Getting the Most Out of Cohorts

With the new Cohorts tab in Ordergroove Analytics, you can take a long view of your subscription program's health - including subscriber retention and loyalty.

While cohorts can be insightful, it can be hard to parse what you're actually looking for among all the charts and tables. In this guide we'll walk through some of the most powerful insights offered by Cohorts and how to generate them in your own analytics.

What can I do with the new cohorts tab?

Cohorts are the technical term for a group of people. In your Ordergroove analytics, it's a group of customers based on when they initially made a subscription purchase. 

You can spot trends by tracking these customer groups over a longer timeframe. Cohort tracking makes it easy to spot things like the effectiveness of promotions, seasonal trends, and common drop-off points where customers cancel their subscriptions.

Prepare for Common Drop-Off Points

The main benefit of the cohorts tab is a long-term view of your subscription program, and cohorts make it easy to spot trends. You can spot common inflection, drop-off, and points and take the appropriate action to encourage your subscribers to stay with your program.

You can use the Subscription order retention rate to spot any pain points:

1. Open up Ordergroove. Go to Data > Analytics.
2. Select Cohorts on the analytics toolbar.
3. The first chart should look like this:

In the example above, there are a few points my store could focus on. The most considerable dropoff is from the first month to the second month after purchase, and another significant dropoff from the second month to the third month. There are a few things we could do to entice customers to hang around:

• Retention Rewards: Reward subscribers for their loyalty with a discounted item after a series of repeat purchases. (i.e. 4th order is free.)
• Loyalty Integration: Overlap your subscription program with a loyalty program with clear benefits and rewards for subscribers. 
• GWP (Gift with Purchase): Add a free gift with subscription orders, like a sample or branded gift. In addition to surprising and delighting customers, GWPs are a great way to introduce subscribers to new products and encourage additional purchases.

Compare Subscriber Spend Across Different Promotions

Another perk of the cohorts tab is the ability to measure your promotions' effectiveness. You can use a few views to compare a cohort that started before a promotion with a cohort that had the promotion in question.

Compare Cohorts to See Dropoff

1. Open up Ordergroove. Go to Data > Analytics.
2. Select Cohorts on the analytics toolbar.
3. Scroll down to the chart. On the top left is a Cohorts dropdown. Average is selected by default, but you can switch the cohort to specific years or in this case, specific months.
4. Check off the month you ran the promotion and a separate month before the promotion began.

In the example above, I am comparing the June 2022 cohort against the March 2022 cohort. I ran a steeper initial discount in March, and in hindsight, it was very effective at keeping my subscribers active.

Compare Cohorts to see Life Time Value

There's more to a discount than how long a subscriber stays on board. My March discount helped keep my subscribers around longer, but did they spend more - increasing their lifetime value?

1. Back on the Cohorts view, click Explore More Details in the Cumulative revenue per subscriber box.
2. Scroll down to the chart. On the top left is a Cohorts dropdown. Check off the same two months you compared before.

In this case, my March 2022 promotion was a complete success. Not only did the subscribers hang around longer, but they also spent more over their lifetime.

I can also use these two charts to compare separate promotions. For example, if I offer a much steeper discount upfront, is it worth eating the long-term cost? If I make a change to a discount after order #4 to combat subscriber dropoff, did it work?

Lean-In with Loyal Subscribers

Your loyal subscribers are listed on the Cohort Champions view. They are subscribers who have an active subscription for at least twelve consecutive months and at least one successful order in the past six months.

You can view your long-term subscribers with the Cohort champions view:

1. Open up Ordergroove. Go to Data > Analytics.
2. Select Cohorts on the analytics toolbar.
3. Click Explore More Details in the Cohort champion box.
4. Instead of a chart, you'll find a table with your top subscribers.

These subscribers have a valuable perspective, and are ripe for a 'how are you doing' check-in email. You can send out a manual communication, or use a service like Klaviyo to automatically add them to a group.

Compare Cohorts by Product

It can be just as valuable to compare products to see if any have a notably higher LTV or have a pattern of staying subscribed longer. To compare products, use the filters on the top left.

This filter can compare two separate Subscription Order Retention Rate charts to see if one product performs better. You can also use this filter to measure your ad spend effectiveness. For example, if you put extra revenue towards advertising in the summer months, you could run a July cohort against a March cohort while filtering for a particular product to see if the ads impacted the average length of the subscription or the LTV.