We work with tons of brands who want to put emphasis on their subscription offerings and improve how they’re converting one-time purchasers to subscribers. But building out a healthy funnel for converting newly-acquired customers to subscribers isn’t always the easiest process.

We get questions as simple as:

“How can I convert more one-time purchasers to subscribers?” 

But we also get super detailed questions like:

“How long does it take for my customers to convert to subscribers?”

“What are the most commonly purchased products that lead to subscriptions?”

Peel answers these questions and so much more with our suite of subscription analyses. It’s a whole set of metrics dedicated to help you understand your subscriber and subscription behavior. These analyses are available through our integrations with subscription platforms - Recharge, Awtomic, Bold, Smartrr, Skio, Rodeo, and Stay.ai. Peel analyzes the one-time, non-subscriber data on Shopify and subscription data from the subscription platform to then measure the behavior between how and when a customer converts from a one-time purchaser to a subscriber. 

Peel also shows your subscription cohorts, so that you get the full picture of how you are retaining subscribers over time, and how much value they are bringing to your business.

With online shoppers more willing than ever to purchase from a wide variety of retailers, the ecommerce space can feel like a battleground for winning customer loyalty. You need to equip yourself with more than just a “subscribe-and-save” banner on your website to convert more customers to subscribers.

Here are the 5 metrics that’ll help you convert more one-time purchasers to subscribers.

1. New One-time Purchase (OTP) Subscribers

This metric shows you the number of new, unique subscribers who originally made a one-time purchase and then converted to subscribers. 

This answers the question: “How many of my new subscribers previously made a one-time purchase in a given time period?”

We always recommend that brands use the segmentation feature when looking at this analysis. Understanding how many of your new subscribers previously made a one-time purchase is useful business intelligence just at face value, but taking those insights to the next level that you can take action upon is the real growth hack. And the good news is that segmenting any of your metrics in Peel takes literally 2 clicks.

You can segment your New One-Time Purchasers Subscribers metric by values that’ll help you drill down into the “why” behind what made those customers convert to subscribers.

For example, if you’re noticing a higher than usual number of New One-Time Purchasers Subscribers for December, you can use the segmentation feature to pinpoint what helped increase those numbers. Possible regional significance? Segment by cities or states. Or was the root of that pattern at the product level? Segment by product types or variations. 

From there, you can lean into more informed and targeted marketing initiatives to repeat and improve on your experiments that are making customers convert to subscribers.

2. Rate of One-time to Subscriber

This analysis shows you the percentage of daily subscribers who previously had a one-time purchase. This helps you answer the question: “Are my customers subscribing right away without making a one-time purchase first, or are my subscribers originally one-time purchasers who then sign up for a subscription?”

This is really all about top of subscription funnel optimization. If you see that most of your customers make a one-time purchase and try out your brand for the first time with a specific product, that can help you push that introductory product on your site or ads and then re-engage those who buy that product since you know they have a good chance of coming back and subscribing based on your data.

3. Subscribers Rate

Subscribers Rate gives you a high level view of your number of subscribers per cohort compared to all customers. 

Cohorts are basically any group of customers with a predefined trait in common. In this case, it’s the month in which you acquired the customers. If you want a crash course on cohorts and Cohort Analysis, here’s the place to learn. 

This metric answers the question: “What percentage of my monthly acquisition groups are subscribers?”

As you zoom into your monthly cohorts and see what proportion are subscribers, you can target those cohorts to convert them based on their unique traits.

What does your December 2022 cohort need to hear from you to convert compared to your July 2022 cohort? What products do those cohorts tend to buy that might help you understand their potential subscription needs? Is the timing of that messaging something to consider? 

For example if you’re a CPG brand, like many of the food & beverage brands we work with, when do certain monthly cohorts need to hear from you? When would they most likely be ready to replenish their one-time purchase and be likely to subscribe? Subscribers Rate clues you in on this and helps you answer these questions.

4. Subscribers Growth Rate

Subscribers Growth Rate shows you your rate of new subscribers for a given time period. This helps you measure the efficacy of your marketing and growth efforts.

This answers the question: “How many new subscribers am I acquiring over a certain period?”

Tracking your Subscribers Growth Rate should be a measuring stick for how well your experiments are working. You can zoom out for a high level view of your growth rate and see monthly or a quarterly overview or zoom in and monitor your growth on a daily or weekly level.

5. Subscription Growth Rate

Instead of monitoring subscribers (individual customers who subscribe), Subscription Growth Rate looks at your rate of new subscriptions over a given period. 

This answers the question: “How many new subscriptions have I acquired over a certain period?”

It’s important to monitor this because you can have subscribers who have multiple subscriptions with your brand. So, your subscriber metrics and subscription metrics may tell you a slightly different story. 

This is especially helpful if you’re trying to convert your subscribers on additional add-on subscriptions and want to measure your success in those efforts. 

Start Analyzing Your Subscribers and Subscriptions

You can start analyzing your subscription business today with Peel. We offer a free 14-day trial where you can connect your Shopify store and your subscription platform (and all your data sources), to get a full view of your business performance. 

Discover how your customers are converting to subscribers, how often you should be engaging those subscribers based on their behavior. With Peel, you’ll get a handle on how subscriptions and subscribers are growing as well as your churn rate and so much more. Head over to the Shopify app store to start a free 7-day trial.