💡TIP: Here's some further reading on how to unlock your enrollment rate for hypergrowth. 

Key Takeaways

• Cart offers can boost enrollment by up to 300%.
• Offering subscriptions in every channel of conversion/type of cart maximizes opportunities for enrollment and subscription awareness.
• Highlight subscription benefits like financial discounts and gifts wherever you offer subscription enrollment.
• When in doubt, simplify your checkout process. Radio buttons minimize buyer indecision.

More conversion pathways boost enrollment

The first step to driving your business’s subscription success is enrolling new subscribers into your program. There are several tactics we recommend leveraging to boost this enrollment (check out our other Enrollment courses here!). Today, we’re going to talk about what is inarguably one of the most successful enrollment tactics we recommend. Cart opt-in has been proven to boost enrollment by up to 300%. That’s pretty fantastic growth, if we do say so ourselves.

So let’s unpack how to offer subscriptions throughout the conversion experience to optimize enrollment growth.

Cart offers convert your ideal subscribers

Some of your repeat customers may be in the habit of immediately adding their routine product to their cart and breezing through to checkout; potentially missing out on the value of subscriptions altogether. And these are the kinds of customers - your repeat purchasers, the habitual consumer - who would thrive in your subscription program, with auto-fulfillment and all the other benefits it has to offer. To catch them before it’s too late, we need to amp up subscription accessibility beyond just your Product Detail Page (PDP).

A general rule of thumb: wherever you offer a conversion opportunity, make sure to include the subscription option.

There are some considerations to account for when using cart opt-in. What if you use multiple carts? What should your display look like? What buttons and clickable fields should you use? So let’s break down the anatomy of an optimal cart offer.

Offer subscriptions in all carts

The average consumer doesn’t think about how much work you’ve invested in optimizing your checkout experience. But we do! To make the most of your efforts, we highly recommend offering subscriptions in every cart experience you’ve built out - including side carts, pop-up or mini carts, modal carts, and definitely your full page cart. Like we’ve said before, anywhere a customer interacts with their order should offer a subscription onramp option.

Here are a few examples of merchants leveraging the cart opt-in functionality in differing cart types.

The Full Page Cart

It’s free real estate! The classic full page cart has the benefit of more space to advertise all offer options to your customers. At the very least, you should offer customers the opportunity to upsell to subscriptions from this full cart view.

Ordergroove merchant Maelys uses the full cart page space to their advantage; calling out all subscription benefits and associated incentives. 

The Side Panel Cart

The side panel cart is a great option for businesses with smaller, less expensive individual SKUs like in the food and beverage, pet, nutraceutical, or beauty industries. When a customer adds their item to their cart from either the PDP or quickview shopping, the side cart pops up with a confirmation of this addition - but still allows the customer to continue scrolling and shopping. This system benefits customers with multi-item orders. For the purposes of subscriptions, it re-exposes customers to subscription as an option immediately upon adding their product to cart.

Ordergroove merchant Firebelly Tea leverages a side cart with subscription cart opt-in to advertise subscription value and drive enrollment. 

The Modal Cart

The modal cart presents as a window when a customer adds a product to their cart. It’s particularly effective for upselling to a subscription, as it brings the display and your offers front and center. One of the only downsides to this cart format is that it can be a bit obtrusive to customers if they’re adding multiple SKUs to their cart for this order; but for higher value products, it can be a quick runway to conversion and onramp to subscription.

CBDistillery leverages a modal cart to upsell customers to subscriptions, highlighting the benefits they’ll incur by subscribing. They also use the best-in-class practice of price transparency to demonstrate savings earned through subscription.

The Pop-up (Mini) Cart

The pop-up, or as many folks call it, mini cart, appears as a small window when a customer adds a product to their cart. It serves as a preview of the full cart and allows customers to confirm that they’ve added this product to their cart while continuing to shop. While this doesn’t leave as much room to upsell as the side panel or modal options, you can still serve a compelling offer to subscribe with the right story.

Bissell leverages cart opt-in with their mini cart, using concise copy to highlight their main value proposition in limited space.

🌟 Bonus: Opt-In Through the Checkout Process

Bissell implements a modal pop-up before guiding customers to the full cart page to encourage customers to add more to their order. Serving customers with these offers displaying both one-time and subscription offers allows customers to realize subscription benefits before completing their checkout.

Simplify your cart offer

Cart Subscription Offers can be displayed as either a radio button or checkbox, similarly to your regular PDP offer. We recommend the radio button experience for a few reasons. 

User Experience testing has proven that radio buttons minimize cognitive load, making the purchasing experience simpler and less stressful for the customer. They do this by laying out all options visually in front of the user, letting them compare and contrast their choices. This is especially beneficial if you’re highlighting subscription incentives clearly. Radio buttons are also more accessibility-friendly, as they’re easier to operate for users who may have difficulty making precise mouse movements.

For an enrollment experience, more is usually not merrier. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend simplifying the enrollment process down to as few clicks as possible.

Customers may get overwhelmed with the additional requirement of a checkbox offer. Yes, one extra click seems simple - but can be the difference between an order realized and one lost - so it’s best to keep options simple with a radio button when possible.

Tula leverages cart opt-in with a radio button to catch one-time customers before checkout and turn their one-time business into recurring revenue for their business. They highlight the clear financial and loyalty benefits of subscribing in a concise copy so customers can realize subscription value immediately.

An alternative to the classic radio button experience is the “click to upgrade” option. Visually, it’s different from the radio button - serving customers with an offer like “upgrade to subscription & save XX%.” Upon selection, the default frequency will replace that copy, with a dropdown to toggle between frequency options or to revert back to one-time. While this is slightly different from the classic radio button experience, it still simplifies the flow with a clear CTA to upgrade, and then gives customers the ability to toggle between all frequency options.

LolaVie uses “click to upgrade” in their side cart to simplify the customer experience while giving them a clear path to subscriptions.

Visually, many of the same recommendations we make for your PDP enrollment offer apply here. Be sure to clearly call out your subscription incentive and display your subscription offer above one-time. We also highly recommend defaulting the offer to subscription with the option to opt-out within the cart.

📝 Try it now!

Work with your Ordergroove CSM to maximize all channels of subscription conversion! Here’s how to use cart opt-in to see an up to 3x boost in your subscription enrollment rates. 

• eCommerce platforms outside of Shopify have cart opt-in installed by default on their full cart page. You can add cart tagging to your alternative mini carts to serve this offer in that location. 

• For Shopify customers, you can set up cart offers using this offer tagging.

• Stylize all offers to maximize enrollment.

Suggested Modules

• Anatomy of a Great PDP Enrollment Offer
• Boost Enrollment with Default to Subscription