkout as guests instantly. We’ve all heard the cart abandonment horror stories. Payment flexibility allows you to offer local currencies and payment options such as digital wallets, cards, and more. For example, Chargebee integrates with Bluesnap to enable online payments for eCommerce, B2B and SaaS companies. Bluesnap specializes in helping companies to increase sales and reduce costs with global payment processing and multiple options for localizing checkout. With flexible payment options like these, you can reduce cart abandonment.

Are You Ready to Launch Your Holiday Subscription?

Gifting subscriptions for the holidays is a growing trend. And with a scalable billing platform like Chargebee and a global payment provider like Bluesnap, you should be able to take this opportunity head-on!

Check out how you can set up a smooth, enjoyable holiday gifting workflow in just a few clicks.

Related Resources:

How to Start Offering Holiday Gift Subscriptions in Just a Few Minutes