Managing renewals is a crucial part of any subscription business. Great news for store owners! Our latest integration with WooCommerce Subscriptions lets you apply store credits for subscription renewals automatically. This update makes it a lot easier to reward loyal customers, reduce failed payments, and keep your subscriptions running smoothly.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know: what this feature does, the key benefits for your store, and how you can set it up in just a few steps. Let’s get started!
A Quick Look At The New Store Credit Integration
Subscriptions are one of the most powerful ways to build recurring revenue for your WooCommerce store. Plugins like WooCommerce Subscriptions make setting this up easy by letting you create subscription products, manage billing schedules, and enable automatic renewals.
Previously with Advanced Coupons, store credits could only be applied during the initial checkout for subscription products:
Once the subscription renewed, those credits couldn’t be used. It’s a missed opportunity to reward loyal customers and make renewals more effortless—which is why we’ve expanded the feature!
With our latest integration, customers can now use their available store credits to pay for subscription renewals automatically. This unlocks more flexibility for customers and new retention power for your store by letting you:
- Automatically apply store credits whenever a subscription renews.
- Deduct the renewal cost directly from the customer’s store credit balance.
- Ensure smoother billing, fewer payment failures, and a better overall experience for subscribers.
This new update takes store credits beyond a one-time checkout incentive. Now, you can use them as an ongoing loyalty and retention tool, reducing friction around renewal payments and keeping customers engaged for the long run.
Key Benefits Of Enabling Store Credit For Subscription Renewals
Enabling store credit for subscription renewals is a smart move to improve customer satisfaction and encourage long-term shopper engagement. Let’s take a closer look at the key benefits of this new feature for your store:
1. Increased subscription retention
One of the biggest challenges of managing subscriptions is keeping customers engaged for the long term. Issues like failed payments or a lack of payment options make it more likely for customers to cancel.
This new integration with WooCommerce Subscriptions helps you reduce friction in the renewal stage by allowing store credit to absorb some (or all) of the cost. This is especially impactful for shoppers who’ve consistently earned store credit through loyalty programs or past purchases. They’re more likely to renew if they can put their rewards to use. Over time, this convenient perk leads to better retention and fewer cancellations overall.
2. More subscription sign-ups
Offering store credit for subscription renewals adds more value to your offering. When shoppers know they can use their hard-earned credits for future renewals, subscribing becomes a more appealing decision. It’s even more powerful when paired with a rewards program. This brings us to the next benefit!
3. Flexible use of loyalty rewards
Store credits are one of the most popular loyalty program rewards. If you’re using our Loyalty Program plugin, for instance, you can reward shoppers with loyalty points that they can convert to store credits.
This new integration makes store credit a much more versatile loyalty perk. Now, customers can redeem store credits not just when they’re checking out, but also as part of their ongoing WooCommerce Subscription renewals. Whether they’ve accumulated credits from previous purchases, referral bonuses, or loyalty point conversions, they’ll now have more ways to use their hard-earned rewards. This also gives new customers more reasons to join your loyalty program.
4. Reduced payment failures and churn
Renewal payments can fail for different reasons—think unexpected payment gateway errors, insufficient balance, or even using expired cards. Apart from disrupting your revenue flow, this inconvenience can also affect your customer relationships.
Allowing store credit payments for renewals reduces this risk by giving your customers a fallback payment method. If a shopper has enough store credits in their account, their renewal can still go through. With this added layer of reliability, you can keep subscriptions active and lower customer churn.
How To Enable Store Credits For Subscription Renewals
Enabling store credit for subscription renewals is pretty simple with Advanced Coupons. Simply set it up once, and it’ll automatically apply store credit to eligible renewals without needing complex coding.
📝 IMPORTANT NOTE: Before following along with this tutorial, make sure you have installed and updated both Advanced Coupons Premium and WooCommerce Subscriptions. These two powerful plugins work together to enable store credit support for recurring orders.
Once both plugins are active, you’re ready to go! Below, we’ll walk you through setting up a subscription product (if you haven’t done so already) and how to activate store credit payments for renewals using Advanced Coupons.
Step 1: Set up your subscription product
With the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin installed, you gain access to two new kinds of products: Simple Subscription and Variable Subscription. You can set them up by heading to Products > Add New.
From here, you can enter the product name, descriptions, images, and any other extra product info as you normally would. In the example below, we’re setting up a subscription product for a weekly cat food bundle that includes one pack of dry food and two canned meals:
Then, scroll down to the Product Data section and select Simple Subscription from the dropdown. From here, you can set:
- Subscription price
- Billing interval (e.g. every week, every month)
- Optional trial period, sign-up fee, or subscription length
In the example above, we set up our weekly cat food delivery that charges $15 per week.
Once you’re happy with the product setup, click Publish to make it live! Here’s how it looks to customers:
💡 POWER TIP: Consider adding a short note in the product description to let customers know that store credit can be used for both the initial purchase and future renewals. This can help set expectations clearly and make your subscription offer even more appealing to shoppers.
Step 2: Enable store credit payment for renewals
Now that you have a subscription product in your store, the next step is to enable store credit payments for renewals. To do this, head to Coupons > Settings > Store Credits.
Scroll down until you see the setting “Allow store credits for subscription renewals”, then toggle it on.
Enabling this setting automatically applies available store credit to a customer’s subscription renewal, as long as they have a sufficient balance at the time of the billing.
While you’re here, feel free to adjust other store credit settings to configure them based on how you want to use them for your store. For example, you can:
- Set a minimum order total for using store credits
- Configure store credit expiration rules
- Choose whether to apply store credits before or after tax and shipping
This settings page gives you full control over how store credit works in your store—including how it integrates with subscriptions. With Advanced Coupons, you have full control over how store credits are used and redeemed in your store.
And that’s basically it! Once enabled, the system will handle everything automatically during renewals.
Where To See It In Action:
After a renewal order goes through using store credit, you can view it by heading to WooCommerce > Orders. Open the renewal order and look under the Order Summary. Here, you’ll see a line that says “Coupon: store credit”, showing how much of the total has been covered by store credits:
For customers, it’ll show up labeled as a “Discount” on their order summary.
They can also track their remaining store credit balance and past usage by going to the Store Credit tab in their My Account page:
Wrapping Up
Subscription products are an amazing way to build recurring revenue for your store. Our latest integration with the WooCommerce Subscription plugin makes it even more rewarding for your valued shoppers. Now, you can enable store credit for subscription renewals. This gives them more reasons to stay subscribed and continue earning rewards!
Let’s take a quick glimpse at what we covered today:
- A quick feature overview: store credit for subscription renewals
- Key benefits of enabling store credit for subscriptions
- How to enable store credit payments for renewals
Tools like Advanced Coupons make it easier to reward customers and keep them coming back. With this powerful plugin, you can easily set up a store credit system in WooCommerce and launch advanced promotions like BOGO deals and shipping overrides.
Do you have any questions about this new feature? Let us know in the comments! Happy to help. ☺️
