It can be difficult to tell exactly how and why you’re lagging behind when it comes to your business, and especially your renewable subscriptions. You are, of course, doing the best you can, but sometimes the tools that you have aren’t the most up-to-date. Without the right technology to support your business, you can start to struggle to keep up with demand, or to retain customers. Here are six warning signs that you need to seriously reconsider what tools you need to do the business that you should.
1. Orders take too long
If you are struggling to get all of your subscriptions orders in, well, order, then you need to rethink your strategies. Flipping through a binder or even trying to sort customers in Microsoft Excel is outdated, and you don’t have ways to easily add information. Finding who has paid and who hasn’t, or who changed their order in some way, should be as easy as a click of a button.
2. Uncertainty in ordering
You should be able to see instantly how much product that you need to order for both subscriptions and shelves. If you are spending time trying to figure out how many subscriptions were added, changed, or dropped while also trying to figure out store inventory, through spreadsheets or binders, it’s time to upgrade. You’ll be able to see, at a glance, what has changed in the last month.
3. Cash-flow issues
It’s time to order inventory for subscriptions and product for shelves; if that leaves you running lean, then you need updated software. You need to be able to pull up sales history easily, and identify those things that are moving well and those that aren’t. You also need to identify quickly those subscription customers that might be paying late, which you may not be able to do if you’re entering the information by hand into Excel, for example. By using a system that can pull up that information quickly and easily, you’ll be better able to manage inventory and payments. Don’t let yourself be two or three bad months away from a real problem. Nip it in the bud now with updated software.
4. Running out of inventory
Are you running out of product every month? Conversely, perhaps you’re ending up with stacks of unsold inventory. If your inventory isn’t stable, or you find yourself having to say “that’s selling really well, and I keep running out” more and more often, then you need to rethink your inventory management and control systems. You need to be able to pull up sales history to effectively manage your inventory.
5. Shrinking subscriptions
When people don’t have an easy way to manage their subscriptions, they are less likely to sign up or renew. If you are bleeding customers who were once loyal, it’s time to change the way that they both reserve and subscribe. With updated software, you can integrate easy to use online subscription management system, which will help you retain, and add, customers.
6. No add-on sales
Your customers should be doing more than just getting their reserved comics and leaving. You need a way to communicate effectively with them, and let them know about all the fun stuff they might be missing. Regular emails about new product, specials, and events are great ways to engage customers. Add-on sales should be happening with nearly every reserve pick-up. You can make that happen with software that integrates regular emails to your customer list.
How can you solve these problems?
You need an easy way to quickly place your orders every month and know they’re right. You need to be able to deal with changing Final Order Cut-Off numbers, and deal with last minute product additions.
You need to know what has sold in the past, what is pre-ordered for customers, and you need recommendations for what should go on the shelf, with over 3000 new SKU’s every single month, comic shops have challenges that literally no other industry does!
You need to get paid quickly for comics you have purchased.
You need to sell to a growing subscriber base, and you need to let those people know what would interest them even when you can’t possibly hand-sell to every single one of them.
All of this is available with the new Manage Comics 2.0. It will help you manage all aspects of your comic subscriptions, and it creates your products directly on your Shopify store, too. Get on the Manage Comics 2.0 waitlist and be the first to know when we launch the all new Amazing Manage Comics 2.0!
