The Wine Flyer’s recurring revenue soars 6x higher with a seamless subscription and loyalty integration

They say the best experiences with wine come when travelling. The Wine Flyer, a DTC wine retailer that’s part of the British Airways brand family run by IAG Loyalty — and the first business that deals in Avios, the group’s own loyalty currency — knows that the right glass of wine can transport you out of the moment and back to those memories. 

That’s why they’re on a mission to make the products frequent flyers experience during their travels accessible as a subscription wine case to everyone, all the time. 

“We reward customers with Avios for each wine subscription, so we have to understand exactly what they’re motivated by,” said Hannah Jordaan, Head of Customer at IAG Loyalty Retail.

“The proposition is designed to  reward the customer for their engagement, creating an aspirational experience that supports their end goal — which is usually redeeming their Avios for an amazing trip.” 

Prior to launching two years ago, customer research revealed that The Wine Flyer’s audience was looking for a moment of discovery — and a chance to develop their palate — with every wine subscription. 

Knowing that their subscription offer would have to deliver novelty and product discovery to be successful, The Wine Flyer decided to launch a rotating clubs model for their subscriber experience — which is more operationally complex than implementing evergreen fixed kit bundles — and more than most subscription apps can handle. 

Their first subscription solution lacked capabilities to deliver the hassle-free subscriber experience The Wine Flyer envisioned — let alone the functionalities they needed to integrate a sophisticated subscription model like rotating clubs with their Avios loyalty currency. And so began the search for a powerful subscription platform to support their unique vision.

Switching to Ordergroove to unlock an exceptional subscriber experience

Recognizing the value of the long-term customer relationships and recurring revenue that subscriptions can unlock, The Wine Flyer has had sky-high ambitions for their subscriber experience since inception — and their first subscription provider was the only thing standing in their way.

“We had stability issues with our first provider,” said Hannah. “As a young brand, it was just too risky to lean on an application that wasn’t delivering the core basics of a subscriber experience.”

Beyond a seamless experience for subscribers, The Wine Flyer’s experience with their first provider made it clear they needed a platform that could:

• Handle the complexity of a rotating club experience and foster ongoing innovation 
• Integrate with their proprietary loyalty program middleware,  along with the other components of their tech stack including BigCommerce and Klaviyo
• And offer robust features and capabilities out-of-the-box, enabling them to address a backlog of improvements to their subscriber experience straight out of the gate 

After consulting with other brands and retailers in the space and evaluating a number of recommended providers, there was only one platform that could tick all of The Wine Flyer’s boxes.

Enter: Ordergroove. 

Pairing subscriber incentives with a unique loyalty program takes enrollment to new heights 

After completing their migration and research to enhance the overall value proposition of their subscriber experience, The Wine Flyer was prepared to leverage Ordergroove’s flexible incentive framework to address their main opportunity for recurring revenue growth: converting every repeat customer into a subscriber.

“We wanted to target our most engaged audiences and deliver messaging to show that as our repeat customers, they’re particularly suited to reap the benefits of our subscriber experience,” Hannah said.  “And give them a generous incentive to enroll right then and there.”

Ordergroove made it easy for The Wine Flyer to deliver subscriber perks like free delivery on every single order. Perhaps most importantly, Ordergroove’s flexible APIs enabled them to seamlessly plug subscriptions into the homegrown loyalty program at the core of their business — and activate the value proposition that matters most to their customers: earning more Avios points.

“We knew that giving subscribers a fast track to earning more Avios would be the best way to capture the attention of our repeat customers,” said Hannah. “Integrating Ordergroove with our loyalty program means we can offer subscribers up to 3,500 Avios for their first subscription order, plus an additional 1,500 Avios for every order thereafter.”

Integrating Ordergroove’s flexible incentives with their loyalty program made for the most effective enrollment offer to date, driving an impressive 5x increase in their number of active subscriptions — and empowering The Wine Flyer to deliver a unique subscriber experience that’s true to what their business is all about: loyalty. 

Growing retention and recurring revenue with personalised cancellation flows

Because their enrollment offer was so effective, The Wine Flyer knew that some new subscribers might churn shortly after signing up, necessitating some clever retention tactics to avoid a higher cancellation rate. 

They were pleased to discover that Ordergroove’s user-friendly subscriber dashboard provided a solid foundation for churn prevention all on its own. 

“We understand the needs of our customers and their rationale for not wanting to have an always on wine subscription. Often, it’s simply that their wine case is overflowing and they don’t need the volume or frequency of product at the rate they first imagined,” Hannah said. “Ordergroove’s subscriber dashboard gives them direct control over their orders so they can make adjustments accordingly instead of cancelling altogether.”

For those times when subscribers do decide to cancel, Ordergroove’s seamless Klaviyo integration means The Wine Flyer can deploy personalised cancellation flows to stop churn in its tracks. In practice, this looks like offering subscribers bonus Avios points to stay enrolled, with the loyalty currency automatically flowing into their account when they exit the cancellation process.  

If subscribers decline that offer and complete their cancellation, The Wine Flyer still takes the opportunity to ensure future engagement with their business by offering a generous voucher for future one-time orders — and because lapsed subscribers almost always use the voucher, The Wine Flyer has another opportunity to deploy a personalised flow with tailored enrollment incentives for rejoining the subscriber experience.

Thanks to Ordergroove’s flexible subscriber experience and seamless integration with Klaviyo, The Wine Flyer reduced their cancellation rate by 60% — in turn triggering a whopping 6x increase in recurring revenue growth.

“The best part is that all of these capabilities came out-of-the-box with Ordergroove,” said Hannah. “All we had to do was choose to switch them on, which is massively helpful.”

With Ordergroove, the sky’s the limit for recurring revenue growth 

Switching to Ordergroove transformed The Wine Flyer’s subscriber experience by empowering them to integrate their wine subscription offering with a unique loyalty program. This allowed them to scale up their subscriber base in the UK and beyond, improve retention, and achieve significant month-over-month growth in recurring revenue. 

The Wine Flyer credits the Ordergroove platform with the impressive results they’ve unlocked from their high-performing subscriber experience. 

“We try to buy software and maximise out-of-the-box functionalities as much as possible so we can focus more resources on A/B testing, and merchandising the best possible products to put in our wine subscriptions,” Hannah said. “With Ordergroove, we can constantly iterate on what really matters, instead of trying to handle all of that subscription infrastructure independently.” 

But the number one reason that The Wine Flyer would recommend Ordergroove to any merchant looking to upgrade their subscriber experience? Their team can lean on expert strategic guidance from Ordergroove’s Customer Success Managers for help navigating macro trends — whether they’re trying to appeal to customers in an economic downturn or stay compliant with new laws affecting their industry. 

“Because we’re in the beverage space, our team at The Wine Flyer has to stay on top of what’s happening with consumer alcohol consumption and regulations,” said Hannah. “And working with partners like Ordergroove, who have such an impressive network and experience in the space, has really helped us recognize and react to trends faster than before.” 

Powered by technology designed to support any vision, any platform, anywhere — it’s safe to say that The Wine Flyer’s unique subscriber experience is on the up and up, and they can count on sustainable business growth in the UK and abroad for years to come.