Also referred to as automatic delivery, a recurring delivery is what every online business enterprise needs to survive or even grow to the next level. A large volume of recurring deliveries or orders for your online store means that your business has successfully created a pool of loyal customers who will keep making purchases.
Besides higher sales, a recurring delivery also means lower costs and time spent on acquiring new customers and growing business revenues. What is a recurring delivery and how does it work? Let’s explore in the following sections.
What is a Recurring Delivery?
A recurring delivery or recurring order is a facility offered by online stores where customers can place future orders, which are executed at fixed intervals—for example, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. A recurring delivery for a product can be configured with the following essential parameters:
- The start and end date
- Order frequency and unit
Examples of recurring orders or deliveries include an online subscription, gym membership, or magazine subscription. Next, let’s discuss why a recurring delivery is needed.
Why is Recurring Delivery Needed?
Recurring deliveries are increasingly becoming popular with online eCommerce stores or companies offering subscription-based services to their customers. Automatic deliveries help in increasing the brand’s customer base and to generate more money from existing customers.
On the other end, online users can save time and effort by signing up for pre-scheduled purchases and deliveries. In some cases, consumers can also save money when sellers offer special discounts for only recurring orders. Business enterprises can also offer rewarding offers by enabling customers to choose the frequency of deliveries and product quantities.
What’s more? Though it may sound complicated, it is easy to set up a recurring delivery system for any business. Next, let us see how recurring deliveries work.
Where Can I Set up a Recurring Delivery?
As mentioned before, a recurring order can be created with the essential properties of the start/end date, order frequency, and quantity (or units). With these properties, a base order can be created as the template for a future order.
How is a base order different from any normal order? A scheduled task is created automatically for every first base order. This is typically executed every five minutes and generates orders. From any eCommerce portal, you can view the list of base orders under the Recurring Orders section.
The recurring delivery creates a new delivery instance every time that it is executed. For instance, if the frequency of the recurring order is weekly, then a total of 52 delivery instances are created in a year. Each delivery instance can be identified by the tracking log.
Do you know how to cancel a recurring delivery? To cancel a recurring delivery, you need to stop the running eCommerce campaign or the workflow executing it.
Now that you know how a recurring delivery works, let’s next discuss the business benefits of recurring orders.
Benefits of Recurring Deliveries
A recurring delivery means multiple benefits for both businesses and consumers. Here are a few of them:
- Improves brand loyalty
For every recurring delivery, you are generating more customer loyalty for your brand. A loyal customer base means more consistent orders as well as the best form of brand trust and advertising.
- Cost and time efficiency
Recurring orders can save both time and money for business enterprises as it is much easier to service existing customers. While acquiring new customers is expensive, recurring orders are cost-effective to fulfill and can generate consistent revenues.
- Faster payment settlements
Along with recurring orders, recurring payments can be configured based on the customer’s preference. This means businesses no longer have to remind customers of pending payments, as they can be automatically charged using a recurring payment system.
- Customer convenience
Recurring orders are convenient for customers as they do not have to keep placing orders for the same product or service repeatedly. Recurring deliveries can also save your customers’ valuable time by automatically delivering the product where and when they need it.
- Accurate sales forecasting
With recurring orders, companies can improve their sales forecasts for a given month or quarter. Further, they can also plan their product inventory and shipments in an organized manner, without any delays or cost escalation.
- Revenue generation
eCommerce or subscription services have to work hard to win their customer’s trust. Once you have gained their trust, recurring orders and deliveries ensure that businesses can increase their revenues. Higher customer lifetime value or CLV means that you can gain more leverage from each customer.
While there are multiple benefits to a recurring order program, it’s equally important to design it properly for proper functioning. Let’s see how next.
How to Implement the Right Recurring Delivery Strategy?
To maximize benefits, here’s what business enterprises must consider when working on the right strategy for recurring deliveries:
- First, educate your customers about how recurring orders can benefit them. This helps in building trust among customers as they feel confident about how your brand works.
- Encourage your existing customers to sign-up for recurring orders by offering exclusive discounts on their first order or subscription plan.
- Keep the customer sign-up process simple and easy to follow. Do not add too many extra steps in the sign-up process that will cause them to exit the process.
- Improve the credibility of your recurring order program by showing testimonials of satisfied users. Customer testimonials are an effective mode of winning customer trust.
- Communicate regularly with registered or subscribed customers informing them about new offers, benefits, and cost savings.
Conclusion
Recurring orders or deliveries are a great way for online stores and subscription-based services to engage with their existing customers and improve their sales and revenues. Every online business requires recurring orders to survive or even grow in the face of competition. Besides improving your revenues, recurring deliveries are convenient for customers, who need to buy the same product or service repeatedly.
As a WordPress development company, Flipper Code has helped its eCommerce clients to develop a wide range of business solutions to grow their online business. We can help you in setting up recurring orders for your business growth. Simply request a quote today.
