How Recurring Revenue Drives Growth in Print Businesses

Summary: Struggling with unpredictable print orders and fluctuating revenue in your print business? Well, the key to handling this issue is by achieving recurring print orders. Let's discuss how printers can accomplish this goal via simple and strategic ways, thus driving growth and long-term recurring revenue for print businesses.

In today’s fast-moving print business landscape, success isn’t just about winning customers but making them come back to you for making more print purchases. It’s a known fact that achieving recurring orders from your existing customers can ensure financial stability and growth for your print business.

But how to make this practically possible? Well, the answer is quite straightforward. By making reordering simple.

That was the key message in a recent episode of Podcasts from the Printerverse. In this podcast, several print specialists together explored how recurring revenue can be accomplished via advanced web-to-print software that offers simplified reordering processes and enhanced customer convenience.

The key speakers in the podcast included -

• Deborah Corn – Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse (host of Podcasts from the Printerverse)
• Naimish Patel – Vice President of Sales at OnPrintShop
• Trent Foreman – Regional Manager, North America at OnPrintShop.

Let’s delve deeper into how print businesses can win more repeat sales in this competitive printing industry through this blog.

Why Recurring Revenue Matters for Print Providers

Irregular cash flow is a major stress factor for print providers. On some months, there are a huge number of orders, while on the other days, you are trying to win new sales with very less orders in schedule. The uncertainty of orders makes it difficult to plan future productions, raw materials, labor, and even scaling the business.

Recurring revenue can solve this issue by providing:

• Predictability of Orders: Having a regular client who orders prints from you on a subscription basis can improve the predictability of your orders. You can forecast the demand, sales, for the coming months with confidence.
• Customer Retention: Research says that it is 7 times costlier to get a new customer compared to doing business with an existing customer. And if you just increase your repeat business by 5% that can increase your profitability by 50%.
• Stronger Business Relationships: Repeat business often leads to deeper relationships with your customers. This ultimately builds more trust and loyalty, winning you more business in the long run.

The Power of Reordering Simplicity

As per a recent finding, recurring revenue can be like 50 to 60 percent of your overall monthly and yearly intake. Also, for online players like Amazon, almost 60% of their revenue comes from repeat customers.

While reorders can significantly improve your print business sales, it does not happen just by accident. Experts in the podcast have discussed how print buyers look for three aspects in a printer - price, quality, and experience.

Deborra shared how she chooses to buy shirts from the same ecommerce website due to the convenience it offers. The platform also offers a bookmark option to revisit her favorite products and make instant purchases.

Another factor that drives customer loyalty is the speed to market. The automation-based approval cycles and smart workflows accelerate the print job processing time, enabling customers to not only easily place orders but also receive them on time.

In such cases, although the products may be a bit costlier, convenience and speed often outweigh the product cost.

Omnichannel ordering approach also helps in enhancing customer convenience. Let’s say, a customer places order for print products from a print business for many years. Irrespective of whichever platform, say phone, email, or website - the customer can easily place an order. This convenience enhances the customer’s print ordering experience, preventing them from turning to a competitor.

How Can Printers Audit the Reordering Experience?

Print providers can audit their reordering workflows both from the customer’s side and from the print business side. You can do this by taking the top 20% of your customers who typically bring 80 % of your business revenue.

By asking simple questions like – How much time do customers spend placing orders? How much time does your team spend for order processing How much time does your team spend processing those orders once they arrive?

Such questions will help you to detect the delays or inefficiencies in these steps, which will further help you to optimize your processes. You can also directly ask your customers on how you can improve the reordering experience? Simple questions like ‘How can I earn more business from you?’ or ‘do you have anyone, for example, who might be needing our services that you may want to refer? - can contribute to building stronger relationships and winning referrals.

“Auditing the reorder experience should start with our existing customers. And that experience we can replicate for new customers and a lot of other accounts, which are already doing business with us.”, said Naimish Patel, VP of Sales at OnPrintShop.

Furthermore, by leveraging innovations like analytics, you can understand what your customers are buying. You can track customer behavior, order history, and buying trends to identify the most re-ordered products and top repeat customers. This visibility can help you to anticipate demand and personalize reordering offers, thus boosting recurring revenue from customers.

Role of Web-to-Print in Boosting Recurring Revenue

Challenges like dealing with higher tariffs, increased operational costs, and maintaining profitability have become significantly difficult in today’s printing world. A modern web-to-print solution can help to solve these challenges by optimizing existing operations like ordering processes, customers' communication, and internal production processes.

Previously, web-to-print was optional for printers. But to the rising consumer expectations and fast-evolving printing industry, it has become mandatory for printers to adopt web-to-print technology.

“The trends that are really putting pressure on printers to rethink their customer experience for reorders are simplicity, frictionless, and the need for speed. The customers want what they want and they want it when they want it and they want it without any type of friction.” Trent Foreman, Regional Manager at North America (OnPrintShop).

It simplifies the end-to-end customer experience and enhances customer convenience, thus increasing revenue for print businesses. Features like dedicated private portals, version control of designs, transparent proofing tools, and simple reordering in a web-to-print system contribute to improving customer satisfaction and recurring revenue for businesses.

Wrapping It Up!Recurring revenue is not about your existing customers who reorder consistently from you, its also about winning new customers. To achieve this, print businesses need to build trust with the customer, offer the convenience of ordering, and deliver personalized experiences.Printers can utilize AI-powered web-to-print software like the ones offered by OnPrintShop to offer seamless reordering for customers from anytime and anywhere.If you haven’t explored OnPrintShop’s web-to-print software yet, then request a demo with us today. Our solution experts will offer tailored consultations to help you start building recurring revenue and long-term business growth.