Stay AI's ExperienceEngine allows you to offer your customers free products or special offers on their subscriptions.
Free gifts and specialized discounts enable you to drive lifetime value and customer satisfaction by creating unique experiences for your customers as they progress through the subscriber journey.
This guide will explain what ExperienceEngine is, how to use AI for a promotion, and how to create a promotion manually.
Getting Started with ExperienceEngine
Stay Ai's ExperienceEngine is an advanced promotions builder, enabling you to test the impact of delivering discount offers and free gifts to subscriber cohorts of your choosing. With ExperienceEngine, you can either manually create a promotion with selected parameters or allow the solution’s AI to run a personalized promotional test to each unique recipient. Ultimately, ExperienceEngine enables you to drive lifetime value and customer satisfaction by creating unique experiences for your customers as they progress through the subscriber journey.
To get started with ExperienceEngine, navigate to your Stay Ai merchant portal and click Tools.
Creating a Promotion
Click ExperienceEngine.
Click Create A Promotion.
Select the applicable option for whether you are going to Use AI for your promotion or Do It Myself.
What’s the difference between using AI and doing it myself?
Our machine learning model uses a number of customer-behavior informed data points to determine which subscribers are most likely to churn. If you want to run a promotion that segments subscribers based on their forecasted churn risk, select Use AI. If you’d prefer to manually run a promotion regardless of subscribers’ forecasted churn risk status, select Do It Myself.
Creating an ExperienceEngine Promotion: Use AI
Leverage AI to segment by customer churn risk and deliver targeted promotions to at-risk subscribers.
In the Apply to Orders section, select the applicable subscriptions (including) for your promotion.
Select the applicable subscriptions for this promotion, including:
Select the applicable subscriptions for this promotion, including:
All Orders: Every subscription order
Orders Including: Select one or more product variants, then choose one of the following options:
Any 1 of the Selected Products: Subscriptions that include one or more of the selected products when the promotion is triggered
All of the Selected Products: Subscriptions that include all of the selected products when the promotion is triggered
Orders with Only: Subscriptions that ONLY contains the product or products that you selected when the promotion is triggered
Orders Excluding: Subscriptions that do NOT contain a product that you selected when the promotion is triggered
2. Select the order cycle.
Select the Order Cycle that applies.
Select the Order Cycle that applies.
All orders, one per subscription: The promotion will fire only once per subscription. Once a customer applies a promotion to one of their subscriptions, they won’t be entered in again.
All orders, customers can be entered more than once: The promotion will fire randomly across all orders, and the targeted segment can include the same subscription more than one time. Once a customer applies a promotion to one of their subscriptions, they won’t be entered in again.
Order number: A selector for the order number this promotion applies to. For instance, if I selected “2”, the promotion would only apply to the first recurring subscription order.
3. Set up your promotion for the Churn Risk segment in the If Churn Risk Is Identified section.
What happens if a customer is considered a “churn risk”?
Customers identified as a churn risk will be segmented into their own cohort, and offered a free gift (instead of a discount offer) for proactive churn reduction. If you’d like to test the impact of this free gift on the churn of identified at-risk subscribers, you can split-test at the volume of your choice; see below.
a. Click Add Product to select which free product to send to the segment of churn risk subscribers.
b. Click Ok.
c. Enter the % of the churn risk segment who will receive this free gift.
4. If applicable, set up your promotion(s) for the Non-Churn Risk segment in the If Churn Risk Is Not Identified section.
a. Click Add Product and select the add-on product you want to offer, then enter the dollar or percentage discount. You can offer up to 4 promotion products.
b. Send this to X% of the segment: Enter the percentage of the segment that product should be sent to. For example, if you’re offering 4 different products, you would want to send each product to 25% of the segment.
NOTE: You will not be able to leave the page until the percentages for each product offered equal 100%.
5. Select the dates of your promotion's duration.
Select the applicable option for Run Promo From:
Select the applicable option for Run Promo From:
mm/dd/yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy: The promo will run for the defined period of time
mm/dd/yyyy until turned off: The promo will run indefinitely from the start date
mm/dd/yyyy until X customers sampled: The promo will run from the start date until the selected number of customers have been enrolled. This applies to both the A and B groups.
6. Decide if you want to A/B test your promotions.
The purpose of A/B testing is to determine the overall retention impact of your promotional test.
The purpose of A/B testing is to determine the overall retention impact of your promotional test.
No: The segments you identified while setting up the “Churn Risk” or “Not Churn Risk” products will fire for the entire segments configured
For instance, if you selected 100% of churn risk customers to receive product A, 100% of the segment will receive product A.
Yes, X% with and X% without: the selected segments will and will not receive promotions
For instance, you selected for 100% of the churn risk segment to receive product A, and 100% of the not churn risk segment to receive product B. If you then choose to A/B test 50% with and 50% without, half of your churn-risk segment would receive the promotion, and half of your not-at-risk segment would receive the promotion.
7. At the top of the screen, click Edit Name and enter the title for your promotion.
8. Click Submit.
What happens now?
Your promotion will become active on the date you set on Step 5. Make sure you have configured your Stay Ai email notifications for the Upcoming Charge Email and/or your Promotion Offer Email to contain the Promotion Block. If you are not using Stay Ai’s email notifications, you will need to custom-configure these notifications using Stay Ai’s Klaviyo integration.
You can fully customize how promotional offers are displayed for customers from the merchant portal, like changing the messaging on the promotion announcement displayed in each subscriber’s portal, customizing modal icons, and switching up various design and color elements.
Now, your customers will be able to see that they got a discounted or free product if applicable to their subscription!
If you’re using the Promotion Offer Email, the subscriber will receive it as soon as their previous order is complete.
If you’re using the Upcoming Charge email, this notification will fire between 2–5 days prior to the order being shipped, depending on your settings.
After clicking the promotion offer email, customers will be directed to their portal where a pop-up modal will highlight key promotion information. In that modal, customers can either accept or decline the offer as well as see information about the offer – whether it’s expired or they’ve already accepted the promotion.
From here, you will be able to access the ExperienceEngine Analytics, where you can clearly delineate a promotion’s take rate, how the promotion impacted subscriber loyalty, and the impact of customer value post-promotion.
Note: If you are not using Klaviyo (and instead another ESP), we strongly recommend enabling Stay Ai’s email notifications in order to effectively run promotional information via email. Otherwise, customers will only be notified of their ExperienceEngine promotional offer in their customer portal.
Creating an ExperienceEngine Promotion: Do It Myself
Set up your promotion manually to select the products on offer and the percentage of subscribers who will receive an offer.
1. Select a Product to offer / upsell.
2. In the Apply to Orders section, select the applicable subscriptions (including) for your promotion.
Select the applicable subscriptions for this promotion, including:
Select the applicable subscriptions for this promotion, including:
All Orders: Every subscription order.
Orders Including: Select one or more product variants
Any 1 of the Selected Products: Subscriptions that include one or more of the selected products when the promotion is triggered
All of the Selected Products: Subscriptions that include all of the selected products when the promotion is triggered
Orders with Only: Subscriptions that ONLY contains the product or products that you selected when the promotion is triggered
Orders Excluding: Subscriptions that do NOT contain a product that you selected when the promotion is triggered
3. Select the order cycle.
Select the Order Cycle that applies.
Select the Order Cycle that applies.
All orders, one per subscription: The promotion will fire only once per subscription.
All orders, customers can be entered more than once: The promotion will fire randomly across all orders, and the targeted segment can include the same subscription more than one time.
Order number: A selector for the order number this promotion applies to. For instance, if I selected “02”, the promotion would only apply to the first recurring subscription order.
4. Set the add-on product discount amount.
Free: The product is added to the subscription for free and the customer doesn't need to opt in.
Percentage (%): Set a percent off discount. If the discount is set to 100%, the customer will still need to opt into the promotion (Discount Promotion)
Fixed ($): Set a fixed discount. If the discount is equal to or greater than the price of the product, the customer will get it for free, but will still need to opt in. (Discount Promotion)
5. Select the dates of your promotion’s duration.
Select the applicable option for Run Promo From:
Select the applicable option for Run Promo From:
mm/dd/yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy: The promo will run for the defined period of time
mm/dd/yyyy until turned off: The promo will run indefinitely from the start date
mm/dd/yyyy until X customers sampled: The promo will run from the start date until the selected number of customers have been enrolled. This applies to both the A and B groups.
6. Decide if you want to A/B test your promotions.
The purpose of A/B testing is to determine the overall impact of certain products on retention.
The purpose of A/B testing is to determine the overall impact of certain products on retention.
No: There will be no other segments, and all the settings you’ve already selected apply to all customers meeting the promotion criteria.
Yes, X% with and X% without: Set a percentage of customers to receive the promotion and a percentage of customers that will not receive it.
Yes (vs a different product/promotion): Test the current promotion against a different one to see which performs better.
Select a product variant.
Set the add-on product discount amount.
Free: The product is added to the subscription for free and the customer doesn't need to opt in.
Percentage (%): Set a percent off discount. If the discount is set to 100%, the customer will still need to opt into the promotion (Discount Promotion)
Fixed ($): Set a fixed discount. If the discount is equal to or greater than the price of the product, the customer will get it for free, but will still need to opt in. (Discount Promotion)
7. At the top of the screen, click Edit Name and enter the title for your promotion.
8. Click Submit.
What happens now?
Your promotion will become active on the date you set in Step 7. Make sure you have configured your Stay Ai email notifications for the Upcoming Charge Email and/or your Promotion Offer Email to contain the Promotion Block. If you are not using Stay Ai’s email notifications, you will need to custom-configure these notifications using Stay Ai’s Klaviyo integration.
You can fully customize how promotional offers are displayed for customers from the merchant portal, like changing the messaging on the promotion announcement displayed in each subscriber’s portal, customizing modal icons, and switching up various design and color elements.
Now, your customers will be able to see that they got a discounted or free product if applicable to their subscription!
If you’re using the Promotion Offer Email, the subscriber will receive it as soon as their previous order is complete.
If you’re using the Upcoming Charge email, this notification will fire 2–5 days before the order is shipped, depending on your settings.
After clicking the promotion offer email, customers will be directed to their portal where a pop-up modal will highlight key promotion information. In that modal, customers can either accept or decline the offer as well as see information about the offer – whether it’s expired or they’ve already accepted the promotion.
From here, you will be able to access the ExperienceEngine Analytics, where you can clearly delineate a promotion’s take rate, how the promotion impacted subscriber loyalty, and the impact of customer value post-promotion.
Note: If you are not using Klaviyo (and instead another ESP), we strongly recommend enabling Stay Ai’s email notifications in order to effectively run promotional information via email. Otherwise, customers will only be notified of their ExperienceEngine promotional offer in their customer portal.
What Next?
Want to know how to manage the promotions you've created?
Click here to read our Managing Promotions article.
Have more questions?
Click here to review our ExperiencEngine FAQ article.
Looking for inspiration for building promotions?
Check out these blog articles from the Stay Ai team: