$500 to $150K/Month! - The Retention Strategy Behind MASSIVE Growth

$500 to $150K/Month! - The Retention Strategy Behind MASSIVE Growth Speaker 1: Acquisition is getting all the glory, whereas retention gets the profit. Speaker 2: Did you know most brands obsess over getting new customers but completely ignore the ones they already have? I don't get it because that's where the real money is. And here's the kicker. Retention isn't just about emails or loyalty points. It's about building a system that keeps customers coming back without even thinking about it. In today's episode, we reveal the exact subscription strategies, AI workflows, and retention flows that top eCommerce brands are using to scale smarter. Unknown Speaker: Lunch With Norm. Speaker 2: Our guest is a director of strategy at Socialite and the CRO coach at Merchant Mastery. He's helped hundreds of eCommerce stores grow substantially. He specializes in subscription growth and we'll get into that in detail in a moment. He created the Subscribe, the Subscribability Framework to optimize user experience, offers retention and lifetime order value. Lately, he's been building an AI-powered workflows with Make.com and 8N to help brands scale smarter and more efficiently. Before we get going, let's hear from a sponsor. Tired of negative reviews dragging down your star rating in sales? Traceuse has your back. Traceview specializes in removing non-compliant Amazon reviews the right way. I'm talking 100% compliant with Amazon terms of service. And with over 11,000 reviews removed for 400 plus brands, they know what it takes to protect your reputation and boost conversions. And here's the best part. You only pay for performance. That means you only pay for reviews they successfully remove. No contracts, no monthly fees, just results. Plus, as a Lunch With Norm listener, you get two reviews removed for free. Ready to clean up your reviews? Visit TraceFuse.ai. That's TraceFuse, T-R-A-C-E F-U-S-E dot A-I. Sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee, enjoy the show, and let's bring on Daniel. Speaker 1: Hello, hello. Speaker 2: Hey, Dan. I started off talking about why most brands fail at retention. Let's go there. But then I want to get into subscription. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Look, I've been building and scaling Shopify brands for over a decade. And if there's one pattern I see over and over again with founders, it's they get very distracted with shiny objects, ad hacks, flashy apps, the next big trend, but they ignore the systems that actually create consistent, scalable growth. And that's what I do. I'm not here to like create a bunch of hype. I'm here for primetime results. So I've launched and scaled hundreds of these Shopify stores and they're in all ranges and verticals. And one brand recently just crossed 100,000 orders in a space where most brands stall out before 10K. And that's what this little guy is right here. Actually quite proud of that. And what I wanted to talk about is subscriptions today. And I just had another one go from $500 per month to 150K per month just last March. So in a category where churn usually kills brands, our target subscription churn is 10% and we're getting there. And that kind of growth is actually really hard where most brands are scaling, most brands can't retain. And doing both is the hard part. And that's where I think I like to live. Speaker 2: All right, so where do we even start with that? Speaker 1: Well, why don't we talk about retention? Because I think retention is like flossing. Everybody knows they should do it, but they only care once there's blood. Speaker 2: Okay, so retention. All right, you've got a brand out there. You always see these brands that have this loyal customer base. They have high retention. Okay, we've got a lot of probably smaller sellers that are listening right now, medium sellers. How do they even look at retention? Speaker 1: Brands need to treat retention as the foundation. So what happens is they'll treat it like something they'll deal with later. They want to work on their ad strategy. They want to work on their influencer push, the new landing page, and somewhere down the line they'll eventually Look at churn, but by then you're not solving a problem. You're probably looking at a bit of a dumpster fire. Retention is always going to be more than sending emails or slapping on a loyalty program. It's about building a continuity narrative. And that's a reason for customers to keep coming back because they're getting continual value. You almost think of it like dating. So the first sale is just the pickup line. Maybe it's clever. Maybe it gets a smile. Maybe even gets a yes. But if there's no story after that, no momentum, no shared vision, no payoff, You're not building a relationship and you're probably going to get ghosted. Speaker 2: I see that so many people think of this as an afterthought. It's kind of like me. When I take a look at perceived value, I look at a product and I go, oh, they're missing out on a ton of profit. All they have to do is a couple of dollars worth of this and they could charge double. But same thing with retention. It's kind of like that's the last thing on my mind is, Okay, I'm just going to sell the product. If I sell 100 units a month, I'm happy. If I sell 150, I'm ecstatic. They're not thinking about their customer retention coming back and building monthly after monthly after monthly or always thinking of your brand, you know, when they have to go and buy whatever product it is. So why, again, I'm going to go back to it. Why Why is that? Why is it so far out there that people just don't think about it? Speaker 1: It seems like acquisition gets the attention, but retention's gonna put cash in your pocket and pay the bills. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 1: Like to me, it needs to be something that's the foundation and not bolted on later. And I'll jump a little bit more into the system shortly, but every touchpoint with your consumer needs to be about a bigger promise. It needs to be about progress, transformation, Identity, momentum, customers need to feel like they're entering something, not just buying something. Speaker 2: A friend of mine, your good friend Scott Cunningham, has taught me and is just embedded in my mind the TBIF selling process. Do you have something like that built into your systems for subscription models? Speaker 1: 100% and we can jump a little bit into that. I think like the smartest brands, they're not just building for the first purchase. They're actually thinking about the second, third and 10th because that's where the margin lives and that's where the profitability is going to come from. Speaker 2: Forget slapping on a subscribe and save button. It's not a strategy. Check out Dan Jordan as he shares how to engineer offers that actually keep customers subscribed. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Once again, scaling subscriptions and retention isn't just about slapping a subscribe and save button on your product description page and praying that people forget to cancel. That's not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy. And when we scale subscription brands, we're creating systems that make the difference between churn city and consistent growth. And I call that the subscribability sauce. So here's a taste and here's three points from that framework. Number one, offer engineering. So always thinking, and this doesn't just apply to subscriptions, it can apply to any brand, but is your product actually worth getting over and over again? Or are you just auto-shipping a product no one really wants on repeat? And this is where most brands blow up. So let's take a common example. Maybe you like a wellness powder or a grooming product. So your subscription right now is get a refill every 30 days and save 10%. To me, that's not really an offer. That's just logistics. It assumes the customer uses the same amount every time, wants the same timing, and still sees value after month one. So what I like to do instead Is design offers based on customer behavior? Can we build a routine around it? Can we offer a starter, progression or maintenance packs? And can we include exclusive perks, early access, education, transformation tracking, putting them into a community? So the offer isn't just shipping, it's delivering ongoing progress. And that's the key. Customers stick around when they feel like they're in motion. And to be honest, nobody in this day and age just wants a subscription. They're looking for outcomes. Speaker 2: Subscribe and leave a comment saying, I subscribed and I'll personally reply to your comment. One of the things that I noticed, so we had a subscription model a little while ago and what people loved were the little surprises. So it was either a handwritten note that we had made in China. Or it was a surprise. Here's a sample of a scent that you can't get online. This is brand new. Or just asking opinions. And one other thing that's really cool, and this is like just old school marketing, but it was kind of, it hit me in the head at a Mexico conference when I was listening to a guy, Sean Hart, just said, Reach out and call. Unknown Speaker: Get a survey. Speaker 2: Take a poll. Ask people what they really think and they'll be shocked that you even touched base with them. Speaker 1: No, it's so true. I think a massive question I like to ask our customers or just eCommerce brands in general, are you listening to your customers? It sounds simple, but you'd be surprised how many brands are just screaming, buy again every 30 days and wondering why their churn is climbing. Personalization. It's more about personalization than it is repetition. Blasting out the same call to actions to everyone every month, whether or not the customers are loving the product. They're quietly cancelling in their heads. What you want to be building It's like AI-powered systems that react to customer behavior in real time, not guesses, not assumptions, actual usage patterns. So tracking things like order skips, delivery delays, product upgrades, inactivity, those type of drop signals, and then using tools, I think you said them earlier, Norm, make.com, NAM, to trigger flows based on those actions without needing like a full-blown retention team in Slack all day. Speaker 2: I just got it and there'll be many rabbit holes, but I was in Vegas and we were talking about, so we did a live event, Kevin King and I. Kevin, I don't know if you do, I know Scott knows Kevin, but he's my partner over at Marketing Misfits and other podcasts and Dragonfish. And one of the things that kept coming up when people are talking to us because we talk about automation and it is make and it is any and and it's how difficult it is and people think it's so tough. It's not that tough. As a matter of fact, there's all sorts of tutorials for it and that's what I did. I just went and I watched the bloody tutorials and I went, okay, this is the first tutorial out of five and I was making all these flows and it worked incredible. Or if you're afraid of it, hire somebody. It's not that bad. You can go to Fiverr, you can go to Upwork, you can go wherever, but you can't miss out on this stuff. It's so important. If you don't, if you're not doing automation right now, you're going to be left in the dust. For sure. Speaker 1: A hundred percent. If you're looking for some communities, I'm going to drop a really good one for N8N and Make. And Stephen Pope has one of the best automation and AI workflow communities I've ever been a part of. Speaker 2: What? Stephen Pope, Amazon guy? Speaker 1: He's not an Amazon guy. He was like, he's a programmer. Speaker 2: Okay, because one of the big guys, a buddy of mine, Steve Pope, he's my Amazon guy. Speaker 1: Okay. I think it's a different guy, but his community is thriving. He puts out videos. He actually puts them all out on YouTube as a way to get visibility and then drives people back to his community for the online coaching. I think he's the guy when it comes to automation. Speaker 2: All right, so let's keep talking about going down these workflows again. So first of all, if you can't do it, hire somebody. All right, let's get back to what you were saying. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was more or less just like using those tools to reduce the resources you need to accommodate like a full-on retention team. So, even things that are like very, very easy, like someone skips an order, you need a break, let's adjust your schedule, well, ordered more than usual, you want some type of loyalty boost, something that says we see you, or if you're going dark for two weeks, we pivot to a curiosity-based flow, and we're using Make and NAN to do this for us, and it's very, very personalized. And Real Personalization is knowing the difference between a silent subscriber and a slipping one and knowing exactly what to do next. And that's where those tools come in so handy, N8N and Make.com. Speaker 2: You know, going back to this live event that we had in Vegas, one of the things we talked about, and this is so cool, because when you're reaching out, You have to know your customer and it can't just be, you know, promote, promote, promote. There's got to be some value in there. Like the newsletter I have, the newsletter Kevin has, it's all value. It's just value, value, value, or you're not going to get the subscribers or the retention. But one of the things that we were talking about is this really cool AI tool or tools that are out there right now, and they can scrape the internet, all your social, everything that you do, kind of scary, but it knows how to talk to you. So when a newsletter is being sent to you or an email is being sent to you, It's talking to you in your voice. Every single email is different to every single person. So if you're in the pet, you know, if you have a pet, if you have a St. Bernard, it's talking to you about large dogs. It's talking about your dog. Now that could spook a few people if you say, Hey, how's Charlie today? But it can get, you could drill it down that much, which is just crazy right now. And it's even going to get even more crazy. This is pretty cool. Imagine knowing exactly when a customer is about to walk away and stopping it. Dan Jordan reveals how AI-powered flows turn insight into action. Speaker 1: And I'm trying to build it out more and more. I honestly think it'll be ready for like a Q4, but the entire philosophy behind it is just intelligent retention. A system that knows when to nudge, when to wait, and when to show up like a friend instead of a brand. Speaker 2: Show up as a friend. Not a brand. Yeah, that's so important. Now, building out that brand, okay, we've talked about it a little bit, but are there specific niches that you should get into? So, you know, if I'm, forget about like if I'm buying WD-40, But you know the typical brands like in beauty or in outdoor or whatever it could be, are there brands that should get into it and there's just brands that should not get into subscription? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean if you can create a continuity narrative, right? Like why does somebody want to keep using your product every four weeks, every six weeks, every eight weeks? Those are prime. And yes, a lot of health and wellness, but Have you heard of Elevar before? It's being used by like True Classic and it's basically a subscription program to get close. So it's this like subscription narrative seems to be transcending your traditional subscription programs. There's like, yeah, sure, probably you don't need a watch subscription, but As long as you're providing continual value, I think you can fall into the subscription model. Speaker 2: One thing I guess everybody should think about, and I'm a brand guy from like 30 years ago, but I'm always thinking brand and a lot of people when they get into Amazon or if they get into whatever they're getting in Shopify in your case, you're thinking a product. But subscription models automatically make you think of the breadth of your brand and if it's not there, Probably not gonna be a great subscription box, you know, or a subscription service. So like for example, I'll give you, I had Joe Martin on here and I don't know if you know him. He's an awesome entrepreneur out of Miami. He started BoxyCharm. And so he started bringing in other people's products, beauty products. And then he said, I'm gonna do it myself. And he just started with a couple of things, putting into the box. And it turns out, I believe it was the Kardashians that said, this is awesome. They started promoting them. And then he started going high level, just like the Kardashians ended up selling this thing to Etsy. I think it was four years after for 500 million bucks. Yeah. But the whole thing started with his brand. And the breadth of the brand, where could he go? What were the products that people loved in the box? Well, how did they get that information? Surveys and polls. Then he started to go further and further and further. So he developed this high end. What did people want? High quality, high perceived products. If your packaging sucks, guess what your perception is. So I always like, I like putting a lot of emphasis On the packaging itself, it might cost a little bit more, but you can get double, triple, quadruple the price sometimes. Speaker 1: A hundred percent. Yeah, it matters a lot. Speaker 2: All right. So we started late today because of some tech problems, usually at the bottom of the hour, which was like 10 minutes ago. We talk about something that a lot of people, if you're a first time user or your first time listener, you probably never heard of. And that's our Wheel of Kelsey, which happens in about 10-15 minutes. And it's a prize we give away at the top of the hour. So Dan, can you tell us what we're giving away today? Speaker 1: I've started a book and I have like the first draft and I think it's incredible. I've been working on it since the beginning of December. So I'm willing to give that away but I'm also willing to like jump on a chat. I want to meet with people. I want to talk shop. I want to hear What they're doing either at a subscription, if they have a subscription brand, or just a Shopify store, and what they're doing in terms of retention. Because I think these principles, well I know these principles that I'm talking about, transcend just subscriptions. Everything that you're doing as a brand should be about building relationships. You need to look at it just like dating. Speaker 2: I'm too old to date. So, okay, and by the way, If you think that this is just like this little niche group, this subscription model, if you've never heard of this summit, I've gone there, I've spoken at it. It's sub-summit. It's huge. You've got to check it out, guys. Kels, if you could put that link in the comments section, that would be great. I think one's coming up right now. It's one of these crazy, especially for Amazon and Shopify users, probably never heard of before, but it's a major, major player for subscription models. All right, so let's go to a sponsor. We'll come right back. Hey, Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok sellers, we're in Q4 and I know the pressure's on. So how do you rank higher and sell more during the busiest time of year? Well, as a certified Amazon partner agency, AzRank has the expertise and proven strategies to take your projects to the top, driving visibility and sales across all platforms. With a proven expertise in optimizing search rankings, AzRank guarantees your products stand out during this critical shopping season. You can email AzRank today at hello at AzRank.com. That's A-Z-R-A-N-K.com. And don't forget to mention the beard guy sent you, and that's going to unlock an exclusive discount. Did you know that your email strategy is probably just yelling at your customers? Watch Dan Jordan explain how he builds retention through two-way conversation that actually works. Let's talk about these flows. Sure. The emails, the post-purchase flows, feedback, anything that can drive or increase your lifetime value. Speaker 1: I think, unfortunately, most brands treat emails like a megaphone. Loud, one-sided, and, you know, a little too desperate. Promo blast, last chance, subject line, discount after discount. They rarely pause and ask themselves, is this working? Or even better, What is this email telling us about our customers? And I'm honestly personally burnt out. I know it's anecdotal. I get constant promo blasts. I get them every day and they all sound the same. But I think if brands spend half as much time listening as they do blasting, they learn everything they need to know to increase retention and LTV. Every email flow is an opportunity to collect insights. Why a customer bought? Why they cancelled? Why they loved it? And what would make them come back? And most brands ignore this. You need to be building systems that actually listen and in real time and feed those insights back into a strategy, whether you're tweaking your offer, adjusting your cadence, rewriting the post-purchase journey, or even thinking about the product itself and upgrading it. So here's how you can use like an email feedback loop. So your post-purchase flows, you want to figure out why people actually bought, not just say thanks. When you're doing review requests, timing matters. You should optimize based on product usage, not shipping. Split win-backs based on churn. A lot of times you'll find out that people have too much product. They're not getting results. They forgot that it even existed and that's where you can start coming at them with like dynamic win-back content. So based on actual user data or last order, if they say it didn't work, you can pivot to guidance, education, something from the founder. If they say it was too much money, we hit them with flexible payment options. The point here is we're always listening and we're adjusting in real time. Speaker 2: Okay. And can you give us an example of some of these flows that you've created? Speaker 1: For sure. So just in the last two weeks, I've been working with a health company that couldn't figure out why their win back was underperforming. It was stuck at about 1.2% conversion rate. So we added a simple post-cancel survey to that flow, nothing fancy, just a few questions. And we're figuring out that people don't know how to use the product. So they don't need a discount. They don't need a better offer. They just need clarity. So we're reworking these emails in a win-back flow with simple educational tips, easy go-to recipes, and a how-to video from the founder. Speaker 2: Okay, I'm just getting this information for Kelsey to get that community you were talking about for Stephen Pope. I'm multitasking and that's something An old guy, you know, I hide my own Easter eggs, so it's hard to multitask. Okay, and come back and talk to you. All right, let's talk about some metrics. What are you looking for? What are the metrics that actually matter? Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this because I feel like founders obsess over churn like it's the whole story and they're looking at it daily, weekly, monthly, like it's a horoscope or something. Oh no, churn's rising. We must be in, what are they called? Mercury retrograde or whatever. But churn usually isn't the problem. It's the result. And the real question is, why are people leaving? And it's not going to be spoiler alert. Because of your Q4 newsletter, it's probably something to do with onboarding, product timing, usage. Are we offering real value before we ask for a renewal? Most teams try to fix churn at the end with discounts, last minute saving offers, or we miss you emails. But by that point, the customer's already mentally gone. The real churn prevention starts way earlier than the onboarding experience. Is the onboarding experience clear? Is the product used before the first renewal? Does the offer actually match the customer expectation? And did the communication build trust or just push urgency? So churn isn't a standalone number. It's a signal and you have to know where it's pointing. So some of the early indicators we track that predict churn before it even shows up. Time to first order reorder. It's a bit of a tongue full. How long does it take for a subscriber to repurchase or replenish? Very important metric. Customer satisfaction by day 30. Are they still excited or are they becoming already a little annoyed? Reactivation success rates. Can we win them back? This tells us if there is issues that are temporary or actually fundamental. An offer to subscriber conversion rate. If the offer attracts the wrong customer, Churn's always gonna be inevitable. Speaker 2: Alright, great. And this is gonna be the last question. What are the common mistakes brands are making right now? Speaker 1: There's a lot, but number one is that acquisition is getting all the glory, whereas retention gets the profit. And you need to be setting that foundation up for success before you go spend hundreds of thousands on meta ads. Speaker 2: Okay. So, all right, Kelsey, let's do this. Will of Kelsey. Unknown Speaker: If you are the winner, please email me kate at lunch with norm.com. We're also going to be sending out an email and it looks like the winner is... Speaker 2: David. Unknown Speaker: So David W., we're going to be reaching out to you. Congratulations. And again, if you enter today's giveaway, you're going to be announced next week. Speaker 2: All right. Okay. So anything else that we should talk about? Speaker 1: Yeah, I think if anything I said today hit home, whether it's retention, conversion rates, or just tired of bleeding money on meta, I'm always down to talk shop. I've been in the game for For a hot minute in building and scaling brands across Shopify, running paid media across Meta, Google, TikTok, I'm here for it. But I'm really focused right now on subscriptions and selling reoccurring stuff, building real systems at scale, and onboarding, engaging, and using AI to do recovery. So if any of those topics If you have any questions that are of interest to you, hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm more than happy to carve out some time. Speaker 2: And then you got this other little thing going called Merchant Mastery, right? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do weekly coaching calls there. We have an entire curriculum on offer setup, website optimizations, which I specialize in, paid advertising and emails. It's a thriving community. It's incredible. Speaker 2: I've heard only good things about it. I've seen you guys grow. So I met Scott a few years ago when you were just getting this going. You were going through a few hurdles because you had to overcome the growth. I cross the chasm and now you're just killing it. So it's incredible. Check out Merchant Mastery. If you're Shopify or if you're in Amazon and you want to grow and scale, it's definitely a community to check out. So that's Merchant Mastery. That's it for today. Dan, thanks for joining us. It was awesome. I definitely will be reaching out to you a little bit later on as well. I want to learn a lot more about Merchant Mastery and your subscribe, what is it called? Unknown Speaker: Subscribability, the book? Speaker 1: Subscribability. Speaker 2: Ah, good name, good name. All right, my friend, we will see you later. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Okay, so if you want to be part of the community, we have A couple of different ways. Watch the podcast. Edited podcast comes out on Mondays. The newsletter, you can subscribe. Yep, we talked about subscriptions. You can join it at lwn.news. You can join our subreddit. You can join our WhatsApp group or our Facebook group. Any of those or all of those, whatever you want. All right, everybody, see you next week. Bye. Unknown Speaker: I'm Dan Jordan.