For eligible brands, Amazon’s subscription program is a sleeper hit. About a third—35%—of all Amazon shoppers have at one point used Amazon’s Subscribe & Save tool. That includes a slight majority (51%) of Amazon Prime users.
The way it works is simple. Fans of a brand choose to automatically re-order their favorite product at a frequency of anywhere from every 1 month to every 6 months.
Most brands, but not all, offer a discount in exchange for subscribing. A SnS discount can range anywhere from 0% to 15%.
SnS subscriptions are not for everyone. They make most sense for CPG brands that produce refillable items—like, say, laundry detergent.
The upside: SnS helps you maintain consistent inventory and revenue predictions. It also can increase sales. SnS subscribers have among the lowest churn rates of any retail subscriptions.
The downside: When you offer a discount with SnS, you sacrifice a slice of your profit margin.
How do you track SnS analytics?
Amazon publishes two key reports that measure the number of active subscribers on each ASIN: the Subscribe & Save Forecasting Report and Subscribe & Save Performance Report.
The data from these reports can be difficult to manage, however. When you download these reports from Amazon, you start with a .txt file. You then have to convert all of those files into pivot tables that map out your SnS numbers.
It looks something like this:
Getting a complete view of SnS subscriptions across your products is important, because it helps inform metrics like inventory data.
Let’s say your product suddenly spikes in popularity. Mapping the uptick in SnS conversions gives you an early warning sign of how much inventory you need down the line.
Tools like Intentwise automatically download and visualize SnS data for you, via API.
Tracking SnS data through an API connection also makes it easier to apply SnS discounts and coupons, and factor them into your overall item-level profitability numbers.
How do you grow your SnS customer base?
Re-targeting. One of the simplest ways to convert a new customer is to re-target them with ads touting your SnS deal.
Build an audience of, say, second-time purchasers of your product, who have already proven they are return purchasers. Then push out a DSP ad discussing the upsides of your SnS deal.
Content. Another way to draw in new SnS conversions is to heavily promote SnS in your content on Amazon. Mention your SnS deals in A+ content, across your Brand Store, and more.
Some brands also offer a coupon to customers who Subscribe & Save for the first time, which can be a great way to get people in the door.
AMC analytics. In Amazon Marketing Cloud, Amazon’s newest analytics tool, you can track which actions your customers most often take before they Subscribe & Save. For example, you could build a query that measures which purchase most people subscribe on. Let’s say you discover a customer’s third purchase is the one when they are most primed to subscribe.
Or maybe we know a certain combination of ad views, or a certain purchase speed, indicates a likely SnS customer.
You can theoretically build an audience of people who are on the precipice of SnS conversion, and then run ads that might convince them to subscribe.
AMC does track SnS conversions. The only limitation: in the free version of AMC, you can only see the first SnS conversion a customer makes at the brand level. After that, you need to buy AMC’s paid shopping insights data.
The limitations around SnS data is one of a few nuances of AMC that brands should know before using the tool.
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