The Strategies Behind Alice Mushroom's Viral Success

The Strategies Behind Alice Mushroom's Viral Success Speaker 1: Hey guys and welcome to a new season of the Chew on This retention and subscription podcast powered by Stay AI. I am Gina. I will be your host for the season and I am joined today with Charlotte from Alice Mushrooms. We are very excited for you to watch the episode. We, full disclosure, already recorded it, but what we talked about was we had like a lot of different light bulb moments and we talked about all the different ways that Alice uses their brand and they really kind of put you on a journey throughout your subscription experience with them. And how it's really improved their retention. There's a ton of little takeaway things that we, even after this episode, have to go in and adjust what's going on in the account and set some new stuff up. Some really cool stuff around post-purchase, things you can do with SMS. And if you have not seen the case study we did with them about their punch card and how their portal looks, absolutely, we're going to talk about it, but you should check that out as well. I cannot wait to get into everything today. Why did you decide to become a founder? Who is Alice? Why did Alice become what it is? Maybe you can just start with like quick founder journey background. How did we get here? Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. So my co-founder and I come from really complimentary backgrounds to one another. So she had spent about 10 years in pharmaceuticals and I'd spent about a decade in media and marketing. I was doing brand partnerships at digital publishers. So if you remember like the heyday of like Rimmel working with Refinery29. That's what I used to do. And Lindsay, you know, Alice was her original concept. She's based in Venice Beach in LA and she had just seen the pharmaceutical industry prescribe so many Band-Aids and she just was looking for natural alternatives, got super into functional mushrooms and then kind of started playing mad scientist in her kitchen, like had a homeopathic doctor come over and was like playing around because I think What we had both individually realized, but she had that real entrepreneurial spirit to act on was that so many functional mushroom or really every functional mushroom product out there is a powder, a pill, a tincture, doesn't taste very good. It's not super easy to incorporate in your daily life. And then functional mushrooms don't actually work right away. And I think that's something that our like very immediate gratification culture doesn't reward. You need to take a medicinal dose of mushrooms every day for about three weeks to allow the nutrients time to compound and start working. They're like adaptogens. Like, you know, remember back in the like ashwagandha craze, it was like, you have to take it for a month, you know, and functional mushrooms work the same. So what the initial kind of genius of it was, was like, okay, well, how can we Get an instant gratification element to that. So that's why we pair functional mushrooms with fast acting herbs, nootropics, botanicals. So none of our products are just mushrooms. They're mushrooms plus. I like that. So that's what she kind of started working on in her kitchen. I concurrently had become disenchanted with my career in media. I couldn't do any more watch campaigns. Any quizzes? Speaker 1: Any more quizzes? Speaker 2: No more quizzes. Speaker 1: What watch are you? Speaker 2: What, where does this celebrity go for breakfast? Let's film him going there and in these pants, you know, um, get the look, get the look. Yeah. And I realized that food was really what I wanted to do and just wellbeing in general. Um, so I went back and did my master's in food studies at NYU, started working on some early stage consumer food brands, was looking for kind of My next thing and literally I'm in New York, Lindsay's in LA. We both networked with the same guy and he threw us on a text thread during COVID and we started working together across the country before we'd even met in person for, I think we started working together like August, September timing and then we didn't meet in person until December, January. Speaker 1: Okay. So like at this point you both like know you want to do something, you want to build something. Who has the, like, does Alice exist? Like, is the concept of it, like, do you at this point know that it's probably in the mushroom space or you're just, like, looking at everything? Speaker 2: It was always mushrooms and that's, you know, when I met Lindsay, she already had, like, the real, kind of, the baseline put together. It was mushrooms, it was going to be in chocolate, it was going to be this mix of the mushrooms and the nootropics and the herbs, and it was called Alice. And then the early branding was there, like the Alice logo was there, our mushroom icon. We made some like tweaks as we built it together, you know, different ways that it looked like the early. The early 10 prototypes are so wild to look back on, but really the bones were there. And then we took the next year and a half to build it together and put the tendons and the ligaments and the... Speaker 3: Before we dive in, a quick word about today's sponsor, Stay AI. Everyone wants that sweet recurring revenue, but building a subscription model that actually works is not easy. At Avi, we spent way too long battling churn, tweaking offers, and trying to duct tape a subscriber experience together. Switching to Stay AI was the turning point. It gave us the tools to automate churn reduction, personalize offers, and improve our email segmentation. Now we can build a subscription flow that customers want to stay in. Stay AI saved us a ton of time Lifted LTV and made subscriptions feel easy. If you're ready to level up your subscription program, go to Stay AI slash Chew on This and mention Chew on This. You'll get $200 off your monthly plan for life. Unknown Speaker: Now, let's get back to the episode. Speaker 1: And I feel like the brand is so, so strong today. Like I, we work with a ton of companies on the subscription side and like your portal is my favorite to show all the time. Like every piece of it just like really like brings the brand where I'm like, okay, like this is a loyalty play. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Um, so when you first launched, were you always thinking like, this is a subscription product, this is an e-comm, like how did you kind of decide what to launch with? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we launched our first two SKUs, which were Brainstorm for Focus and Energy and Nightcap for Sleep. And we were like, I think we'll be a DTC brand for a while. I think we're hyper conscious of the fact that we're not only in the mushroom space, which is ever evolving and is new to people, like very new to people. There's a lot of confusion, a lot of education needs to be done. And we're a new form factor in that space. So I think, you know, at a certain point, some people are like, okay, like there's a powder, I get it. But the chocolate adds another layer of education that needs to be done. So we were very much thinking like it's going to be DTC where we can really control the conversation and education and all of that. Retail quickly became its own beast and that really surprised us because we, you know, were a little bit precious about, you know, letting the product go on shelf and where we can't explain it. But I think people actually knew a lot more than we gave them credit for about the space in general and the product. But to your question about subscription, we honestly, it was a bit of an afterthought when we launched. It was like, not auto selected. It was like small print like save 10% like wasn't even a legitimate discount that people would care about. And that was honestly a conscious decision because I do think that with products like ours, I think so often in the wellness space, you just get hammered over the head with subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. And it becomes overwhelming for the consumer. There are brands that I've always been interested in and I'm not going to name drop, but that are very large wellness brands. And I probably once a quarter go to their site and I'm like, I should probably do this, right? And then I get to the thing and the subscription discount is so heavy and it comes with all of this stuff. And then the one-time purchase is so expensive and it stresses me out to the point that I leave. And so I think that like we were conscious of our product being so new to the customer that if we were hitting them over the head with this like really intense subscription offer, they were going to get kind of spooked and leave. And we wanted to make it super easy to try 110 one time. And that was kind of our year one playbook is just like, chocolate to lips, like make it as easy as possible for people to try. And then once we felt like we'd hit that market saturation point where we had community, we had brand loyalty, we had kind of built brand equity. That's when we were like, okay, we feel comfortable now incentivizing this further into subscription. Speaker 1: Got it. Got it. Okay. So started without it. Now, I should know this, but what is the subscription discount that you guys went with? Speaker 2: 25% plus free shipping. Speaker 1: And that's in shipping for you guys. Does shipping vary throughout the year? Speaker 2: It does. Summer is, summer is expensive. Now we've made some changes, so it's going to be not as bad. Um, but because we're a multiple product in the summer, um, we have to ship with, I mean, just like base, like we have to have different boxes, insulation, ice, and then depending on where in the country people are vis-a-vis our distribution centers, we have to ship two day. Um, so it gets very expensive. Right. Speaker 1: And like, A 10 is probably like in the 20s, right? Speaker 2: How much one 10 is $29. So if you add in your customer acquisition cost, plus your shipping and your fulfillment, like you're, you're hemorrhaging money on that. And the two day shipping in the summer, I'm sure just two day shipping can range from whatever zone you're in from. Speaker 1: It's $12, $30. Yeah, which all of a sudden that's two tens. So it's like, you might as well subscribe. But then you need to keep those subscribers to make it make sense. You guys have done a ton around just building this really cool loyalty element and brand into the subscription program. It's my favorite portal. We just did a case study with you guys that I'm just so hyped about. And every time somebody's like, what can we do with the punch card? What should we be doing? And I'm like, this is the blueprint. Alice nailed it. Thank you. I guess, like, what went into that? Like, when you were thinking about, like, what is this journey we want to put people on? I think you guys have four different incentives across 10 different punches. Like, how did you guys kind of come up with that and, like, decide on what you were going to give away? Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something that was really important to me because I think that your customer lifetime value is your business at a certain point. And we learned that, right, after we had a business for a year where we weren't really incentivizing subscription. It became very apparent to us that not only is that loyalty like what keeps your business going, but it also is what people want. I think that there was this, there's this kind of misnomer that like people want to be kind of on their own and not subscribe, but actually subscription is a courtesy, especially for people who love your product. So now we very much look at it like that. And I think there's been so many people who, who are benefiting from, from that. But I think we want to make it as, I want to make as great of an experience as possible for people because I think that like a lot of marketers just kind of stop once you acquire the customer and it's a whole life cycle situation. And like, I mean, just from a math perspective, if you look at what you're earning back, if your customer stays for three months versus six months versus 12 months, those milestones are really important to hit. So if it costs me $3 to send a tote bag at order nine to get that customer to stay to order 12, that's huge. It makes a material difference on the bottom line of the business. And not only it just also makes your customers like you more and they care about you. And I think something we found is that Now that we have gifts with purchase on your first subscription order as these incentives, our retention has gotten better because I think that customers know when you're intentional. And like you said, with this portal, that was so important to me because I wanted people to come in. Maybe they're thinking they're going to churn. Maybe they think they're going to skip, but then they see like, oh, there's so much here for me. And the customer has been put at the front of the conversation and top of mind and people can feel that. Speaker 1: It feels like you're on a journey with Alice. Like when I go into the portal and I see this little ribbon, I'm sure we'll be able to pull up a photo of it, but I'm just kind of like, I'm on this journey. I'm part of this. I'm part of this brand. This is really cool. There are different milestones. And I think to your point before where you were like, A lot of mushrooms, you do have to take it. Yes, there are things with instant gratification, but with a lot of supplements, there is this element of like, auto-ship is what you should be doing. You should be, like my daily vitamins I put on subscription, I need the accountability. When that order comes and I still have 10 things left, I'm like, okay, so I didn't take my vitamins this month. I need to be held accountable for this. Speaker 2: And it's aspirational. People want to be held accountable. They want to be like, oh, I need to do this. It gives them this, sense of structure, I think. Yeah. And like what we're doing too is like it's chocolate. So it's not that hard to get through a couple bars. Speaker 1: Yeah, you can absolutely catch up if you missed a few days. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Awesome. So you guys did something else recently that I thought was like on this whole shipping and how it can be expensive where you let customers, I think, get a discount if they, got all their summer orders sent sooner. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1: Walk me through kind of the thought process on that, how you did it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, right, if you have all these subscribers who are on a 30 day cadence, and like I said, it's expensive for us to ship in the summer. And we're looking at then shipping, you know, now summer is like four or five months with heat. If you're looking at shipping four to five orders, that gets really expensive, really fast in that time of year. And so we wanted to kind of create a win-win for both us and our customers. And also people are traveling in the summer. You know, it's helpful for them to kind of front load all of that stock because, oh, I was in at the beach this week and my chocolate sat outside and someone stole them. You know, it's just like, It's better for everyone. And so basically we emailed all of our subscribers and we said, we'll ship you your entire summer stock and then we'll give you extra chocolate on top of it as a way to say thank you, plus an extra discount. So we had a really large number of people opt into this. I want to say that it was around 20%. Great. Yeah. Speaker 1: Proactive to get people to sit there and be like, yes, I want to 4x the volume of my next order and I want to pay for it. Speaker 2: Because they're paying up front, right? So we had all these people, like our ALV looks so good. But we had so many people be like, yes, this is so smart. And they opted to have their entire summer order shipped in one shipment, which is great for them. They got discounts, they got extra swag. We got to only send one shipment and it's a super hands-on process. Our head of CX, Bonnie, is like, her blood, sweat, and tears are all over this, but it's so worth it. Just from, I think, a customer experience and then also the bottom line of it all. Speaker 1: Yeah, it just makes a huge, huge difference to you. There's a lot of brands, like we have a quick action that's like change, skew, and frequency. Yeah. Because we have a lot of brands, like you want to get somebody on That's your point before. That first order, it's hard to be like, spend $100 on a supplement and get a three pack. You're like, okay, we just need to get a one pack in somebody's hands. But then once they're subscribed, it's like, okay, but now it's like, It's better for the environment. It's better for you. It's better for us. It's better for everyone if you actually get less frequent shipments and higher volume product. Yes, the AOV goes up and your order amount goes up, but- The profitability of each of those orders. Right. It's good for the environment. Good for you. Really, it is. It's beneficial for everyone. Speaker 2: I think people also, they like having 90-day supplies. I think that not everyone wants to get something every 30 days. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: Just the unboxing of it all alone. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yes. Like I don't want to go down and get more packages every single day. Every time I go down to the package room, I'm like, how are there this many things here? Speaker 2: In my quest for always looking, I actually saw a brand the other day, a supplement brand post-checkout and I had subscribed to 30 days and post-checkout they said, do you actually want to save 25% and do a 90-day supply? And so I'm only getting one shipment. They're only having to send it one time. I get a better deal and it's a win-win for everyone. Speaker 1: Yeah. Wait, I'm so happy you brought this up. By the time this comes out, it will be live, but I just saw the PRs go in. I think in final testing now, we have a post-purchase experience similar to this that will just come native with Stay. So I will, after this, I'll 100% get you on the beta for it. But what we're looking at is, yeah, like right after the order is placed, being able to go in and say, even if somebody just bought it one time and not a subscription, did you want $5 back on your order and change it to a subscription? Did you want to add this product to your order? Did you actually want to get a larger pack? Yes, like, because now you've locked in the order. So like you're not adding risk to like the conversion rate on the paid and all these things. I think people are scared to change different offers on the PMP. So it's post-purchase, once it's locked in, Did you want to get some form of credit, some form of this and update to this. So I'm so glad that you saw that. Speaker 2: I think it's brilliant. My other question, and this is a techie question, but because we offer free shipping on subscriptions, I kind of want to also be like, Yeah, you can take 25% off and we'll refund you your shipping cost. Speaker 1: Oh, so we're, we're already adding, like we have to go back and like kind of refund the order. So I bet we like could just set it up where it's like kind of like an extra refund. Like if the shipping is like a variable amount, like we'd probably have to grab that price, but maybe it's like, we're going to do a flat rate. Oh, okay. Then yeah, that's easy. Cause I think we would just be able to be like, you know, on that. Speaker 2: Whatever. Speaker 1: Plus 9.99. Yes. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: I love this. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Cause that's something I really want to do because I think, and we're trying to figure out ways to hammer home that like it's free shipping on subscription. And like I was just saying, shipping is expensive for us in the summer. So that's actually a huge incentive. Um, and even if you're just trying one time like that, 25% off the one time price plus $10 that you're not paying on shipping, it's a big deal. And so we're just trying to figure out how, we message that most effectively so that people get it. And I think a post purchase is like, wait, do you want that $10 you paid on shipping back plus 25% of your order refunded? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: It's like a no brainer. Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the take rate on this stuff is going to be really, really high. Yeah. Especially like after like, yes, you get through checkout, but then like you, like it hits, you're like, did I just. Spend $50 on chocolate with shipping. And like you, like it hits and you go in that moment and then you're like, wait, oh, I can just get $20 back on my card right now. If I just am in a subscription that I can opt out of like whatever. Then you go into that portal. If somebody wants to opt out, they're going to go in, they're going to see the little punch card and the roadmap and everything. And they're like, well, I'm on this journey now. Speaker 2: Yeah. Like I want the hat. Yeah. Duh. Speaker 1: Yeah. You guys have incentives on First order, second order, fourth order? Speaker 2: We have, so when you opt in to subscribe and this is built out on our PDPs, you get a gift. So the gift is different for all of our SKUs. So for our sleep SKU, you get a custom silk Alice eye mask that says, that has embroidered eat more mushrooms on it. And then you also get a free 30-day subscription to a meditation platform called Open that we work with a lot. And it's this like 21-day sleep reset. I think what's really important, particularly around building retention with subscribers, is creating the lifestyle around your product. I think it's so easy to just be like, here's the product, but there's a lot of user error and there's also a lot of People who don't fully understand how it fits into their life. And I think that results in churn. So when we can send someone like, look, you just got this product that's going to help you sleep. Here's an eye mask that is really going to help you also. And then here's a meditation, 21 day reset, you know, that's, that's a lifestyle around sleep all of a sudden. And I think people are so much more motivated to go through the product, actually use it, create a new habit and then stay. And then back to that, What I was talking about earlier is that intentionality, then I think they feel that from us and they want to reciprocate it. So that's been great for our happy ending, our sexual wellness chocolate. We do a 30-day free subscription to Dipsy, which is erotic audiobooks. Speaker 1: Oh. Speaker 2: Yeah. So that one's really fun. Speaker 1: I'm going to go through all these dirties. I just need to see all of this. Speaker 2: Yeah. And then the uptake on that one is insane. People really want... Podcast, audio, spiciness. Love it. Yeah. And then for our brainstorm chocolate, we co-designed a journal with the artist Angelica Hicks and we have this really cool daily planner that is like Alice branded with all these Angelica's custom illustrations. Like she's done lines for Gucci and she's amazing. Speaker 1: You just really put someone on a journey. You're just like, yeah, like you come in, you make this purchase with us and like you're locked in. Speaker 2: You're locked. So that's order one that they get and we, for all of these, we have like special boxes designed so it feels really intentional and we've seen retention go up since we've introduced these because I think people, like I was saying, that intentionality then becomes a two-way street. Then order three, I think we do a tote bag, the Alice Tote. Then we do a hat at some point. We have really great like baseball caps, dad hats with our mushroom icon. And then towards the end of the journey, closer to the 12 month mark, we do our socks, which is actually one of our best selling, most like cult fan favorite items. Really? We make these socks and people go nuts for our socks. I'll see people out and they like pull their pant leg up and they're like, I'm wearing your socks. They're just like compression, the right amount of compression. They're kind of that like varsity look. So they've got black stripes and we have a mushroom embroidered on them. And they're so comfortable. People go bananas for these. We were like, okay, let's make it. And they buy them on our site. So we're like, let's make that kind of the month nine gift. It's like a real thank you to the homies. Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a credit at some point too. Like I think you get like $15 off and you just really are like, You're on a journey with Alice. Yeah, I just I love it. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's all and I'm still trying to like in so many ways figure out to how to build that out and I know This is something maybe you were working on or I've asked you about, but like how we can get people like before order three, because they have to go in and claim. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: Right. And so I'm trying to figure out ways that we can make it like super foolproof. So like everyone goes in and claims because not everyone's in their portal. Speaker 1: We have emails that do go like when you like earn a reward, we just check to make sure it's turned on and branded because like maybe it's not. It might not be turned on. You have to toggle it on. You want to make sure the branding is good and the message is really clean on it. So let's go in and make sure that that's turned on. Then we can also measure the take rate on that, the redemptions, and make sure that that redemption rate is at a good percentage. Speaker 2: It'd be cool to do something with SMS too. Speaker 1: Yeah, we definitely can. So we're passing all of that through to like the Klaviyo integration. What SMS platform are you using? Speaker 2: Attentive. Speaker 1: Oh, amazing. Attentive. So we pass all that through. So there should be like an event that's like punch card, like award given or something like that. And then you can build like a little flow off of it of like reminder, like go in and like add this to your next, or like redeem this. And then we can just add a quick action link that would put them right in the portal. Speaker 2: Amazing. Speaker 1: Yeah. So we'll get that set up. Speaker 3: Here's the truth. Most subscription platforms are built for billing teams and not for growth marketers. We didn't get subscriptions right the first time. There's too much friction and too many drop offs. Stay AI helped us clean it all up. Now we have the platform to manage subscriber upsells, gifting, offers and profit analysis. After we added Stay AI, churn went down, LTV went up, and our team isn't stuck in support tickets every single day. If subscriptions are part of your roadmap, check out Stay AI slash Chew on This and mention Chew on This. You'll get $200 off your monthly plan for life. Unknown Speaker: Now let's get back to the episode. Speaker 1: So on all of this, how are you, are there any graphs in stay or like anything you guys are pulling? How are you measuring success? Like if you're fundraising, if you're whatever, like what? What do you look at to be like, is the subscription program headed in the right direction? Speaker 2: I mean, I always, top of the analytics dashboard, which I look at like literally every day, is the just very much like, here's how many people have opted in this month. Here's how many people have repurchased in that dollar amount. And just like the red and the green, is it up? Is it down? And that is just so foolproof to me where I go in and I'm like, okay, there's greens on both. Great. Speaker 1: We're good. Speaker 2: We're chilling. And if it's down, okay, why is that? What's going on? Is it just, you know, the early, the first two weeks of the month where we don't have as much subscriber, like renewals, right? Most people actually are on a cadence on the end of the month or whatever, you know, different things like that. But really what is the, that's more of like a day to day, but what is the North star to me is the cohort data that you guys break out really seamlessly and just making sure that like those numbers are getting darker and darker pink is, is all that is, my focus. Um, cause I think the more you can look at each cohort month over month and see like, okay, they're staying at this rate and okay, now month three is looking like this and month five is looking like this and you can narrow it down to like their, opt-in month, I think. And that's where we've seen, I feel like I've said this a million times, but like when we introduced these gifts in January, all of a sudden every cohort since January is staying at a higher rate. So I think that is really what is the most important thing is just how are people retaining. Speaker 1: Amazing. And have you dug into, so it's technically on our churn dash, but I've been looking at this for a couple of brands of like, Not only are they staying subscribed, but are they spending more money? Speaker 2: Oh Yeah, so if I need to look into that, okay. Speaker 1: Yeah, we should do a little a little deep dive there Yeah, cuz that's something that I've been looking at and then when you start moving people I'm trying to figure out like best ways to break this down because now there's like shift and a lot of people like can we yeah people on the three month But then figuring out how much people spend, it's interesting because then it drops off for a couple of months, but then it pops back up and drops off where I'm trying to figure out what is the 60-day payback period? What does that amount look like? What is the average payback of the customers that come back after 60 days, after 90 days, after 120 days? And as we're switching frequencies around, how does that shift? Because I think that's the next thing that we're trying to crack. Is getting somebody on a three-month, you know, like three cases every three months, is that better? Not like, yes, they might be subscribed longer, but do we actually generate more revenue from the customer? My assumption is yes. And like, we can kind of break it down the way it is, but I'm trying to figure out, like, is there a clearer way for us to display that so that brands can run that test? Speaker 2: Totally. Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, margins just must be so much better. Even if the retention was slightly worse, it would still pay off. Speaker 2: Because it all comes down to really small amounts. So if you can eek out a dollar here or there, it's a game changer. Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the next thing that I'm very focused on is not just keeping somebody active, but how do we know how often they're purchasing and is there anything that we can do to incentivize consuming more frequently? Before all of the e-com stuff that I've done, I worked at Red Bull and I was like one of those Red Bull girls in college with the backpacks and all of that. But a big thing that they drilled into us was consumption occasion and how do we know if you have somebody who takes Red Bull when they're partying, can we get them to drink it when they are studying? Can we get them to drink it when they're working out? Can we get them and I was like, Red Bull at the gym? And they're like, oh yeah, you need to go sample a bunch of gyms and get people into this because nobody thinks about it as something you drink at the gym. And so like with brands, I'm always like, oh man, are there more consumption occasion? Are there other products? Do you guys have like a hero skew and then you try to upsell to others or is it kind of like different customers? Speaker 2: That's where I think this has been a challenge for us because I would put all three of our chocolates and we're We're a relatively low-skew business. We have three different chocolates and then kind of a random assortment of merch that's fun but is in no way the workhorse of the business and the way that our chocolates are. And all three of the chocolates, depending on different platforms, do better than the other here and there. Or this month, Nightcap was crushing, but actually last month it was Brainstorm, then before that it was... They really kind of steal market share back and forth from each other. And our bundles are really what do the best. Speaker 1: I'm subscribed to the full bundle. Speaker 2: Yeah, we can get all of them together. So this has always been a challenge for me is like how to people, how to get people to spend more. And I think it'll be more interesting once we start rolling out more SKUs, which is very much on the horizon and more things, because I think that almost right now it's, we're just kind of in this, it's almost like too small to do a lot of upselling, but I'm, I'm open to be, proven wrong. Speaker 1: I like would love to look at that. I'm just like, yeah, like the average customer, how many products are they subscribed to? And is there one that like overlaps better with another and like, can we measure the take rates of that? I don't know if you guys have done anything like that. We've got with, Experience Engine, you can go in and you can test like the take rate where you could say, hey, everybody who's just on sleep. Yeah, let's do a test to see what the take rate would be of the other two different SKUs and see if they lean more towards one or the other. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's so interesting and another thing that we do want to do that is like anyone who's just For example, like you said, subscribe to our Sleep Chocolate. We have single servings of our other ones. So it's like, is it on everyone's who's subscribed to our Sleep Chocolate on their third subscription order? They get three minis of our energy chocolate with a little postcard that says, like, we wanted you to try this. Here's a discount if you want to add it to your subscription and the code and go in the portal and whatever. Speaker 1: Oh, yes. Wait, I'm like, it's going off my brain. I'm like, okay, yeah, like definitely 100%. We would just set it up. Like we would say, if you're on this product, order number three, add this as a free gift. That would be set up. But now I'm like thinking like, yeah, with a quick action with a QR code, you could have somebody scan a thing, it would pull it up on their phone, and then they can just add it. And it would be like a specialized, like kind of a hidden product because you could do a quick action that would have this like kind of hidden discount amount in it. So like maybe they would get 50% off if they added it to their next order. Oh, I love that. Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why we're here. Yeah, this is why we're here. Speaker 1: We should have done like a laptops up podcast where we're just like sitting here and like adding everything in. Speaker 2: You should get like, they would let you do this at like the Shopify in Soho and just like get like 30 heads of growth in the room and then be like we're demoing this but then I mean everyone's so down to share stuff with each other I think. So that'd be interesting to just have like a head of growth brain trust. Speaker 1: Coming to a place where we're going to do a road show where it's just like laptops up, like, okay, like let's get into it and like, let's see what we need to do to optimize the accounts. Cause even like, you know, we'll hear people being like, oh, like our cancellation, like our save rate is this and someone else's is this. And I mean like they range, like brands have save rates of 4%, brands have save rates of 35%. And it just is like so much about like, what is the cancellation reason? If it's price, that's like the easiest thing to do. But I think for a lot of the supplements where it's like, I don't, I didn't feel it. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: I didn't like, I don't know this. We're like, so heavily education where you have to just like. Really push education on people and be very conscious of it in your emails. And like, while it's the cancellation reason, I think sometimes people just focus on, well, what can I do in the cancellation survey to treat that? And I'm like, no, like you have to use the cancellation survey data to power the whole experience. Like if you know that somebody is like, might be like, oh, I don't feel it, but you know that it kind of takes 60 days or something like that. Again, they have to get past that first reorder. You need to be messaging that from the start. That should be in the first post-purchase email. It should be in the upcoming order email. It should be everywhere. Speaker 2: We really want to kind of do like, okay, it's day 10 on your subscription. If you've taken it for the last 10 days, here's kind of what's going on in your brain. Here's how cordyceps is boosting your blood oxygen levels. Because I think so much of, this is what my media buyer says and it always cracks me up. He's like, Charlotte, always remember that Jesus Christ lives in your heart. And the point of that is that people need to believe it themselves, right? And so if you give people that education that is like, look, this is what's going on, even if they can't feel it off the top, know that it is working. Know that something is going on. This isn't just placebo, like have patience because So it's like, we want to have some type of thing that's like day 10, day 15, day 30. Here's now what has happened. Speaker 1: I, I love this. I made this analogy, I think on this, on the podcast last year at some point, but I was like, think about like when women are pregnant and they track like, oh, it's the size of a grape. It's the size of this. It's the size of that. Cause like, you can't see it, but you're like, you, you want to know what's going on. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: And you like get very invested in that. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: And I'm just kind of like, it's a very similar thing. Like I want to know like what is happening after 15 days? What is happening after 30 days? Think about all the hair growth supplements. Speaker 2: Totally. Speaker 1: You put it on your scalp, after 30 days, I have no idea if my hair is longer. It's so hard to tell. Speaker 2: Live in your heart. Speaker 1: Would it have grown this way anyway? Is it growing faster? No one really knows. Unless you take it for like a year. I started using, I'm on a hair growth journey right now. Speaker 2: Your hair looks great. Do you do photos? I have a friend who is just on a hair growth journey and she had monthly photos and it's crazy. Speaker 1: That's like, I should have started with that. I mean, I'm sure we, vain enough, there's enough selfies in my camera roll. I'm sure we could piece it together, but I should have. But like, yeah, I'm trying to figure out like what it is, but I started using a product that like is for greys, like it gets rid of like greys and stuff like that or slows down greys, whatever the claim is. I swear it's working. I swear I have less. They're not coming in as much, but it took a year for there to actually be something that I can see. And so yeah, with supplements, I think that that is really important. Something that gives- Right, like hang tight. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: As we wrap up, is there anything, other founders watching this, people that are trying to build brands, a piece of advice that you would pass on? Something that you wish you knew sooner or something that you're so glad you did? Speaker 2: God, I mean there's so many things. Like I think every mistake you make is a learning. I think that's something that I've really learned is like every time you mess up and you think everything is gonna go to the dumpster, you figure it out and you get better from it. So just like don't sweat so hard. I think, I mean do you want it to relate to like subscription or DTC? Speaker 1: I mean anything. Speaker 2: I think like one of the biggest things you can do when you're building a brand is really know what the brand is, be authentic behind it, pack it with intentionality. I think so often, especially now, like AI brands are getting churned out left and right. And it is so easy for the consumer to look at something and be like, that doesn't even feel real. This feels like a scam brand. This just is like, This AI generated images did even have a product like this coffee is creepy and I can tell a computer wrote it. Speaker 1: Are you a big TikTok scroller? Speaker 2: Sometimes. Speaker 1: I can tell the second an ad or something is coming. I don't even have to get three seconds in. I'm just like, oh, nope, nope, right past it. It's so weird where I'm like, what is this that I have in my brain? It's so funny because my dad just absolutely not, has just no idea. He got scammed the other day, bought some outlet that he thought was going to, that Elon Musk invented. I was like, dad, Elon Musk, not building outlets right now. Not his focus. But I'm like, yeah, At least our generation, like when we see that AI stuff, we're like, oh, like, yeah, we know. Speaker 2: It was funny. I did a panel the other day and in the Q&A, someone was like, what do you, how do you recommend or how would you have used AI when you were starting your business? And how do you recommend new founders use AI? And everyone else was like, use it like this. And I was like, don't. Because I think there's something that like when you're starting that grit of you figuring it out yourself and not cutting. Now it's to the point where like sometimes if I need to do a small copy update, I'll throw it into ChatGPT because it's copy that I've written. And then I'm like, just make it a little shorter or whatever. Clean it up. But I think you have to start with it like all being. Speaker 1: you. Yeah. Speaker 2: But I think that will come across and people will appreciate it and your brand will win because of that. Speaker 1: Like I did my bio the other day. I was like, here's all the things that I want to be in the bio and like here is everything that's really, really important to me. I put this in two paragraphs and I was like, okay, yes, but I can't just go to it and be like, write a bio for Gino Pirelli and dig up what you can on the internet. Speaker 2: But even then I had ChatGPT write me a bio the other day, but I was like, make it shorter, fix this. And then I ended up taking it and still workshopping it. And I think it's just like, don't, just don't be lazy. Speaker 1: Yes. Like be intentional and like, yeah, like use it. Like the way like when we're building stuff within Stay, like I'm always looking for like, how can we make this 20% more efficient? Like not how do we take it from zero to like all the way and we don't touch it at all. But like our, our smart dunning, for example, like we were just looking for it to be 20% more efficient than regular dunning. And that's enough at the end of the day. Like the cancellation survey, how it's like a live learning model, like it's better over time. Like, yeah, in the beginning it's 50-50 split and then it just starts self-optimizing a bit. Is it going to be night and day 500% better? No. But if you get, 20% better there and 20% better here and 20% better over there. That all at scale makes a meaningful difference. Anything else that we feel like we need to leave the people with? Speaker 2: You stay AI. Yes. Speaker 1: Thank you. She said it, not me. Well, thank you guys for tuning in. We'll be back with another episode. Speaker 3: If you want more from us, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on TikTok and check out the website ChewOnThis.io.