How Aria Supported Arlo’s Expansion Strategy, While Reducing Churn From Double Digits to 2.6%
About Arlo
As a leading provider of home security cameras, Arlo’s aim is to provide peace of mind to every household. Arlo’s durable and affordable security cameras are supported by Arlo Secure, a security monitoring subscription service.
Arlo started life as part of Netgear, a networking hardware company, before becoming their own entity in 2018. Netgear had been an Aria customer since 2014, and continues to be an Aria customer today.
Having made its mark on the home security segment, Arlo took its first steps into the world of personal security in November 2022 with the launch of Arlo Safe, a personal security solution. With just the tap of a button, users can be connected to a live security expert, who can summon emergency help. Arlo Safe also has a range of features that support driver and family safety.
Arlo operates in 38 countries across North America, APAC and Europe.
Arlo’s billing requirements
As Arlo transitioned out of Netgear, they conducted a full market evaluation to identify the billing solution that would best meet their requirements, which were:
The ability to support Arlo’s expansion strategy, which included introducing new business models and lines of business.
The ability to support new billing models and architectures, such as umbrella accounts that could cover both home and personal security.
Churn reduction capabilities (both voluntary and involuntary).
PCI compliance. As market leaders in the privacy and security segment, Arlo takes the privacy of their customers’ data extremely seriously. Arlo are PCI-compliant and only use PCI-compliant products.
Why Arlo chose Aria
Having completed their market evaluation, Arlo decided to stay with Aria as it met their requirements in full. Aria can support complex account structures and a wide range of billing models, and it has advanced churn reduction capabilities. Aria is also PCI-compliant. As an added security measure, Aria provides granular levels of flexibility for access rights, which would enable Arlo to create and define their own roles and permission sets.
In addition to this, Arlo preferred Aria’s UI and found it easier to use than other billing platforms. Ultimately, it was Aria’s superior functionality, and the strong relationship that Arlo already had with Aria that led to Arlo choosing to stay with Aria.
The implementation
As part of their transition out of Netgear, Arlo needed to implement their own instance of Aria. This was a complex project with two essential requirements:
The need to migrate subscribers to the latest version of Aria, with minimal downtime or disruption.
The need to develop an architecture that was compatible with Arlo’s strategy to implement new business models and launch new lines of business.
The project was complicated by the fact that there were so many different types of accounts to migrate – some were business, some were consumer, some were receiving a discount, some were in dunning – from across 38 different countries.
Some 700,000 accounts were migrated in total, in a project that took around six weeks to complete. Amazingly, there was no downtime and no customer disruption at all.
“The implementation went well. It was a well-planned architecture with a perfect game plan. The Aria team were true partners.”
Aashima Sahgal, Senior Director of Subscription, eCommerce and CRM
Since spinning off from Netgear and implementing their own instance of Aria, Arlo has experienced impressive growth – from just a small set of subscribers in 2018, to2 million in 2023. This growth is largely a result of Arlo’s strategy to implement new business models and launch new product lines, such as Arlo Safe.
Churn reduction
Aria has worked closely with Arlo to improve their dunning processes and reduce churn. In fact, Arlo’s churn rates have dropped dramatically – from double-digits down to 2.6%. This success was achieved via a three-part smart retry strategy:
Optimizing Arlo’s dunning intervals.
Using Aria’s Credit Card Retry solution, which identifies the best date on which to retry a customer’s credit card in the event of a failed payment, alongside Chase’s Account Updater, which updates the customer’s credit card details before they enter the dunning cycle.
Using Aria Events to trigger in-app dunning messages. These messages are used alongside dunning emails to create a sense of urgency, which often results in immediate action from the customer.
API performance
API performance is very important to Arlo, but when they first separated from Netgear, they experienced some issues, mainly due to the volume of data and the parameters involved. Aria helped Arlo to refine their APIs, improving performance from over a minute to just a few seconds.
Considering the success of Aria and Arlo’s partnership, Aashima Sahgal commented, “If cameras are our bread and butter, Aria is our bloodline.”
What’s next for Arlo?
Over the next few years, Arlo aims to increase their presence in the total home security segment by enhancing Arlo Safe’s functionality and rolling it out to new markets. Arlo is exploring new B2B partnerships and is working with employers to offer Arlo Safe as a perk to their employees.
As Arlo explores new business models and product lines, Aria will continue to be a true partner, providing the billing functionality and expertise that will unlock their ongoing success.
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