TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
customers, mixers, product, brand, customer experience, returns, consumer, love, insight, marketing, women, consumer insights, customer feedback, put, branding, supplements, experience, people, subscription, purchase
SPEAKERS
Savannah Benson, Mariah Parsons
Mariah Parsons 00:05
Greetings and welcome to retention Chronicles, the podcast with learnings from expert e commerce brands and partners. I'm your host, Ryan Parsons. If you're here, you're either on a quest for ecommerce enlightenment, or you accidentally clicked the wrong link. Either way, I am thrilled you stumbled into our corner of the internet. And I hope you'll stick around. We've got pearls of wisdom for everyone, whether you're running a multimillion dollar business, or simply just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey. Before we unleash the brilliance of today's guest, let's give a shout out to our podcast sponsor Malomo. Malomo is so much more than just another Shopify app, their post purchase wizards making beautiful and branded order tracking smoother than a jazz solo. So our amazing founders, like our guests can keep their customers happy and up to date while they track their orders. So hit that subscribe button, like it'll increase your LTV overnight, and go listen to her other episodes echo malomo.com That's gomalomo.com Get ready for insights chuckles and perhaps a profound realization or two with this newest episode of retention Chronicles. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to retention Chronicles. Like I say so many times it feels like on this podcast. This is the best part of my day when I get to sit down with all of our amazing ecommerce leaders that are doing really cool stuff in the space. And today is no different. So So Savannah, thank you so much for joining us here today. We were talking about this before you hopped on or before we started recording. And we actually had your coworker Dallas on this podcast as well, which is fine, because we've never had someone from two people from the same team who are on the same recording. We've done two team members together on the podcast. So this is a fun, new way. And I'm excited to hear everything that you know and love and your experience at mixers. So I will pass the mic metaphorically over to you. And let you say hello to our listeners and introduce yourself. Hello,
Savannah Benson 02:13
yes, as Mariah said, Dallas was on this podcast. And she told me so many great things. So good.
Mariah Parsons 02:20
I'm glad hopefully we live up to it.
Savannah Benson 02:24
It's it's great to be here. I'm Savannah, I'm from mixers. I have a background in actually marketing analytics. And then I worked in brand for a while. And then all of my interest in consumer insights and strategy and consumer behavior has kind of led to my evolvement in customer experience, which has been really awesome. So yeah, I've been at mixers for about two years now. And for those who don't know, mixers is a hormone friendly supplement brand made for women by women. We have 15 hormone friendly supplements for women that are highly absorbable hormone friendly, and so enjoyable. They're all they all come in drink packets. So super fun to mix and match and increase nutrients in our diet. Love
Mariah Parsons 03:16
it. I actually forgot to mention this before we got on the recording. But I just went to shop talk I don't know if you were there, if any of your team was there. But I went to the amazing women in e Commerce event that a lot of amazing peeps in the E commerce space held or sponsored. And in their gift bag, they had some mixers packets, which I was like, oh my god, this is literally so ironic because it was in between when I was at shop talk was in between when I spoke with 1000 when I was going to now speak to you and I was like, wow, sometimes the world is just so funny, you know? So
Savannah Benson 03:54
certain dividends. That's why it's so fun. I didn't know that was Yep,
Mariah Parsons 03:58
there we go. Um, yeah, so huge fans, great introduction. I with like coming from marketing and branding to then going into the ecommerce customer experience and like consumer insights side of things. Have you always been more of a numbers person or more of a like creative branded, branding type of person? I don't know if you can really distinguish the two, but it's interesting. That's a
Savannah Benson 04:24
really good question. So I have been super interested in the numbers, actually for years. So whenever I was in my undergrad, I had a particular interest in like accounting, finance, and then the marketing analytics. And then when I actually got into my program in marketing, I was so curious about consumer behavior and strategy and how like, you can predict you know, what consumers are going to how they're going to behave and how that has a direct effect on revenue, things like that. And so like my more numbers Some interesting background and skill set kind of, yeah, it all kind of funneled together because I was just I've just always been extremely curious about the consumer and how they're behaving. And also, as far as like, just strategy goes, strategies also been extremely fascinating to me, I've just, yeah, a plan is not a strategy, a strategy is what's going to move us forward. And so that has, I feel like, over the years, they go hand in hand, right. And so working on more of the forefront of the marketing side, and then I actually started my marketing team here at mixers, and then just my, yeah, my skill set in consumer behavior and consumer insights, just kind of it was a natural fit to kind of move into customer experience and kind of understanding because I was doing so much research on the market side of things of what's the market doing? What are the insights, what are the consumers demanding here, and then kind of closing that gap with our voice of customer and marrying the two to improve our business and to innovate in the ways that we need to stay relevant in the market.
Mariah Parsons 06:12
I love it, I am super excited to dive into more of the, like market insights and customers. And I think you can probably, to some extent draw, draw some generalizations of like what consumers are looking at right now, especially from, you know, the what you're considering from the brand side of things. So we'll, we'll put a pin in that for later. But I wanted to ask, Have you always wanted to work in like the DTC ecommerce space? Or was that like I happily found myself working in the E commerce space? I didn't necessarily anticipate it. But some people, they know that, you know, perhaps they're more entrepreneurial. They want to work on the brand side of things is that you are you happily found yourself in this realm?
Savannah Benson 06:54
I would definitely say that I didn't know I would ever end up here. But now, customer retention marketing is a huge part of what I'm focused on.
Mariah Parsons 06:59
I think that's most people, right? It kind of finds. Yeah. Yeah,
Savannah Benson 07:02
it was not my plan every day. I'm surprising myself and my career surprising me too. But ya know, I had, I had explored a lot of different jobs, a lot of different routes, a lot of different things that I was curious in. And, at least for me, I'm super interested in health and wellness. And like, I looked into medical, and all have that. But as soon as I switched to business, at least in my degree, suddenly, like, I started to get a lot higher grades, everything just made sense. To me, it just makes business makes a lot more sense to me. Anyways, but that's why it's so fun to work for mixers, because it kind of marries the two, I'm super interested in health and wellness in my life. And the impact that a supplement a dietary supplement can have on women's health. And so being able to do those two together has been really awesome. But ya know, I couldn't have predicted being here, but it's kind of evolved and compounded over time. And it's been awesome.
Mariah Parsons 08:03
Yeah, I love it. That's actually another similarity we have in that. I also I studied neuroscience, so I was on the pre med track. And now find myself in marketing, which is been a great a blessing in disguise. And yeah, it's, I still love health and wellness. And very much focus on that more in my daily personal life. But it is kind of interesting how it, there's a lot you can do within marketing. And I think especially neuroscience, it relates so much into, like, consumer insights and buying behaviors. And, you know, trying to assume or trying to use data to then predict, you know, like, this is the specific messaging that will really relate or really resonate with customers. It's also also fascinating, but for a jump. Yeah, yeah, definitely a jump. And I do not regret one second of it. So let's zoom out a little bit and go back to when you were just starting at Nick's hers. What were some of the I know, this is you were on the marketing side, which is okay, because we talk a lot about marketing and branding and customer retention in ecommerce, because they're so related and customer experience. Um, what were kind of your biggest focuses when you were starting out on the marketing side, and then I would love to parallel that with now what are your biggest focuses on the customer experience side of things? Yeah.
Savannah Benson 09:36
Great question. Mixers is a growing company when I came in, I mean, we've grown a ton in the past two years, but it's just, it is wild to look back and see where we've come. So when I came in, we were very reactive or trying to stay day to day with our plans, at least from a marketing perspective. We're making revenue, you know, for monthly. And that has shifted, we are so much more forward thinking we're planning way ahead. We are I mean, this is a teaser, but love it. We're, we're rebranding, and it's launching in May at the end of May. And it is been such a massive undertaking. So whenever I started on the marketing team, we, as a marketing team, we saw the need for this. And the current branding had got us you know, a couple a few years, we've just skyrocketed in growth. But we were looking at it as branding that was capturing value and sustaining value in Utah, our home base, but we wanted to zoom out and apply to all women everywhere be a nationwide household brand. And so that kind of was the catalyst to the rebrand. And it's been almost two years of just this project going underway. But we we thought, if this is the business goal, and we really want to help more women, we need to look at our branding, and how does what does that have to do with the customer experience zoom out? Fast forward, customer experience is literally every person on the team. Every single person on our team touches customer experience, because it's not just customer support. It's not just the experience in the packaging. It's it's literally every touch point with our brand, social Willington everything has to do with customer experience. And so I found myself just collaborating with so many different people on the team cross functionally. But yeah, it's been absolutely incredible to just like, have that perspective on the marketing team, and then take that full circle, and apply it to our new branding. And we're, we're seeing that through now. Which has been really awesome. Yeah, that's
Mariah Parsons 11:55
so exciting. I'm always curious to hear more about a revamp brand, just like the ins and outs of it a bit more. I know, you're probably less so on the execution side of things now that you're more on the with the shift from marketing to CX. So I would rather chat about the notion of switching from being reactive to proactive. And I can relate to that on having spoken to many brands on this podcast, but then outside of them as well, with brands who are using Malomo in being proactive and using the order order tracking page and proactively updating their customers to of where their their shipments are. Because, as a consumer, I think we all relate like we want to know where our stuff is. And so was that something that you all were feeling from, like every single team across the board have, you want to be you want to shift from being more reactive and being able to plan out further in advance in terms of like, there was pain points along the way, or was it just because now you have a bigger team, you're able to execute more on a strategy more of a long term plan, because you have a little bit more of a cushion. And while you're growing,
Savannah Benson 13:17
we still run pretty lean. And I will say it was from those pain points that we were like, we can be functioning different. And we can serve, we're here to serve our customer. And we need to solve these problems. So for us planning ahead, like FAR, FAR and ahead, helps us to manage expectations of our customers, for example, or a supplement company. So we have some formulas that are going to evolve, women evolve and mixers does too, we want to stay up to date with what we're putting in our bodies and what's best and so adding more value for the same price hopefully for customers. So like things like that operationally for it to hit at a specific time and have it go over well with the customer. We're a subscription business and so like they've had consistency with us month after month with their order and having that change and making sure we've over communicated with the customer from email, SMS, you know, all that we can do to kind of notify the customer that these changes will be coming and they're positive and whatnot. That's something that we needed to get ahead of. And we weren't quite there and we have made leaps and bounds of just you know, kind of sinking cross functionally so much more often and, and thinking ahead of like, what would the consumer think or what would they need? I always say that the consumer is the most important stakeholder in the company. And so we CX we represent the customer and so being able to represent In those meetings, what would the customer need to feel comfortable and confident with this change that we're making as a business? Does it support the business? Or the customer? Can we can we support both? And thinking through those scenarios far in advance than whenever they actually hit the shelves? Or the website? Things like that? Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 15:17
yeah. I love the that saying of the customers? are the biggest stakeholders in the business. Have you ever found obviously, I think number one goal would be to have something when you're looking at a problem or a pain point to have something be both advantageous for customer and for a business. But since you're in the role of really trying to advocate for the customer, and the customer mindset, and the customers wants within mixers, have you ever found that? You know, there's there's a, there's a conflict between business and what a customer or customers would potentially want? How do you navigate, you know, as a team, where you're where you're going to, I guess, land on a decision like that? Totally.
Savannah Benson 16:06
I mean, this dives deeper into lifetime value of a customer and what we're willing to give for our loyal customers, because we have customers that have been with us for three plus years, purchasing mixers every single month. And for us, that's far more important than, you know, us losing a bag of product or something like that, you know, like, we actually, I will give credit to leadership for this. They they do consider the customer in these decisions, we would rather keep them and so we're going to do whatever we can to keep them. And yes, those trade offs are made all the time. But we do try to see it from every angle of can we get this earlier? Can we do this? Can we surprise and delight our customer in this way? Oh, we're getting the shipment earlier. Let's just surprise them and give it to him a couple of weeks earlier, instead of you know, things like that. And yeah, I think that we do a good job at that. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 17:05
yeah, I love that. Shout out great leadership teams Malomo. I also feel that as well, where our especially CS team, always is thinking of, you know, customers and leadership very much the same way. So love, love getting out shout outs where and when they're due. So let's, before we dive into perhaps some more of more of the tactical side of things, when and this can be just generally when you have a problem that you're trying to figure out say it's, you know, you're seeing a lot of customers are going in this general trend or XYZ. problem, where are you looking in terms of trying to solve that problem? Are you looking at industry leaders, I love to see you know, what resources people are using, and ask them on these chats? Because I do think it's fascinating where people are pulling all their learnings from? Yeah,
Savannah Benson 18:01
that's a great question. So I'm thinking of a different, I mean, a couple of different angles here. Yes, we do them all, we can do a couple. We feel the well, we try to be inspired by the industry. And also I mean, our consumer feedback is first and foremost, where we're looking to know what we need to solve for and at what volume. And so of course, like customer support, we have pretty robust ticketing and organization of customer feedback and product feedback or tracking that super closely. I read comments every single week, just trying to understand why are people canceling their subscriptions? Why are people staying with us? These types of things? So we have a structure set in place for that. And then we're able to kind of analyze the volume of that and say, How can we innovate here? How can we like customers are saying they have too much product? Is that an issue with the product? Is that an issue with education, and then from there, we solve internally, we need to educate better expectations. For example, our product her time, this is actually pretty interesting. We were seeing high churn for her time. And then we saw that customers were saying that it wasn't working for them, but they were only using it while they were menstruating. However that product is supposed to build up in your system and nourish your own current system. And actually, the study showed that the best results are after three cycles. So that was a little insight that we found from the customer. We put a sticker on the bags that says best results after three cycles. The churn has been decreased significantly, and the volume of questions to customer support has it has drastically decreased. So first and foremost, the customer is where we we look. Wow,
Mariah Parsons 19:56
that's really fascinating. Yeah, I've heard of a Um, gosh, who was it? It might have been Caraway? Yeah, I think it was fairway, like the pots and pans Kitchen Kitchen were brand. And they saw a lot of consumers being upset because their pots and pans weren't, like things were getting stuck on the pot and paint pots and pans. And they weren't lasting, you know, as they were supposed to. And from customer feedback, they saw that people were using really abrasive, like steel wool or putting them in the dishwasher where you're not supposed to do that with pots and pans, because it very much wears away the nonstick properties that they put on the pan. So what they did is they started messaging more and put in I believe it was a product insert. And I actually think they also put it on their order tracking page of like, care tips of like, hey, read this before you get your package. And then they saw a huge decrease in well, increasing customer satisfaction, and then huge decrease in returns, and exchanges and refunds because they had a warranty of you know, love it or get it back or whatever they called it just because they saw that people were cleaning them in a wrong way. And it's something like that with a little sticker or just setting the right expectations where it can really flip the switch and be incredible insight for a business. Totally.
Savannah Benson 21:32
And it seems so simple. I mean, internally, we're like, oh, yeah, of course, like you take it every day. And then I'm like, Yeah, that's something that we understand, because we take these products every day. But if I'm across the country, and I'm in, I'm in a retail location, and I'm picking up mixers for the first time, and am I am I understanding how to use the product, how to use it. Yeah, it's just those funny things. For the onboarding experience, we had another one where it was just customers complaining about products mixing, and then you know, as trying a variety of different ways to mix. It's just a stick pack, and you mix it with water. But we have been gifting our customers frothers now and then also instructing them to add ice after its frost. And it's just it seems so simple, but we have very specific directions that say mix with eight to 12 ounces of water, froth at ICE, and like those complaints have gone down significantly as well. So just establishing expectations, onboarding in a proper way of just, you know, we kind of get lost in the curse of knowledge sometimes of Oh, yes, like this, this makes sense. This is intuitive. And you just nothing is intuitive. Right? It's your product to the expert, but no one else is. So you need to teach it simply.
Mariah Parsons 22:56
Yeah, sometimes I feel like it's yeah, when curse of knowledge of you're in it so much that you just, you can't unsee the things you know, right. And it's, it's a very, it's a great practice to try your hardest going through the process, like you know, everything, but there just are going to be assumptions that you make. And even if you don't know anything, you can look at two people that have never come across mixers before. And they can have totally different experiences, right? So it's the, it is a funny, fickle experience or problem to try and solve for because inherently, the e Commerce Industry is great, because you can personalize so much to each and every customer. But you're also trying to make that and assumptions where you can where it's it'll make sense to the masses of people, which is not an easy balance to you toe help.
Savannah Benson 23:55
No, it's not. And yeah, we're not for everyone. Everyone's not for us. And that's like it's just yeah, sifting through that to make sure we prioritize
Mariah Parsons 24:07
are people that are for you. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, Savannah. So because you're so in tune with customer insights. And I feel like that is one of the biggest things that you know, all brands are preoccupied with justifiably? Right. What are you seeing right now in 2024? We're just starting out q2, and we're recording this. What are you seeing customers tend to what's their what's their purchasing behavior? Has it changed, kind of as you've been sitting in the sea, or has it been pretty consistent?
Savannah Benson 24:47
I mean, for mixers specifically, yes, it has changed. I mean, the economy is changing. It's different than it was a couple of years ago. But our loyal customers They're their behaviors is the same, right? They were not a luxury good to them were a necessity. And we've established ourselves in that value with those customers. And so it's just kind of using that Brand Champion to market to the swing group, to then, you know, continue to grow and retain customers. I
Mariah Parsons 25:24
love it. And then in terms of week, because we've been talking about customer feedback and collecting that data, I'm assuming, can you walk us through kind of all the different touch points that you're gathering that insight from? I know, you said, you're reading comments a lot. I wonder if that gets overwhelming in terms of just seeing product and consumer feedback? I'm seeing it every day. So I'd love to touch on that. And then yeah, what touchpoints are you using to draw in that data? And is there certain ones that you've seen historically worked better for mixers versus not?
Savannah Benson 26:00
Yeah, that's a great question. I will touch on, again, mixers as a growing company. So we are extremely scrappy, when it comes to consumer insights. Like we have, yeah, we have some good resources. And then also just, you know, asking questions. So for touchpoints, we have a lot of different areas where customers can provide feedback. One of them being a post purchase experience survey, so they can tell us where they came from how we can improve their experience mixers, we invite them to reach out to customer support, things like that. And those were kind of the more freeform responses that we have. And so that goes into a text analysis, we do a sentiment analysis and kind of understand the volume of those comments, as well as we use a program called turn buster. And so that helps us on the back end of why are customers canceling. And it goes. It gives us insight into both passive and active churn, and interesting, within Active churn, we have a myriad of different flows that customers can go into based off of the reason, excuse me, the reason that they've chosen so they have like ABCD reasons that they can choose, and then it populates a second question or an offer to retain them. And from there, we really dig into the customer feedback there. But then I also use a variety of different things such as Qualtrics, if you've heard of Qualtrics. Yeah. So I've set up a lot of feedback surveys for both, for all the products actually to just even help customers understand this is where I'm starting from, and I've been taking the product for 90 days, and like I'm taking a different survey. So we get some customer feedback there. As well as reviews, like customers are always welcome to leave reviews, we have, you know, 1000s of reviews that we dig through, and we use that for insights as well. And so there there are different areas for deflection and for insight, and we're getting a pulse on that pretty regularly. So that's what we use as far as, like, vocalized consumer insights. And then there's also the behavior, right, like, people will tell you what they value and what they think what their behavior tells all. And so consumer behavior is really I mean, it's really telling we have we have a program called peel analytics. And that has been something that I dive into to just analyze customer purchase behavior and how often they're purchasing amount of days to their next purchase, what they're purchasing, which product products, they're bundling together, which product they're most likely to purchase next after they've purchased a specific SKU. So that is also something that I use pretty regularly to just and I'm working on a project right now I'm really excited about it just with the brand team of like really honing in on that, in marketing to kind of guide the consumer along that route of you know, everyone who buys her time actually ends up buying her greens on month three, but can we get them to purchase it on month two? Can we guide them along that can we give them a sample ahead of time, so that they've tasted the product, they have a higher confidence in buying the product. So it's so intertwined into the sales and marketing and all that. Okay,
Mariah Parsons 29:42
I love that. So with within like all the all the ways that you're working with the customers to get their feedback, and then trying, like you said, trying to guide a consumer along the pathway that you've seen You know, other people with similar purchasing behaviors have gone along to purchase? What was what was the example you gave? The her? Her time? Her time? Okay, yes. Who are purchasing her time? And then going on to her green? Did you say? Okay, wonderful. So I love all the names, it's so it's so fits, it's so coated in like DC brand that I absolutely adore it. Um, but one of the things that I was on a recent episode of pretension Chronicles that I was speaking with the founder of pillow cube, and he was saying that he learned like very early in the days of his company. He would give people the product, and then instead of asking them, you know, how do you like it? And this was like, family and friends. Right? So they're way they're gonna be? Maybe a little bit? Yeah, they're gonna be a little bit biased. He was asking them instead of, do you like it? Can I have it back after like 60 or 90 days or whatever. And so he said, That was a pretty good temperature check, of checking if people actually really enjoyed it, because it took away the, I guess, more subjective of like, how do you like something that I have done and put my time and energy into versus Oh, can I have that free sample back. And he said, it was a great indicator of this is a good product, because people aren't willing to give it back once they've tried it. And so he was talking about how you know, you can flip or even just edit or tweak the way that you're asking the people using your product, how they're enjoying it, and it might be a totally different insight. And hopefully, you're working towards correct insight, in his case, rather than getting a muddled or a bias feedback loop that is not maybe perhaps indicative of what the general masses would. would say. And so I love that you're using the parallels between similar customers to be able to predict, Oh, can we give them a free sample of this? Or can we, you know, around XYZ, time point, can we start to message around Oh, did you know we also have these other products that you may enjoy and kind of comfort the purchasing process, which is a win win for both people involved. I always say this, as a consumer, if someone has put in like a brand has put in the extra time and effort to understand me better as a consumer and show me there are other other products that I will most likely enjoy. If I enjoy the original one I purchase, I'm happy to let a brand, make those suggestions because they have consumer shipping reporting of oh, if I bought this sweater, maybe I'll like this shirt from you. Because of whatever 20,000 Customers have also bought this shirt after they bought said sweater. And I think it can be an easy talk track for a brand operator operator to think, oh, I don't want to, you know, push push a sale onto my customers, and I don't want to scare them away. But most customers, especially if it's done well, right, you don't want to overwhelm and send 20 emails, right? Nobody wants that. But if it's done well, and it has a lot of intentionality behind it, it can be something that a customer very much welcomes, if they're already enjoying, you know, your brand experience and your product. Totally.
Savannah Benson 33:38
Yeah. And one thing that we've done is we call them mixers mocktails. And it's natural way for us to just within the educational flows that follow a purchase, just making recommendations for flavors of her time and her greens that go together, and mocktails that we've enjoyed around the office that we would love for women to enjoy everywhere. And so yeah, that's been a way that we've done that. Also on the thought of pillow cube that is so interesting. And I also feel like that consumer insight is so, so powerful for innovation and relevance long term because it's not just the feedback now it's the feedback of okay, well, if, if you're willing to give this back to me, what are you using instead? And really like taking note of those substitutes, so, okay, so what's the problem that customers are actually trying to solve? And am I able to discern that from this customer feedback that I'm getting? And if so, can we innovate to solve that problem? Because they're coming to us to solve a specific issue and are we solving that issue for them? Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 34:48
I love that. That added lens to it, of taking it one step further and being like, Okay, if they do give it back, what is it? What does that look like? What what are they still looking to solve? Solve This specific pain point that they're, you know, setting out to solve. I also wanted to ask in the in your industry of supplements, do you see and specifically having like a subscription service as well? Do you see a lot of returns in your, in your experience with customers returning? Or do you have any? Probably not off the top of your head, but any like metrics in terms of returns or exchanges? Or is that something that you all don't have to really worry about?
Savannah Benson 35:30
We worry about it, actually. Yeah, great question. So in our industry is pretty standard, actually, for supplements, to have like a 90 day return policy just to kind of mitigate risk for the customer, especially like a consumable, you're consuming something we're asking you to commit for certain amount of time and for your health to change. Granted, dietary supplement needs to be paired with behaviors to actually see lasting change. But yeah, we do see returns. And that is so telling. So I actually look at returns in conjunction with product insights to see if they match up. But like, any complaints we're getting from the product side of things as well as returns like what our number one skews returned. And, yeah, I mean, right now, we're talking about a particular SKU about flavor complaints we're getting on the product side, and it rising to the top of the return. So that's the SKU the question of, is this something that's benefiting the business long term? Or is it providing a negative customer experience with enough customers, that it's diluting the brand for these potential customers that might love all of our other skews, but they just don't like this flavor? So things like that. So yeah, absolutely. We look at returns exchanges. All the time. Yeah.
Mariah Parsons 36:44
Okay. Wonderful. It's, it's always so fascinating, because it does sometimes depend on the industry and, you know, different products and expectations. And you know, like ao v, right, if, depending on ao V, there might be higher or lower. numbers around, returns and exchanges and all that. And I have also, in terms of, like, taste, right? That is something that maybe it requires a whole different recipe, or I don't even is that recipe, the right word, like levels.
Savannah Benson 37:22
It's like formula, and then there's flavor work on top of the formula.
Mariah Parsons 37:25
So like flavor profiles. Yeah, that's I think that's the word I was looking for. It sounds more morbid, but it's an recipe. It's like a recipe.
Savannah Benson 37:34
Well, it's kind of fun. We're gonna take that.
Mariah Parsons 37:38
Okay, good. Good. Yeah, it gives it a very fun, I think, a fun, fun, fun lens to it. So okay, yeah. Taking like the the flavor profile of, okay, maybe it requires a tweak, maybe you're scrapping the entire thing. And that's something where, I'm sure the product insights and the return insights, that's where you're, you're gauging, okay, how big of a change might this be? And I, I feel like I only started really taking into account. You know, the differences of returns and exchanges across different industries, when we launched our loop integration here at Malomo. A little while ago, and ever since then, it's been so fascinating. Because I feel like, from a consumers point of view, I always am looking to see if there's a return policy in place, because you just sometimes you just don't know, right. And I, as a consumer, definitely expect that. If it is something I've not tried before, it makes me feel better about if there's a guarantee, no matter how, you know how big of a window that is, and I think a lot of consumers are in the same boat. But then from the brand side, it can also be an easy path to walk down of, oh, I don't want to like return a guarantee guaranteeing returns might be a terrifying thing or a scary thing to do. Because you're worried you're going to miss out on that, that revenue that if someone is returning with you. So is that like a, is that a conversation at all that you all are ever worried about? Or has it always been like, No, we are taking care of the customer, first and foremost, always. And we will, you know, figure out the back end numbers when you know when we need to.
Savannah Benson 39:35
Totally I think we've I think well, we've gone back and forth a lot on this. And we have I feel like we've updated our terms and conditions to where we can predict the business and we can advocate for the customer. So there's always that happy medium for advocating for the customer and then also enabling them right and Foundry and so we have set boundaries is our terms and conditions are, within 90 days, you can return your product. And if it's unopened, you know, that's a full refund, if it's opened, and you have 50% of the sticks or less, like that's a prorated refund, things like that. And so we try to do what we can. But you know, it's it's a consumable, they've opened the package. And so we've even been kind of lenient in accepting those returns. So yeah, it's always, you know, we have to be super clear with our subscribers, as well as like, if you're opting in for a subscription, here are your terms and conditions. And these are your charge dates. And these are like the expectations on your side and our side in this agreement, because that's a mutual agreement. But yeah, if they're one time customers, and they want to return it within 90 days, we honored that.
Mariah Parsons 40:58
Okay, lovely. Um, I like that you. Yeah, with consumable, like CPG products, it's, I think harder, because, like, exactly, that it's consumable. So you recognize the percent of product that might not be there. When you're looking at a return or exchange, and I, I'm sure a lot of brand operators in the CPG space, but probably every industry relate to it. And so I know I've, we've been talking a lot just around subscriptions and consumer insights, I wanted to ask you one final topic, and then we'll wrap it up, have in terms of the subscription program itself, can you tell us a little bit more about what the consumer experience looks like if someone signs up for a subscription of like, what notifications are getting? I know, you just outlined the the agreement, obviously, of this is what you know, you're signing up for a billing and all that stuff. But what does it look like in terms of can a customer customize their subscription experience with you all have you figured out, you know, this is the perfect window of a subscription that will apply for all of our customers?
Savannah Benson 42:08
Yes, oh, you're getting a sneak peek, because we're really this but ya know, it's so fun. So subscribers, I mean, it definitely is a benefit to be a subscriber of mixers. You're taking the product every day, it gets delivered once a month, you know, you're, it's renewing every 30 days, when you become a subscriber to mixers, this is the rebrand experience. So you'll get a beautiful experience box is what we're calling it. And historically, we've been we've had bags of product, but we're switching to boxes, we're trying to be a lot more sustainable. And so we've got these more rigid boxes that are beautiful, they have magnets on them, so they can sit on your shelf in your pantry really well. And like all go together, you take off the top. And then within the customer portal, you can actually customize each subscription that's coming up. So you can choose to 15 packs of different flavors, and you get, you get those two refill cartons, and they go into your rigid box every single month. And then first time subscribers, they also receive like a pretty nice frother to also enhance that mixing experience for them with a with a myriad of onboarding educational resources. And so we've got product flows per product that will educate the customer on how to use the product, when to use it, what to expect every 3060 90 days. All of that comes in that experience as a subscriber you save on shipping every month, you get a discount every month. So yeah, that's kind of the subscription.
Mariah Parsons 43:53
It's yeah, yeah, I love it. I love the kind of the more experiential side of like the unboxing of a product and especially something that is a subscription, because you can, you know, be excited for something and maybe it's part of your habit or your routine of Yeah, I get this, you know, every 30 days, I get to, like, put the refills back in the box and then get Yeah, get it get all excited about it. So I love that. You've given us so much to be excited about some teasers here and there I always like to try and round out the episodes by asking Is there anything else you wanted to share around what you all are doing what you're excited about in this new in this new year with mixers?
Savannah Benson 44:35
Yeah, I am so excited for this year with mixers. As I've mentioned a few times throughout, we've rebranded and I feel like we really have positioned ourselves to have a lot of vibrance and color in our brand that we see in nature but also marry that with the credibility that women want to see in their supplements. We have 100% natural Highly absorbable products, they're so clean. They're good for women, they are thoughtfully dosed. We have a chief product officer that worked in hormone health for decades before she formulated her time that's helped 1000s of women and like, I kid you not every single product, the more I learned about it from her, I am blown away at the thoughts she's put into women specifically to formulate the dosages, the amount of a specific ingredient, the absorption rate, the type of folic acid, we don't use folic acid, we use methylated, folate, like things like that specifically for women. So we're just so excited to to share more with women and make make health more enjoyable, right, like I was taking capsules for years. And you know, that's fun for a while but mixers is such a more enjoyable way to get your nutrients and I'm absorbing a lot more in a fun drink that tastes good. Instead of like taking 1212 different supplements or some nasty herbs, things like that. So, mixers is really is pile mated sounds like elevated a new way to increase your nutrients in your diet and to supplement your evolution as a woman. So hopefully, women out there can can feel a little bit more joy just from taking mixers and that whole experience. We
Mariah Parsons 46:30
could all use a little bit more joy, right? A little bit more fun, happy, happy little things, happy little wins in our days. So I love that I can read the excitement on your face. I'm so excited to see the rebrand when it finally comes out. May 1 You said right, or am I making? Oh, that's exciting. Um, it'll be so huge. I have. Yeah, I'll put it down on my day. I'll be sure to look out for Yeah, the rebrand but this has been so amazing. Thank you so much for you know, taking the time to sit down with me. It's always always always so much fun. I hope you enjoyed it. And thank you to Dallas shout out Dallas, too. She has the same last name as me so I'll never forget at Dallas Parsons. At mixers as well for connecting us and I am so excited to stay in touch. Thank you, Savannah. Oh
Savannah Benson 47:23
my gosh, you too. Thank you so much for having me. It was so great meeting you and getting to learn from you as well.
Mariah Parsons 47:28
Oh, good. That makes my day. Thank you. Thank you for that.