Businesses often overlook billing and payment strategies as routes for incentivising growth, yet if these areas are used correctly, both a reduction in customer churn and boost in the growth of your customer base can be seen. For many subscription companies payments are becoming a greater focus, yet for some businesses the true power of payments and billing still goes unnoticed. When it comes to billing, human error can often occur (happens to the best of us), and as you aim to expand your business it becomes increasingly necessary to look at embracing automated billing. Headaches over billing are just another unnecessary stress for your growing business, which is where billing automation really comes in.
Read on to find out how your billing and payment strategies can be utilized to increase the growth of your company:
Why Should I Move to Automated Billing?
Automated billing not only reduces the risk of human error, but also gives your business extra time to focus on other areas. With an automated billing process in place, you can stay on top of payments, manage collections, overview your cash flow and much more. So, how does automated billing lead to growth?
Hassle-Free Expansion of Pricing Options
In the modern world, pricing options hugely vary in order to allow customers the most pricing flexibility possible. With the rise in subscription offerings, this has only increased. Subscriptions can now be offered in a variety of tiers or plans, with a range of different pricing options. For example, a company can choose to offer 3 different subscription plans: a flat-rate ‘basic’ plan at a lower price, a flat-rate ‘premium’ plan at a higher price (due to added features), and a usage-based plan with a pay-as-you-go approach. You can imagine how confusing the manual billing for this company would become! Automated billing means that your company doesn’t have to be limited to a basic price strategy, and you won’t need to manually calculate charges for each account at the end of every month.
Global Payment Acceptance
The ability to process transactions in a range of currencies is vital when looking to grow your business, as one of the greatest accompaniments of growth is overseas expansion. Meeting compliance requirements for the countries that you operate in is essential, and with manual billing this added complication only fuels the likelihood of human error. Billing automation simplifies the management of global factors, meaning that your business’s growth overseas is easier, and more likely to be a success.
Easy Data Collection
With an automated billing system in place, all of your business’s data can be collected securely (including payment transaction data) in order to provide you with information that can be used in reports, to increase your customer retention rate, or to enable your business to grow further. Some of the most important decisions that your business makes will come from data, so make sure that your data is reliable, and not open to consistent potential for error or manual problems.
How Can I Focus on Payments to Incentivize Growth?
Streamlining Your Checkout Experience
One mistake that is commonly made is creating a checkout experience without the customer in mind. As with all customer-facing areas of your business, you should take a customer-centric approach to ensure that at each step of the way, your business caters to the wants and needs of the customer. For subscription businesses, the checkout experience is arguably even more important than with traditional goods and services, as your aim is to secure the customer for a longer period of time- not just for a one-off purchase. As subscriptions often have customers signing up for periods of months or years, it’s vital that your business gets the checkout right, and help convince them to make that final purchasing decision.
By making a checkout experience more confusing than it needs to be, it’s likely that you will disincentive your growth by turning people away from making it to the final stage of checkout. Don’t make them jump through hoops to complete their purchase!
Payment Options for Customers
Flexibility and control are two of the main things that customers desire when considering the purchase of a subscription, good or service. Payment options such as being able to purchase a subscription in your local currency is a great way to incentivize growth, as it makes your offerings more accessible to customers across the globe. Multi-currency options aid with the geographical expansion of your subscription business and are likely to increase the satisfaction of your customers, as they can pay in their preferred currency.
A choice in payment method is also likely to increase your customer base, as allowing customers to pay by a method they already know and feel comfortable with, such as through a local payment gateway or eWallet, acts as an incentive in the checkout journey for them to make the final purchase. If the payment methods provided for your customers don’t suit their needs or preferences, it is more likely that your customers will abandon your checkout before making a purchase.
Coupons and Promotions
It really is no secret that all customers love a good deal. With customer incentives such as coupons or a free-trial offering to your subscription product, you can boost your business’s growth. By getting customers to try your offering in a trial or at a discounted price your business is one step closer to gaining more long-term recurring customers. Check out more in our recent blog post on how you can implement coupons into your subscription pricing strategy, and the benefits of coupons for customer retention: How Can I Implement Coupons into my Subscription Strategy? (billforward.io)
How Can Billforward Help Your Business Grow?
Billforward’s recurring billing platform rules out the potential for human error in your company’s billing strategy, making your billing not only easier, but also more efficient. With Billforward as a billing partner, the prospect of expanding your business internationally is also less of a headache. Our globalization features aid your overseas expansion, such as via multi-currency support, making Billforward your right-hand-man in business growth.
Payment flexibility features such as the option to use usage-based, flat-rate, tiered or volume pricing also make Billforward a great fit when it comes to growing your business via payment methods. At Billforward we know that flexibility is key, and the wants and needs of your customers are central to making your subscription business a success.