Gift Subscriptions—The Powerful Business Growth Approach

I love watching ‘Bridgerton’ on Netflix. I love it more when I binge it along with my friend ‘Sasha’. But, she is in Houston and I’m in LA. Can we not? Of course, we can. I can purchase a Netflix gift subscription for ‘Sasha’ and we can together binge-watch all our favourite series and seasons.

This is how the gift subscriptions allow customers to exchange subscription of physical as well as digital products as gifts.

A gift subscription is also a great strategy for the subscription merchants to onboard more customers and converts more leads into paying deals.

Also Read: Subscription Management Mastery—How to Get Started with SubscriptionFlow in 2021

In this article, we will overview how does the gift subscription work and what are its different types. We will also walk our readers through the gift subscriptions assistance within the SubscriptionFlow.

First things First,

Let’s begin with understanding the gift subscription.

What is Gift Subscription?

Gift subscriptions are the subscriptions offered by the merchant to the lead or a loyal customer. It can also be purchased by the customers themselves to gift it to their contacts. The contacts are the recipients of the gift subscriptions.

They can continue to use the subscription services or products until the term of the subscription ends. Later, the customer can renew the subscription or the contact can also re-subscribe or upgrade the subscription plan to use with more features or with more access.

Also Read: Subscription Box Business 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Start A Valued Subscription Box Service—From Prospects & Marketing to Subscription Box Billing & Management

You have done your part.
Let SubscriptionFlow take it from here!

Let us help your business grow with our powerful
subscription management software.

How do Gift Subscriptions Work?

Gift subscriptions require three persons to get connected with each other over the subscription management platform.

The Subscription Merchant
The Subscriber
The Gift Subscription Recipient

The subscription merchant is the subscription management application client who is also the first loop of connectivity and subscribes to the subscription billing and payments software and offers their customers subscription plans.

The subscriber is the customer who subscribes to one of the subscription plans offered by the merchant and become a source of recurring revenue.

And, the gift subscription recipient could be the customer or lead himself who has been given extra access to the product or service by the merchant as the gift subscription. Or, it could be the contact of the customer to whom the customer purchases the subscription from the merchant. This contact could be a friend, a family member, a sibling, spouse, parents, co-worker, employee, or anyone.

Also Read: Subscription Box Business 102: Curate Your Subscription Box—Types, Niches, & Procurement Ideas

Why Gift Subscriptions are the Great Strategy to Grow Subscriptions?

Allowing customers to purchase the subscriptions for their contacts allows the subscription merchants and SaaS vendors to keep their customers connected and continue paying for a longer-term and as a source of more than one streams of the recurring revenue.

Gift subscriptions also favour the onboarding of more customers by attracting them with the gift services they are using. They can be approached to buy these subscriptions, later, or upgrade the plans. Gift subscriptions lower the sales and marketing costs and efforts. A gift subscription is a great approach to grow subscriptions and subscription business due to these reasons:

To acquire more customers
To retain customers
To attract more revenue
To extend the range of plans and products
To attract word-of-the-mouth and referral marketing
To cater to the customers from a range of strata
To keep the customer acquisition cost low and manageable
To create high-quality lists of leads
To keep the market intact against the competitive pressure
To avoid the negative impacts of the competition

Different Types of Gift Subscriptions

Gift subscriptions can be made available in several forms:

Gift Cards

Gift cards could be special coupons or vouchers that you can give to your customers or they can purchase from you to gift it as a subscription to their contacts. Every business with any billing model can extend its customer base with gift cards, but it is a great deal for subscription businesses. They offer flexibility to the gift recipient and is a great deal for the digital services providers who offer the gift cards and appeal to the recipients to upgrade their gift subscriptions to the regular plans.

Gift Plans

Gift plans are no different than the regular subscription plans, except these can be ordered as gift subscriptions to other recipients who could be another source of recurring revenue besides customers. A gift subscription can be managed from the customer’s self-service spaces whereas the merchant is responsible for the delivery of the gift subscription.

Also Read: Subscription Box Business 103-Market your Subscription Box, Attract the Sales And Grow the Subscriber Base

Ideas for Gift Subscriptions

No matter what and how different sort of subscription-based product or services do you offer, you can always offer gift subscriptions to your end-customer as well as can allow them to gift these subscriptions to their friends, family, relatives, co-workers, and other contacts so they can enjoy, learn from, or admire.

Some of the most popular gift subscriptions ideas include;

Magazine subscriptions
Newspaper subscriptions
Digital media platforms subscriptions
Assorted Subscription boxes for an old and new wardrobe, accessories, books, coffee, beverages, stationery, art and crafts,
Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Spotify, and other streaming services or OTT platforms subscriptions
Business process management platform subscriptions
Social media applications subscriptions
Online audio, video, or research library subscriptions
E-readers subscriptions
Gym subscriptions
Spa subscriptions
Dental Subscriptions
Personal grooming subscriptions
Pet grooming subscriptions
Pet medical subscriptions
Help subscriptions
Health Subscriptions
Car Subscriptions
Recreational Subscriptions

And more.

Also Read: Subscription Box Business 104—From Picking, Packing, and Kitting to Shipping, Manage Seamless Fulfilment

How to Gift the Subscriptions?

If you are a SaaS vendor and offer digital assets like video or music streaming services, gaming, marketing automation or management service, or a digital media publisher, you can offer gift subscription plans for your digital product. Likewise, another popular gift subscription stream is gift subscriptions for magazines, newspapers, research journals, dedicated subject podcasts, channels, or OTT platforms. You can also gift a gym or saloon subscriptions to your spouse or parents or kids.

Similarly, one of the latest trends of gift subscriptions is the assorted subscription boxes. From old and new clothing to everyday essentials to food and beverages—subscription boxes are available for everyone and in every niche. Subscription box businesses can offer their subscriptions not only to their end-customers, they can also facilitate them to offer these subscriptions as gifts to their extended contacts.

In short, subscriptions boxes, magazine or newspaper subscriptions, digital asset subscriptions, or personal or health care subscriptions—all can be gifted.

To allow customers to gift these subscriptions to their contacts, all a subscription merchant need is a subscription of the subscription management software that can not only automates the recurring billing management for their customers as well as offers a one-size-fits-all subscription management platform. A place where not only the clients but their end-customers can also manage their own subscriptions and are able to order and manage the gift subscriptions for their contacts as well.

SubscriptionFlow is your ultimate subscription management platform where it is easier, simpler, and faster for the clients to automate the invoicing billing, payment processing, communications, recurring revenue monitoring, tracking, and management, and all the subscription business with dozens of integrations.

Also Read: Subscription Box Business 105—Follow These Actions To Scale and Thrive On Thin Margins In the Subscription Box Industry

Gift Subscriptions in SubscriptionFlow

SubscriptionFlow allows clients to offer their customers the services of the gift subscriptions so they can continue to share it with their friends, family, co-workers, employees, or anyone. The recipients are required to be added as ‘contacts’. Different cycles of the subscriptions can be created in SubscriptionFlow.

Gift subscriptions is a three-step process in SubscriptionFlow: