TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
subscription, customers, brands, product, brandon, purchase, loyalty program, merchants, ribeye, question, recharge, point, touched, portal, transactional, personalization, create, membership, subscribers, ltv
SPEAKERS
Brandon Amoroso, Yaw Aning, Mariah Parsons, Dan Deren, Eric Alder, Jenna Dobrin
Mariah Parsons 00:00
Gonna go ahead and get us started. So I'm Mariah here at Malomo. And I'm, I'm going to be our moderator for this afternoon. So on behalf of Malomo, and all the panelists, thank you all for being here today. Super excited. I'm going to introduce our panelists. So Brandon amoroso is the founder and president of electric, which is a retention Marketing Agency recently acquired by drinks. And in his free time, he is at home with his dog Bella and traveling for food and wine adventures. very jealous Brandon. Dan, Darren is the Senior Partner Manager at CLEVEO, which is a unified customer platform. And in his free time he likes to hike mountain bike make pizza from scratch, which is very impressive. I cannot do that. And he's currently training for the Chicago Marathon. Yeah, inning is the CEO and co founder of Malomo, which is the post purchase best purchase post purchase tracking platform and when he is not fearlessly leading the Malomo team, he is at home enjoying fatherhood with his two kids and wife. Eric Adler is the VP of partnerships at revive a personalization platform that creates intelligent shopping experiences. Outside of work, He also enjoys skiing, biking, running in the mountains, and of course, spending time with his family. And Jenna dough brings unique and diverse experience ranges from media and advertising to e commerce tech. So after four years in advertising, sales and account management at Hulu, she is now a partner manager at Reebok or recharge scuze. Me and she's helped to build out their agency partner channel. And when she's not talking about LTV and subscriptions, Jenna enjoys playing tennis and exploring LA's food scene. So not only is our panel filled with outdoorsy go getters, but of course, econ experts, and that is why they're here. So with that, I'm going to stop sharing my screen, and we're gonna get started. So before we can really dive into Subscriptions for ecommerce brands, let's chat about why subscription subscription programs can be influential for a brand. So I'm first going to check or pass it off to you, Brandon, you work with a ton of brands. And so do you think that any brands can have a subscription program? Tell us why or why not?
Brandon Amoroso 02:24
Yeah, I mean, I really think for some brands, it's very obvious, like if you're a consumable brand, obviously, you can have a subscription program because you're like eating or drinking your way through the product or using it in the case of skincare. But I think there's some really interesting applications as well, for sites that even have like a single hero SKU that's just a one time purchase. And then thinking about additives that you can put on top of that. So like we had a client that we worked with, probably a year and a half ago, now that sold a like a cold plunge tub. And obviously, you're typically only buying one of those, but we added in a subscription component a few months into it that was sort of like service oriented. And so keeping like a maintenance plan for that particular laptop. So that was a great way to not only like keep nurturing the customer relationship, but also extract some extra revenue and lifetime value of that customer. So I think that's probably the weirdest use case I've seen for subscriptions. But I think it's definitely possible for anyone, and they just have so much potential, because you can create this VIP sort of aspect and community feel around it, where you're gating certain, like content certain offers certain like features and functionality behind that subscription program. And so whether it's percentage off exclusive content, I've seen really cool things done with like supplement companies where you have access to a nutritionist once a month. So a bunch of really unique and interesting things that you can weave into your subscription program that create these stronger customer relationships. So I'm a big proponent of it.
Mariah Parsons 04:09
Yeah, no, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing. I love those unique use cases because I feel like it's it can be difficult to kind of take a step back and be like, okay, subscriptions, you usually think about consumer goods, but how can you really tie in different ways, different models to, you know, that relate to your brand? And so I'm going to open it up to the rest of our panelists. Can you all either, you have the same question as Brandon, why do you think any brand can have a subscription program or even why do you think that subscription? A subscription model has a ton of potential for brands?
Jenna Dobrin 04:42
Yeah, I can chime in. I think Brandon, you know, hit the nail on the head perfectly that what comes to mind kind of naturally when you think of subscriptions are those replenishable goods. So certainly, you know, brands and the health and Well in this category like supplements or skincare, food and beverage like Brandon's touched on makes a ton of sense. But I do think he's spot on that they're interesting use cases, for brands that maybe you wouldn't necessarily think of. I think one emerging category we're really seeing on the recharge side is the fashion and apparel category. So again, not a category where you would think, let me subscribe to a pair of sunglasses and get a different pair every month. But you can implement something like a membership model, where a customer can pay a recurring fee to access special benefits. So similar to kind of the Amazon Prime approach where where you're paying that annual membership fee to access other cool benefits and opportunities. One brand that comes to mind that we work with is Pella, which is a phone case company. So again, not one that would necessarily, you know, trigger subscription. But they implemented a VIP membership offering called the Pella collective. And when they launched that they saw 7000 subscribers join in the first two months also was great for average order value increases, having maybe that phone case, purchase one time, but also that membership add as well. Just you know, created a great additional upside for the brand. So yeah, I think to your point where I am Brandon's point, definitely some unique use cases that wouldn't necessarily come to mind when you think subscriptions but are really successful.
Brandon Amoroso 06:36
And I think one thing with those unique subscription programs with the ability to like, let your customers know what's going to be coming, especially if it's like a random, like, let's say like a T shirt of the month club or something, you can always just skip it. So if you have those transactional emails and texts set up, that way, you're not having people churn, you're just allowing them to skip but still keeping them on as a network. Yeah,
Eric Alder 07:05
one thing to add, so rebuy, we're personalization, a lot of that is product recommendations. So cross selling and upselling existing customers. So subscriptions, obviously increase the LTV, but it also gives brands additional tools to cross sell, and upsell and recommend products, whether it's one time or subscription in those relevant use cases. So it's another tool in the toolkit for brands that have more than one product.
Mariah Parsons 07:39
Yeah, I love that point, Eric, I think the personalization aspect, I know we're definitely going to touch upon. And I think Brandon, to your point of the transactional emails and really communicating, you know, if you're going to skip an order, that's the, that's what subscription programs can do to elevate and really makes sure that they're catering to each of their customers. And so one thing that is very important for the customers for the subscription experience is, of course, the customer journey. And so with that, yeah, I'm going to toss you another question is where do you see that brands can specifically in the post purchase space? So like those transactional emails that Brandon just touched upon? Where can brands elevate their subscription program or adoption?
Yaw Aning 08:33
Yeah, for sure. Thanks. So when when you think about like, transactional messages, they tend to be the most open most viewed messages, especially around like post purchase order delivery, customers really want to know where their stuff is, I think one of the benefits of subscription businesses is that it naturally has built in touch points that you can start to leverage to build your your business and creative ways. So like obvious low hanging fruit is like using those touch points to just make your customers aware that you've got a subscription program that exists and some of the benefits that it provides. Like your customers are super excited to hear from you. So why not introduce the program to those those consumers at the time. And then like if you're, if you are, you know, trying to get more advanced, I think a lot of merchants that are starting to like really drive their subscription business forward. They're doing a couple of things. They're starting to segment their post purchase experience based on subscription status, right? If somebody's a first time buyer, you should be highlighting your hero subscription products, trying to upsell those first time buyers into a subscription of that product. Like Eric was saying, I'm On the ribeye side, right, they do a really tremendous job of being able to, like handle that logic for you. And so another thing that I think about and Jenna, Jenna touched on this a bit is, you know, I also think you need to like, think about the lifestyle of your consumer, like how your product fits into that lifestyle. I think the best brands are, you know, they're not only able to make the subscriptions, a utility for the customer, but they're also thinking about ways to make the brand new utility. So you don't always have to think about like subscription like generous thing in terms of like, what product you're selling. It's like, what do you also unlock by being part of this, like, unique group or program? And so what other content can you be delivering to that consumer alongside the product? Like for CPG brands, right recipes are a great example of this, how do you weave in, weave in your product into their daily, weekly monthly routines, it's valuable for them. So I think there's a lot of opportunities there on post purchase, because it's such a highly engaged, highly engaged from the customer experience, there's so much you can do to really unlock the value of that program.
Dan Deren 11:15
If I can build on top of that, I think one of the things Malomo is really good at in particular, is being able to add the content on the post purchase, experience and educate consumers on what type of value they'll get through a subscription. One customer that is a claim to customers italic.com, that does it that has a membership program. And they do an incredible job about explaining the benefits of their membership. And they get me every time but they one of their benefits is like a Tuesday sale, that's for members only well, they're heavily discount one of their products that's in high demand, or they have overstock and they send it out, but you're constantly seeing reminders of what type of value you get through that membership in that post purchase experience that they have.
Mariah Parsons 12:03
Yeah, that's a great point. And I love that you bring up memberships to you because it fits right into the subscription category. And so that's a great example, right, of making sure that you have all the information that a customer should know, right at their fingertips. Right. It's all about making the information easily accessible. And of course, yeah, you touched upon this of transactional notifications, getting very high open rates, right. So it kind of pairs very nicely in that experience. And so I'll ask Jenna, Eric and Brandon, if you have anything else to chime in as how as to how you've seen like post purchase memberships subscriptions all tie in together?
Jenna Dobrin 12:44
Yeah, no, I think Dan and yeah, really hit the nail on the head, I think to kind of build upon the idea of you know, that that post purchase experience, just really creating a nice natural touch point, like gal mentioned. So I think one thing we're seeing is merchants really leaning into having the right promotional message messaging strategy, as well as the right transactional restaurant messaging strategy. And really meeting the customer where they are and making the you know, order management or the ability to access a sale or promotion just really frictionless. So whether it's implementing, you know, managing order notifications through SMS recharge, has an SMS product that allows customers to manage their subscription in a really frictionless way. Brandon has a ton of experience working with that product. Klaviyo does an amazing job of you know, having really an easy way to automate those transactional messages as well, just to it's a really frictionless experience for the customer. And they can easily, you know, skip an order if they have too much product or add a one time product to a subscription order to just deepen that customer relationship and also retain customers, you know, to making that experience more frictionless customer, they're less likely to get frustrated and turn off.
Brandon Amoroso 14:13
My favorite thing to do with all of our brands, is take the Malomo transactional flows and like, split them out based off of properties that we have on them and play view. And so the one that we do with every single brand that we work with is one shot versus subscription. So that way, all the One Shot transactional messaging. And on the landing page, it talks about the value props of the subscription. So that way, it's really a nice funnel for your one shot customers to then move into subscription. And because of the fact that there's so much volume and traffic on that order tracking page, they're just consistently being hammered with that messaging around why the subscription program is could be a value to them.
Eric Alder 15:00
So with personalization, we see lots of good moments to introduce product recommendations. And post purchase is a great one so that the panels, you know, referenced this in different ways, but ribeye has a strong rule builder that's complemented with our AI engine. And those recommendations can be incredibly relevant and compelling for the users. So not only does it create a great experience for the buyer, but it also is an opportunity to increase a Ovi of that initial purchase, and ultimately, the LTV of the of the buyer. So just just a great moment in time to introduce product recommendations.
Brandon Amoroso 15:41
Yeah, we include the ribeye, which is in all of our Malomo border tracking pages, too, which is really helped a ton in terms of driving conversion.
Jenna Dobrin 15:53
I heard a really great quote from one of our partner marketing managers on our team, he said that, oftentimes customers think, you know, they've made the purchase, and that's it. But for us, it's really just the beginning, like, there's so much more that you can, can offer and unlock. And that next phase of the journey, which I think everyone's touched on, is such a valuable time. So, you know, making that customer aware, and having that constant communication, like, Hey, you're in our community now. And, you know, serving up that right, relevant content and messaging, to, you know, continue that journey.
Eric Alder 16:33
And one, sorry, one other thought there. So for me, you know, even for brands that I have a lot of affinity for, it's hard to stay on top of the products that they offer and what I want to buy, so these recommendations end up, you know, for me, I shopped at Mountain hardware a lot, so a lot of outdoor gear, and there's just always new stuff that I could be buying. And it's, it's hard to stay on top of what's available. And knowing what's available is half the battle. And so I think it ends up adding a lot of value to the buyer as well.
Yaw Aning 17:06
That's such a good caller, Eric, like introducing newly launched products, like when you subscribe to things, you almost a lot of times put that stuff on autopilot. And then you don't think about until the next purchase occurs. And you make sure you you need that thing in that moment. It's such an awesome opportunity to introduce, like new things that you're doing. Ali pop does this, I think they just launched a minions version of like a banana flavored soda that they did and, and they use their post purchase experience, right to really promote that new thing and drag people to add it to their subscription order that just got placed, or surfaced that in those moments. So I think that's a really tall out of like, your customers like, Yeah, I think they're there. A lot of times, they're probably on autopilot with their subscriptions, you've got to find ways to interject the new things that you're doing into their current flow that they're already experiencing. And impulse purchase is obviously a natural, natural extension.
Mariah Parsons 18:13
Yeah, and so with that, as we're talking about being on autopilot, right, like the post purchase experience, that's really the customer experience, how do you make it seamless? And so of course, talking about subscriptions, I have to ask you, Jenna, what is the most important thing for brands to understand when it comes to a subscription program? So we've talked about the importance of it and how it creates a seamless journey and how to really amplify that program. But with recharge being, you know, this is your bread and butter. So what would you say is the most important thing or a couple of the most important things brands should really consider when they're talking about their their subscription? Model?
Jenna Dobrin 18:54
Yeah, no, I love that question. So thanks, Mariah. I think kind of the the first thing and this is maybe a little bit in the pre purchase journey, so I won't spend too much time on it. But I think the first key thing is just making the benefits of this subscription program really clear. So say, you know, on the product detail page, maybe there's the option to purchase one time, or to subscribe to the product certainly want to give customers flexibility. But if you're offering a discount to subscribers or other benefits, like making sure that's really clearly outlined to customers, we're seeing some merchants and I think Brandon touched on this to maybe in the post purchase side but also in the pre purchase side, having a subscription landing page. So a dedicated page on the site for that that subscription program and subscription products again, just kind of taking advantage of the site real estate to highlight the value of why subscription matters to that customer. So I think that'd be the first important point to consider. are. And then secondly, and this kind of feeds into that post purchase part of the journey is just really taking special care of the subscription customer once they're onboard and really nurturing the relationship with that customer. So that could be in the form of making sure customers have flexibility in their order management, which which we touched on. So making sure you have the right communication strategy setup, whether that's through automated flows with clay, VO and Malomo or via SMS. Again, to just meet a customer where they are and foster that really frictionless order management experience, I think that's just such a critical part of retaining customers. And then, you know, subscription customers really are so valuable, they're, they're the gift that keeps on giving. So leaning into those customers, and I think to your point, while they are a bit on autopilot, which you know, is great, because you're getting that recurring revenue, really taking the time to nurture that relationship, and sending educational content or the right communications, to lean into that community specifically and speak to them specifically I think is, is really critical to see a subscription program grow.
Yaw Aning 21:16
I've ever questioned, Ginni made me think of this. In Jenna, Brandon, Dan, would love to maybe hear your thoughts on this, like, I see this trend now happening with two way communication, where like, like you talked about relationships, Jenna, subscription customers are like the epitome of what a relationship looks like for an E commerce brand. But it's still a lot of brands, I think are still in this mindset of like we're pushing out stuff. Have you seen any merchants start to like, turn their strategies towards more like open ended? Conversation prompts to start a conversation and in the end, like, if so how are how are brands doing that?
Dan Deren 22:06
I can take crack at this. But I think one interesting thing we're doing as a company, but also what we're encouraging our customers to do as well, is to actually interview your customers, right? There's so many times where a brand will talk to their customers. And they realize that their product is being used in a different way than what they either like intended to make the product for, or just understood about their customers. So two way communication is a really great way to understand how your customers are actually using your product and how they're engaging your brand. It's, it can be difficult to do it at scale, right? I think some of the tools to be able to do so at scale are still being built out. But I certainly see like the value in asking your customers their thoughts on how they're using the product, how they like it, and building that relationship, that way to get more candid feedback is really important.
Brandon Amoroso 22:59
That's something I try to encourage our brands to do, especially to the startups, it's just create a segment and clay do have everybody who's ordered, like 10 or more times will be shocked how many customers there are there. But there's no communication strategy that's special for them. I'd say 99% of the time, even though those customers are right for not only to get feedback, but to drive additional revenue as well. But something that I've been trying to do more and more for the brands that can support it, who have like a robust customer service team, or who have an outsourced team that can handle it, is start doing those open ended conversations, like you can send a text that doesn't necessarily have a direct call to action, that's more of a question. You just have to have somebody else on the other end is just going to be there to respond. Which has been something that because it's such a conversational form of communication has worked pretty well for the brands that can't support it.
Mariah Parsons 23:55
Yeah, those are all great answers. And I this perfectly segues into a question Damn, that I wanted to ask you is, so we've been talking about, like the importance of the communication and two way communication, interviewing your customers, you know, all of those, perhaps newer things are things that are that merchants are trying out or will be in our future. And so Dan, my question for you is how can brands, specifically leverage Klaviyo to build up that subscription adoption in their transactional messaging? So we've talked about like segmentation. You could dive into that a little bit deeper. I think that'd be great.
Dan Deren 24:31
Yeah, it's a great question. I think we've been hinting at how clay Vo is used throughout this whole call. Right? But the beauty of clay Vo is that we have all the data we're integrated with Malomo recharge ribeye and then we have power users like electric making the magic happen. But I don't think we need to, you know, corner ourselves just into transactional meshes messaging, right like in clay vo you can create segments like Brandon just mentioned of all your customers who have purchased from you X amount of Heinz, and you can create all these different segments to target them with specific campaigns, and treat everyone in a unique and personalized way. And so it's really easy when you're building out your flows to make a conditional split and just say, Has someone purchased from us yes or no? Is someone a subscriber for our subscription product, yes or no and treat those two different paths accordingly. Then when it comes to your transactional messaging, where Malomo really excels, as what was mentioned earlier, you guys have all these extra added points of shipping notifications, order and transit order delivered and so on, which gives you all these different touch points to be able to, again, split out your flow to be like, is this person or subscriber not in this specific touchpoint and personalize it even further, they're in, in these confirmation emails, they get so much web traffic, they get so many views, right, it's really important to tailor your experiences to that type of customer, what they're using your products for, and who they are and what they purchased. So I think the beauty of clay Vo is allowing you to get all your data in one place and really understand who your customers are, so you can interact with them appropriately throughout the entire customer journey.
Yaw Aning 26:15
I was gonna I was gonna say one of one of the interesting things that I think you can also think about. So Brandon touched on this, right, like, looking at customers who buy from you a lot, like being smart about that data in the message that you're trying to drive. So like if somebody bought from you in LA, and they're not a subscriber, like creative messaging around, you could have saved X amount of dollars, if you would subscribe to this product, or like trying to understand what are the fears that are driving them not to subscribe, if they've bought from you so much. Danny touched on like interviewing your customers? Like, that's a great question. It's a surface to see like, why are you so loyal to us? But like not taking advantage of this feature? That seems like it's right up your alley. So I think I think like these platforms generate a ton of data, right? Like ribeye recharges clay, VO they all generate a ton of insight. And it can I think one of the key things is like how do you then leverage that data and insight to drive the actions that you need for the business. And that like just jumped out to me is like one really, really key one as you as you all were talking?
Dan Deren 27:32
Yeah, totally agree. And to come back to something we talked about earlier, especially we're gonna like Malomo strength is is the content at the end, or in that post purchase experience, right. I was actually watching one of Brandon's YouTube videos that I'll post in the in the chat here. But he's talking about how they have a landing page for subscribers and a landing page for nonsubscribers, which is super important because your landing page for subscribers is going to be you know, showcasing how to use the product and making sure that they understand that they're getting the most out of it and continuing to build value there. Whereas your landing page for nonsubscribers is going to be more geared. So getting to this, getting them to subscribe and the benefits of that subscription. And again, segmentation and clay vo makes all that possible. And all the data points and events we get from these platforms is what allows that to happen.
Eric Alder 28:24
And I think to build on that part of what we see in our data is that the more personalized the offer is, the higher the conversion rate is the higher the ARV is and so fits perfectly with a segmented approach with clay vo emails and personalizing it at scale for for all of our customers
Mariah Parsons 28:51
Yeah, I want to emphasize like that, that data point all three of these examples have been great of platforms that can really share more about your customer, their you're able to inform your strategy right and so before we transition into more of that personalization, I want to give Jenna and branded give you the space if you have anything else to add like cool use cases that you've seen as far as you know how you're able to kind of build up that messaging
Jenna Dobrin 29:27
Yeah, I can add it and I think you know, the question about the power of clay vo you know, one thing that I've been thinking about which is on that same vein of creating just really seamless experiences for customers. We have a great feature with our clay vo integration, called quick actions. And Brandon has been a great adopter of this and implemented this strategy with a lot of the brands he's working with. But essentially quick actions are links that can be embedded into clay vo flows and campaigns that allow a customer to take an action on their subscription just by clicking that link, then there's a two step authentication process. And then that action gets taken. So a customer doesn't necessarily have to log into their account to make a change to their subscriptions. So I think there's just been some really innovative and creative ways to make that customer experience even easier, you know, taking the guesswork out of it. So definitely, you know, something that we're seeing adopted more and more as a way to just keep order management easy. And again, meeting that customer where they are and putting that power in their hands.
Brandon Amoroso 30:48
Yeah, and the reason why I love it so much is because we can do so many different, just crazy things based off of the fact that every other app that we use plugs in there. So we have data from the loyalty program, we have data from the referral program, we have data from the quizzes, we have data from the reviews, so even little things like taking an automated flow, okay, somebody just left a five star review, but they're a one shot customer. Now let's communicate with them in a particular way that will get them over to the subscription, because they literally just gave a five star review, like a minute ago, here's the perfect time to start to communicate with them to get them over. But that's only possible because of the fact that it all integrates into this one central hub. That is that is played yet.
Dan Deren 31:34
If I can make a shameless plug tune into our product event tomorrow to hear more about what Brandon's saying on our data capabilities.
Brandon Amoroso 31:43
Isn't that what this is for shameless plugs?
Mariah Parsons 31:47
Yeah, this is this is the lead up. Come on. This is we're hyping you all up? That's incredible. Yeah, no, that thank you all for contributing. I agree. Jenna, amazing layup. Yeah. So this is I mean, yeah, this is so important. I hope everyone's getting so much value out of this. Just hearing you all talk has been so cool. And so I want to transition us now more into like that personalization. So similar. We have touched upon it before. But Eric, I would love to know if you could kind of walk us through like with ribeye, all the data that you guys have all the personalization aspects. Can you walk us through? Exactly, you know, what brands can do to elevate their subscription program? Yeah, so
Eric Alder 32:31
I think I'll just touch on themes that have already been shared by the group here. So you know, ribeye, we sit at the intersection of AI and E commerce. And we combine that and surface make it really easy for brands to surface product recommendations for buyers. And I think relevancy has come up multiple times personalized product recommendations that are relevant. And then Jenna, you've talked quite a bit about reducing friction. So we do this in various ways. And we think about it across the lifecycle. So as a brand, need to acquire subscribers need to retain those subscribers and in ideally, increase the number of subscriptions that they have. And then if they do churn and turn the subscription off, winning them back at some point, and we see consistently value being created at each point along that journey. And this may be a shameless plug, but I think it highlights everything that the group has, has shared here, I want to just show how we do this at one point of that journey. So this is Magic spoon, it happens to be a joint customer of many of us on the panel here. And so this is the product page. So when you hit Add Card, you know, there's there's the option to change the subscription here on the page. If the buyer doesn't do that, and you add it to the cart, this, this happens to be a revised cart shore, we call it Smart Cart, but it could, it could be any card drawer. And we make it really easy reduce friction to switch this into a subscription, or ever. Switch this one time purchase into a subscription, you can adjust the frequency here right in the cart to align with what that buyer actually needs increase the length was with which they stay on the subscription. And then here it's really easy to add a one time product to that subscription purchase. So high relevance personalized for the user based on the AI that essentially product purchase history and what that user has done on the site in a very frictionless way. And that increases the number of new subscribers and rebuy we happen to do that across the whole journey and with these partners post purchase as well. And what we typically see with Customers who implemented across the journey is an increase of 20 to 30%. of new subscribers through these features, and not uncommon for ao V to increase by 10 to 15%. So just a ton of value there in personalizing across the store, and post purchase with, you know, order tracking emails. And essentially, you know, Brandon and other agencies who are implementing this. So just super cool to see those numbers. On the really high end, we just published a case study, one of our customers implemented it, they saw an increase of 67% new subscribers, and ao V increased almost by 50%. So you can see outsized returns as well. But on the average, we see, you know, just a ton of value when you implement subscriptions in a relevant personalized, frictionless way across the journey.
Yaw Aning 36:00
I'm curious, this may be a question for for Jen and Eric. I'm curious, like what percentage of merchants who launched a subscription program to build a like a subscription portal? And in like, Are there any best practices there in terms of like, subscription, like order management and like, product recommendations in that portal?
Jenna Dobrin 36:28
Eric, you want to start and then I can, I can.
Eric Alder 36:32
Yeah, so I can't avoid the shameless plug on this one. I was trying to figure out a way to do it. So So we recently launched a feature and essentially, in the portal, rebuy can be used to surface make product recommendations, or subscription recommendations in the portal. And it hasn't been live very long. I think it's probably a month or two at this point. And we're seeing customers adopt it, they're seeing value, but it's still early in terms of specific numbers across our full base.
Jenna Dobrin 37:05
Yeah, I think with with recharge, we we are seeing that the majority of customers are, or the majority of merchants, excuse me are actually having a portal, their customer portal setup. And I think one big key there is making sure all features in the portal are toggled on. So with returns, you can you can customize what you want to have, you know, a customer to be able to have access to but I think it's important to have any feature, you know, live. So the ability for a customer to skip a shipment easily to swap a product. In our out of the box customer portal, we have a product grid, that can has other products within the suites that a customer can easily add on one time or add as a subscription. definitely seeing a lot of that behavior adopted, and to Eric's point adding in making that more personalized and custom is, you know, on on the roadmap, and I think that will further amplify the that full customer experience within the portal on that post purchase journey. But today, I definitely think the the customer portal is critical to keep that that LTV high and retention, you know, strong.
Yaw Aning 38:27
The so on on a lot of Malomo tracking experiences for brands that do have subscriptions. They often surface account links on the tracking pages. So when they're tracking their current order that's in transit, often going to the Account page and managing their subscription as well. click throughs to account pages are insane. They're very high. So I was curious to hear like across merchants what you all are seeing in terms of like these merchants building custom portals or portal management for subscriptions, because we see a lot of a lot of engagement around that. On the tracking side.
Eric Alder 39:09
Yeah, and it's still early on our end, but we anticipate this being a key moment for merchants and brands to increase the number of subscriptions per subscriber. So, you know, anticipate a real good return in terms of LTV and length of that customer.
Mariah Parsons 39:31
Yeah, that's the great question. Yeah. I'm gonna see Brandon and Dan, do you have like, have you seen similar trends? As far as you know, Eric just mentioned like a key moment in the customer experience as far as portal like subscription portal management goes.
Brandon Amoroso 39:47
Who want to go first standard,
Dan Deren 39:54
should I I think you have the more relevant experience here.
Brandon Amoroso 39:59
So I I mean, one of my goals, when we're working with a brand is, how can we use email and texts to actually not have them go through the portal? Which is, I mean, there's a lot of values once you get into portal, like creating some content experiences, and also having like the additional product upsells. But for some people, like the ideal is that they just do everything via email or text. And so how do we take the benefits of the portal, and like, get them into our email and SMS communications. And so like with click Actions, for example, I can theoretically never even log into my account, which for me, would be great. Like I just I'm getting shown, like rebuy recommended products within there, I'm getting shown, I can skip, I can ship now I can add an upcoming product to this order. All that can be managed right within just the email. And because of the fact that it's transactional to I'm going to receive it, and I'm most likely going to interact with it as well. So one of our goals is to think about reducing friction. And the portal is great, but there's always inherently a little bit of friction with having to like login and getting in there. So I think there's a lot of value to try and think about how can you take the benefits of the portal experience and try to create them an email and tax?
Jenna Dobrin 41:25
Yeah, I think that's such a great point, Brandon, I think we've seen with the launch of our, you know, recharge SMS product and having clay vo quick actions, you know, that functionality as well, just the savings that we're seeing in customer support costs for brands, you know, to Brandon's point, if you're not able to log in, that immediately creates friction. And it's frustrating. So to take that out of the equation, we have we have some great data that showed that that's is that hypothesis is exactly spot on that that it has reduced support cost significantly for brands.
Brandon Amoroso 42:05
Yeah, with recharges SMS, like there's not an account I've been in yet that doesn't have the increase in the lifetime value for the users that do interact with SMS versus those who don't. And so the more you can get, even if it's a skip, which like historically, you think, oh, maybe if you're skipping, it's going to reduce LTV, it actually doesn't, it has the opposite effect. So it's been super, super valuable for us. But there's some really cool portals out there too, especially like it, you could turn it into sort of like a membership hub. So not only do you get like all the product recommendations from rebuy, but then you have like some gated content that you can only get to through logging into the portal. I think that's where the portals can get can get really neat. Yeah, that's a
Mariah Parsons 42:53
great point. And I love that you offered up another option, right? Because that just feeds into the personalization as far as giving multiple options for each customer like what they prefer, right? i If you want to go into your portal and really have it be, make sure that you have all the boxes checked, you know, everything's right. Or if you just want the frictionless way of through email and SMS you have both right? That's, that's the beauty and all these technologies being able to work together and having powerhouses to then implement these technologies and really infer on the strategy. And so I know we just got a question about the recording, which I answered in the chat. But I wanted to share live just so everyone knows we will be recording because this has been phenomenal information. So thank you all we're going to move into our q&a section. So we've gotten a couple now how we're gonna go about these. Yeah, I'm gonna pitch them to the group unless they're specifically targeted towards someone and then we'll have a discussion about all these questions. So Preston, I see that you just pitched one. And the question for our panelists is, how do you recommend or see brands intersecting memberships slash loyalty programs with subscriptions, so whoever wants to take a first spin on it, go ahead.
Dan Deren 44:13
I'll quickly add my two cents. But this is why collecting all the proper data points and events in clay Vo is so important so that you can segment out your loyalty program members, your subscription members, your memberships, and also find the overlaps right and treat each customer differently. Whereas like if someone's a subscriber, but not in your loyalty program, you can be tailoring your messaging to include them into your loyalty program or on the opposite side as well. So being able to properly segment your customers and make sure you have all the integration setup is really really important. So many times we'll hop into a brand new account and see that they're using clay vo they're using ribeye, but they don't have the to integrate it. So connecting the dots there is really important to make sure that people are utilizing all of these tools properly.
Mariah Parsons 45:08
Anyone else want to take a stab at how you would recommend intersecting membership and loyalty programs when it comes to subscriptions? It's a great question.
Yaw Aning 45:23
It's a hard yet hard question, as I was trying to think through this a little bit, because it's like the I mean, one of the things you don't want to do, I just have the one program cannibalize the other, right? Like you, you want to really focus on a strategy and drive that strategy. So if it's like we need to build our loyalty program, you'd likely want to find more ways to surface that program to people who are not in it. But then that's another opportunity where you also might want to drop in subscriptions. And so I think it's a delicate balance between like, potentially a be testing that strategy and seeing what works the best for your brand in those moments. But I do think that to play well together, I think you have to look at margins in your business too, right? Likely, if you've got a loyalty program, you're giving discounts, giving pre pre product and gifts to those customers to maintain their loyalty. If they're subscribing, you're also likely discounting on that subscription. So like thinking really critically about the margin and whether somebody is in both of those programs against that product. But I think the two also it's natural, like hand in hand that they work together. Um, so I mean, it's a really good question.
Brandon Amoroso 46:39
So I mean, something I see a lot of is brands, I would say, trying to do too much all at once, with limited resources. So like, if you want to have a robust loyalty, memberships, and subscription program, okay, you better have the team to support that, because people are going to expect that something comes with that. And I can't tell you how many sites I've seen that just like have a loyalty programs are thrown out there. And there's no real, I would say, like intention or thought behind it. So it doesn't generate the ROI that you think you'd get from it. And it ends up just being a sunk cost for you. So I think, maybe start with one, go all in on that. And then think about how you can extend it from there. But something I've been curious about with memberships is like some people just don't want to be on a subscription. So if you have all these gated perks, your subscription program, maybe your membership gives you access to those gated perks, but you just can purchase one time now but still get the same benefits that you would have as a subscription customer.
Mariah Parsons 47:49
Yeah, I love that point of really making it like that maybe there's some hesitancy to joining a subscription program. So giving another option. Jen and Eric, do you have any ideas as to how you would navigate membership and loyalty programs with subscriptions? I
Jenna Dobrin 48:13
think I really liked what Dan brought up about making sure you're different, you know, apps in your tech stack are talking to one another and properly integrated. So I think one unique way to kind of merge subscriptions with loyalty and give further benefit to subscribers is, you know, when you have a loyalty program, like loyalty line, or yacht Po, for example, integrated with something like recharge, you can offer double points to subscribers that then can be you know, used at a later time or a gift with purchase or something extra that that ties into just creating additional value for subscribers. But the key there will be making sure you know, the apps in your tech stack are seamlessly integrated. And I think that everyone on this panel really beautifully does integrate together. So you know, making sure that and consideration when you're looking to implement different programs, how do they all feed into one another to create that halo effect? And just kind of add add additional value and harmoniously work?
Mariah Parsons 49:29
Yeah, for sure. I really I really liked that point on emphasizing all of that. Yeah, that halo effect. Aaron, or Eric, before we move on, do you? Do you have anything you would like to say before I got another question sent to me.
Eric Alder 49:44
I think just real quick. With our customers, we're always looking for new opportunities to cross sell and upsell and this group is touched on that but but another opportunity to take what's being done in the loyalty program and cross sell products subscriptions that are outside of that program. And yeah, making sure that that's coordinated.
Mariah Parsons 50:06
Yeah, that's a great point. I love that. So got another question. And so we've been talking about giving flexibility to your customers and creating that frictionless experience. But I think we could all agree it's inevitable, if it's inevitable that some customers are going to have maybe not so great of an experience. So how can you kind of rectify being either the brand or the technology? How can you rectify that? That experience that a consumer might have through a subscription program? Another another hard hitter?
Brandon Amoroso 50:47
Your key repeat that last part? So I can fully digest it?
Mariah Parsons 50:51
Of course, of course I can. So if someone has a bad experience with a subscription program, how do you rectify that either from you know, a brands or technology pointment point like optimization, something of that sort.
Brandon Amoroso 51:07
I guess it depends on what the negative experience was. Again, like, if somebody leaves a negative review, you can have a clay vo flow associated with that. And then you can also have some something gorgeous set up to automatically like get to that customer and try and address it right away. Try to get on the phone with them, talk to them, see what went wrong. Sometimes there are things you can do sometimes, sometimes not, there's not always going to be a solution, either. But I think having some automations built around, it will help for sure.
Jenna Dobrin 51:49
Why one feature that we have as part of our recharge SMS product, because I, you know, can imagine a scenario where a customer maybe is texting something they're not happy about or they got the wrong product, or hopefully that never happens, given all of the amazing technology that that we're we have. But one thing with recharge SMS is it does send an automated prompt to the customer where they can, you know, choose from a menu of options. But if the customer you know, writes something that's outside of that prompt, that automatically does feed into whatever helpdesk integration that the merchant has set up, to kind of take it into the the CS side. That way, a customer isn't just stuck, get out texting and not getting the response that that they're looking for. So having those those things in place, I think helps, you know, just combat some of those situations where a customer might be frustrated. And getting them right into the hands of support are in a ticketing system to make sure that issue gets resolved. I think it's really key.
Brandon Amoroso 53:08
I don't know where I saw it. But I saw somewhere that three year customers who have a negative experience, if you make it like do right by them, they actually turn out to be better customers over time than those who just have like normal experiences. And you can actually turn them into like a brand advocate that so I thought that was really interesting, too, was like maybe I should maybe we should start having poor experiences on the first order and making it right and then having crazy LTV.
Mariah Parsons 53:38
Yo let us know how that goes. Brandon. That'll be the next webinar. We'll have a recap.
Brandon Amoroso 53:43
Shopify app I come out with
Mariah Parsons 53:46
no, I love that. I mean, it's great. Yeah.
Dan Deren 53:49
Is that what you mean? When you talk about surprise and delight? Brandon?
Brandon Amoroso 53:52
Exactly. Surprise, your package is three months delayed. And I don't know if we charge your credit card again for no reason.
Mariah Parsons 54:02
It's perfect. We have a couple of minutes left. So we got one question. We're gonna get it try and get an answer to so thank you to homage But his question is how do you go about segmenting or what are the best practices when you want to identify customers with high AOP but sometimes they don't cross the threshold for your set AOP. So I can repeat it if we need or if anyone wants to take a stab.
Brandon Amoroso 54:29
The first part was best practices for segmentation, right?
Mariah Parsons 54:33
Yeah, how do you go about segmenting when customers have high o v. A OB
Brandon Amoroso 54:43
or somebody else talk because I feel like I'm doing all the time
Jenna Dobrin 54:54
I feel like you
Brandon Amoroso 54:55
should go back and just keep talking. Yeah. Go for it. So I think for segmentation Just in general, I like to think about what could be a value in terms of personalization of an experience? And then from there, you can back out how do I need to segment to get to that personalization. But also, even earlier than that, like, now that you know what you need to segment, how do you get the data? Like is a zero party data? Is it first party data? So in this case, with a EOB, it would be first party data? And what sort of, like sort of tactics can you use to get it higher? Whatever your let's say they're spending $50, but you want them to be spending $60? Well, just like send them an email saying if they spend above $60, they're gonna get back. Or something along those lines would be one really easy thing I think you could potentially implement or throw on a subscription, incentivize bulk, but less frequency. So as opposed to ordering one unit every month or three, every three months, keep your shipping costs down, and you stay over that way as well. Just a couple of things.
Mariah Parsons 56:07
Yeah, those are great. Does anyone want to add something in before we wrap it up real quick? Everyone, good. Okay, well, perfect. I think that's a great note to end on. Thank you so much for everyone, for our panelists. For anyone that worked to get this up and running so that we all could be learning here together. Thank you. It has been wonderful and we appreciate you. Like I said, we will be sharing the recording. So look out for that. And if anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to us. But it's been great. Thank you to everyone who engaged in the chat as well. Bye.
Yaw Aning 56:44
Thanks, everyone. Thanks. Good to see everybody