The Subscription Strategies You Aren't Using for your Brand (But Should)

The Subscription Strategies You Aren't Using for your Brand (But Should) Speaker 1: Okay, guys, we're back. Speaker 2: Did you miss us? Speaker 1: Because we missed you. And this is another episode of the Chew on This subscription and retention podcast powered by Stay AI. If you have watched the last couple episodes, you know exactly who we are. But if you're new here, and you're just tuning in for some amazing email and SMS tips, I am your host, Gina Pirelli, founder of Stay AI, and we've got the lovely Audrey, who I've had the pleasure of working with for the last five years. Audrey runs everything strategy over at Stay, so now I have kind of passed the baton. I am no longer the retention strategy queen. If you have strategy questions, probably best off to call Audrey, and she is going to help us run through today everything that you need to know about email and SMS for your subscribers. Let's get into it. All right. So where should we start? I mean, first off, I think probably the biggest question is like, should I be emailing and text messaging my subscribers? I think when I, when we first started Stay, we're talking, you know, four or five years ago at this point, when we were just thinking about the subscription space, there were a lot of brands that just were like, the whole strategy was do not email or text your subscribers. How do you feel about that strategy? Speaker 2: Email and SMS is key to building a relationship with customers. And one, there's some emails that you are legally required to send, so definitely be sending those. But I think outside of that, you shouldn't be scared to talk to customers. I think there's a lot of ways that you can position a subscription to be beneficial just outside of the initial discount that you're offering. Yeah, email and SMS are amazing touch points that like help you do that. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think times have shifted. It's no longer this thing where you're like, oh, like, you know, if I send an email, they'll cancel. Like if you don't send an email, you're gonna violate some laws. So you're gonna, you're gonna send emails and you're gonna make it a positive experience and make it work for you. So right off the bat, sometimes we get a brand that starts up with us. They want to know, should we use the stay native emails or should we use the emails in our ESP, something like Klaviyo? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's value to both. Like if you're just starting out with subscription, like definitely just turn on the stay emails. It's a super, super robust, like customizer. Um, pretty much just like the Klaviyo kind of email builder design, pretty similar to that. You can get pretty creative with what you're doing within the Stay, just like native notifications, all the quick actions work and everything like that. So like all of these suggestions that we're giving are pretty applicable to the Stay notifications too. I will say that if you want to unlock some like additional segmentation power, analytics, that's when I think it's worth moving over to Klaviyo. So yeah, if you're a brand looking to kind of like up your subscription communication and retention strategy, I'd say the first place I would start is your Klaviyo emails or honestly any other ESP, but. Speaker 1: Yeah, doesn't matter. So yeah, if you are just starting out, fine to use the stay ones once you are ready. So if you watched episode two, like I feel like we've really gone through the story of how to optimize. So it's like, yeah, like first you got to pick what your subscription offer is and how to set up subscription. Then you should optimize everything that you have within Stay. Then I feel like really go through all the touch points and see like, how are we speaking to people? When are we speaking to people? So totally fine to start off with your subscription providers, native notifications, but when you're ready to like step it up and you've got some time and you've got the resources, then move them into your ESP of choice and start to build out those flows. I think also then you can kind of put people in trip campaigns and everything like that. Unknown Speaker: 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. Now, let's get back to the episode. Speaker 1: Anything else that, like, if you are using either, like, your Stay, like, if you're not using the Stay emails, actually, let's run that back. If you are using your ESP, what are things that you need to make sure you do? Speaker 2: Yeah, the biggest thing is making sure that your emails, like your upcoming order email, for example, is marked as transactional. Speaker 1: Alert, alert, like, if, please, wait, like, clip that. Tell the people again. Speaker 2: Yeah, make sure that your email For subscription are marked as transactional. Speaker 1: Absolutely. If you move your emails out of your subscription provider and into your ESP, mark them transactional because anybody who's unsubscribed to your marketing promotional emails is not going to get the upcoming order email and that's not a good experience. So once you've done that, What do you think is the number one flow that people should start with? Like, what makes the most sense? If somebody is like, hey, I can't move all of these emails from Stay into Klaviyo, where do they start? Speaker 2: Yeah. Can I give two? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: I think the upcoming order, because that's the most like transactional touchpoint and can be a pretty negative experience when you're telling customers that you're going to charge their card. So that's something that we want to turn into a more positive one. But then also the subscription started email. We've talked a lot about how retention starts before the customer even purchases. And I think this is a really early on touchpoint where you can like set expectations about the product, give them more information about the subscription program. And really start that relationship off on the right foot. Speaker 1: Yeah, I would absolutely agree. And how many emails do you think should go in that type of flow? Speaker 2: I think two to three. Again, I don't think you should be afraid to be emailing customers, especially at this point where they're getting familiar with the brand. Maybe they received the product and haven't even started taking it yet. You really need to nudge customers into using the product and then all of the other things that they can do within the subscription platform. Speaker 1: Okay, so if you're gonna do three emails, maybe give me a quick breakdown. What goes in email one? What goes in email two? What goes in email three? And then also, how spaced out should they be? Speaker 2: Yeah, email one should just be like, hey, welcome to the program. Mars Men does something super cool. We're super on brand. They give you a mission brief, which is essentially just how to set up your subscription account. So they direct you to Log into the portal and check all that out, which I really love because I find a lot of times that customers aren't even logging into the portal until their first upcoming order email. And obviously if your portal is optimized based on everything that we've talked about in the previous episode, like you want to get customers there. So yeah. Basic information about the subscription. You can even start talking about like anything related to like product expectations, what they should be feeling within a few days of using it. Again, just to put them on the right track. Speaker 1: Amazing. And then that I would assume like that first post-purchase experience kind of goes into the upcoming order email. And then actually before I even get there, what if we want to use SMS And email. Are you seeing people do both? Is there just one or the other? Like how does that work if you want to use both channels? Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I think there's a place for both of those in the flow. Again, like let's say you have a series of three emails, like you're welcoming them to the program. Maybe you follow up with like more information about any of the loyalty programs that you have, digital punch cards, stuff like that. And then, I don't know, a third email about best practices for using the product. Again, just making sure customers start taking it. Mix in an SMS within there as well. One way that you could do this is around maybe that second email with like a text that says like, Check out your subscription perks, directing them to the portal. Yeah, there's there's definitely a lot of opportunity to mix in SMS because some customers never check their emails. Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I absolutely feel that like sometimes I do just like want to get a text about it, but other times like I think it really depends on how much content you need over like how much education your product needs because some of it just doesn't all fit into an SMS or you need like the SMS to link to some type of landing page or just like really think about that experience. Okay, so Hot topic, upcoming order emails. Everybody I think at some point has wanted to turn this off. Legally, I think there's a handful of states. You have to have it turned on. It's also just not a good experience if you don't have any type of heads up turned on. How do we build the perfect upcoming order email? Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, definitely you should be sending this because also like you might think it's helping churn because customers aren't canceling when they receive the email. But once they're charged, they're going to churn and then you'll probably have a bunch of charge back. So it's worth sending it. But we can make this a more positive experience than just a, hey, we're charging your card right now. The first place I would start is the subject line. Make this engaging, make this fun. Instead of just like, we're getting your package ready, say healthy benefits are coming your way, or like, we're getting your order ready with some fun emojis. Yeah, again, just making it more interactive and less like, oh shoot, I am about to pay for this product. Another way that you can kind of frame this is we work with a, like a air filtration brand, and this isn't a product that you necessarily are like, going through. Um, so they use the upcoming order email more so as like a reminder that it's time to change out your filters. Speaker 1: Yes. I have my shower filter. Um, I, yeah, I'm not going to skip it. I'm not going to wait. It just is what it is. Like that's how I remind myself that I need to change the filter is whenever that order comes, I'm just like, okay, it's time. Like who's looking at that. Uh, so yeah, I love that example. And then what else can we do in the upcoming order email? Like the subject line, I think that one of the, or how do I frame this? Have you ever heard like deliver bad news with a smile? Okay, that's kind of how I feel about the upcoming order email, is like deliver it positively. So like if you just say, we're about to charge your card, credit card emoji, like that, not great. If you're like health and wellness is on the way. So the examples you said, that's how you should be thinking about it is like, are you delivering the news with a smile? Are people going to be excited about what's about to happen? Or are you just highlighting something negative? Speaker 2: Totally. And I think that's also where it becomes important to, again, reiterate those benefits. We've been talking about that so much. Like, this is your first upcoming order. This is your second upcoming order because you've been taking the product for 30 days, 60 days. How should you feel and just kind of like reiterate what the customer should be experiencing positively at this point. Yeah, but also don't be afraid to give the customer options to manage their subscription. Like don't be scared to let them make it super easy for them to pause or delay their order because ultimately like if the customer has flexibility and control, they're less likely to cancel. So make those options like really readily available. And then on the other hand, also give them the option to get it now if they actually love the product, went through it really fast and they need it before you charge them in three to five days. Speaker 1: Yes, I love that. I think the other thing we touched on it briefly in a previous episode is like conditional blocks. I think these are just the most slept on thing, as I say that about a lot of things, because you guys are sleeping on a lot of really important stuff. But conditional blocks, like get familiar with them and start using them because they're like a little scary in the beginning when you're I'm like, oh, I don't understand. I don't know how to test this, blah, blah, whatever. But conditional blocks are your best friend for things like this. So exactly as Audrey was saying, maybe after the first 30 days, you're seeing one thing. After the second 30 days, you're seeing another thing. And so by looking at the order number that somebody's on for the upcoming order email, you can slate in different conditional blocks and maybe you don't need to build that. After order six, you probably don't need that. Somebody's hooked at that point. And you can look at the risk analysis to see where is that arc of churn and where does it fall off. But in the first at least three to four orders, especially with any supplement, there's something going on there where I think that that is like the perfect place that you don't need to make a million different templates of the upcoming order email. You just need to slate in some conditional blocks with what is the benefit on that first or second order. Speaker 2: Exactly. The other thing that I think people forget about on the upcoming order is upsells. That is a huge, huge unlock. Giving customers a discount on trying certain products, giving them recommendations. Again, it doesn't just need to be like, we're selling you on this other product. We're like, here's something that I think might go really well with the product you're currently subscribed to and actually make your experience better. Always use quick actions in that case because it removes a lot of friction for customers doing that. But then there's also like some really amazing integrations like Zamo, for example, is super, super cool. Speaker 1: I am seeing them more and more pop up on our brands. I feel like every day I go to a channel and someone's like, oh, we're going to use Zamo, we're going to use Zamo. And I like love what they're doing in the email space. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Like, so instead of the customer having to go to the portal, they can add products, change anything about their subscription, like literally right in the email. It's so easy. Speaker 1: So good. Okay. And then if you don't have Xamarin, you can just use quick actions. So like you got do something like the bare minimum is like using quick actions and conditional blocks in these emails. Well, I guess like the bare minimum is like not doing anything, but yeah, what you should be doing if you have 30 minutes of time is go in update these emails. What else can people do? So we talked a lot about education. We talked about upsells. Anything around like loyalty, gift with purchase, like what can we do there? Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. If you are running some sort of gift with purchase, make sure that you reiterate that in the upcoming order email. When we talked about Experience Engine specifically, we talked about how that has its own separate like metric in Klaviyo that you can use to trigger a flow. But all of those properties are also included in the upcoming order metric as well. So you can kind of add that dynamic block, add that segment and let customers know again at this touch point that does cause churn that they are getting something free with their next order. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: And then also in terms of loyalty, like direct them to the portal to check out how many points they have to redeem or remind them based on their order cycle, like what punch they're on in their digital punch card. Speaker 1: Yeah. Another thing, it's like a little bit outside of our wheelhouse, but if you are using a points loyalty solution, Conditional blocks, if somebody has, you know, points, you know, if somebody has greater than a hundred points, you should always have like a little bar that's somewhere, you know, either in the top and the bottom, wherever in your emails that just says like, Gina, you have X amount of points, like redeem now. And it like goes, those are things that I just think they're such small touches. And once you train the habit, once you build that block and you just clone it into all the other blocks, really can go a long way. Anything with SMS where, because we talk, so I feel like I default to talking about email, but SMS can be huge for subscribers. Anything that you've seen somebody do, something cool, SMS experience? Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen merchants use the keywords within Klaviyo, Attentive, PostScript to trigger a quick action. We get asked all the time about SMS, chatbots, and allowing customers to manage their subscription. My like hot take is that that actually contributes to like negative customer experiences. I've never really seen a merchant using a chatbot or like experienced one of my own that has actually like understood what I wanted it to do. Speaker 1: I know it's one of those things that's like so good in theory and I mean like cards on the table when we first founded Stay I called it retention. I thought it was going to be so heavy text And we just started to run it and we started to push everybody into these chatbots to manage SMS. And it just, it wasn't it. So the SMS laws are a bit different. You can't do as much direct upselling on the product. Somebody has to go into the portal. They have to confirm things in order for compliance and all of that, which is fine. So you can use quick actions because they go into the portal, but just reply yes to add this to your subscription. You really need to check what the opt-in was and if that's fully compliant. Where the chatbot with like reply to only lets you do negative actions. So if you're not I think there's like this misconception of like, oh, this is going to like really help retention because I'm texting people and most of the time it does more harm than good. Speaker 2: Exactly. Speaker 1: So yeah, it just, it depends on you. It depends on your brand. If you are like seriously like, Hey, I don't ever want somebody to get shipped the product that they don't want it. I want to give people every opportunity to skip. Then maybe like you, we have the chatbot, you can turn it on. Um, but I always try to have that like serious conversation with somebody before they just turn it on and then they're like shocked skips are up. Speaker 2: Or before you even turn the bot on, just start with like a really simple upcoming order SMH. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: Like just say, apply skiff. And we'll send you a skip quick action or reply get it now and we'll like process your order now with a quick action. And just like see how customers receive that and if they actually are interacting with the SMS because that might be enough and you don't need to use the chatbot. Speaker 1: Yes, I could go down this rabbit hole all day and then I will leave it after this. But have you ever gone into the reply section to see how people interact with the chatbot? To see all the open tickets? Speaker 2: It's crazy. Speaker 1: You just would think in this day and age that people like know how to interact with the chatbot. But it's crazy. Like it will literally be like, oh, like reply, wanted you this reply to do that. And it's like operator. And it's like, oh, then it opens a ticket and it's like, wait, no, no, no, no, I want. And then you're like, like, come on. Like it just. Speaker 2: You just have to be prepared to like field the CX requests that come from people saying like, talk to a real person. And if you're not, I think it just creates even more. Speaker 1: Yes. And if you have real time support, I think that's better. But what happens is sometimes people try to do a chatbot, but then they don't realize that it's going to open a ticket in Gorgias. And then like, they don't respond to tickets for 24 hours. And like when somebody is, you know, replying one, replying two, they're expecting when they open an operator to get a note back. Like if you're on a website and there's a chatbot like there's nothing worse than when you open it and you like think you're talking to someone it's like beep boop and then it's like oh you're 75th in line we'll get back to you tomorrow and you're like like I'm not gonna stay on this tab. Yeah like what what do I do? So you can do it well but it's really worth a chat of how Do I want to do this? And like, what are the expectations? Again, if you have 24 seven support and you reply in less than five minutes, ChatBot could be fantastic for you for subscription. If you don't and your support tickets take two days to respond, probably not a great idea. Unknown Speaker: 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. Now, let's get back to the episode. Speaker 1: Okay. On that, what happens when we lose a subscriber? So, cancellation, win back. Again, I'm always screaming about this. I think that we need more attention on win back flows. What do you suggest there? Speaker 2: Yeah. This is, I know I said, welcome email, upcoming order email, but I think there's I think there's a ton of benefit to moving this into an external email provider, just because you can set up a flow that reaches out to the customer every 15 to 60 days, obviously depending on your product and your cadences. But yeah, super, super important to be reaching out to canceled subscribers and trying to win them back. Obviously you want to send a confirmation right when they cancel, like, oops, did you make a mistake? Or just kind of confirming that, giving them an easy way to reactivate. But then also, this is where your cancellation survey results come into play. Did they cancel because they had too much product? Okay, let's just give them a gentle reminder 30 days later. Did they cancel because it was too expensive? Maybe they need more heavy discounting up front. But even too, there's a lot of opportunity as well to Take out customers that canceled for a specific reason from these flows. Like if you're a pet food company and you know that someone canceled because their pet passed away, like maybe you aren't following up with those customers. Or another example is like kids brands, formula, diapers, things like that. You don't want to bother those customers when there's literally zero chance they're going to win the bet. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, for anything like that, I do think that's important to think about, like, is there a negative reason, like, is there a reason why, a sensitive reason, negative's not the right time, but is there a sensitive reason why somebody canceled the subscription that we don't want to hit them up about? And like, how do we capture that in the cancellation flow to make sure that we are not emailing those people in the future? And I think also there's like a step further. That you can go where maybe you set up some type of flow in your ESP where if somebody did cancel because of that reason, maybe you suppress them from emails or it's something that your CX team can at least review. Yeah, especially with a pet passing way or something like that. I know we do a ton of pet food subscriptions. Speaker 2: I love what Alice Mushrooms does on their initial confirmation email that you cancelled. They give you a bunch of... Well, first of all, they give you a few days if you cancelled and you wanted to change your mind. You can still reactivate really easily. Their support team will help you. But also, they give you a bunch of alternatives to cancelling. They're like, here's why you should actually pause instead of cancelling. While you reactivate and pause, you won't lose your routine. Unknown Speaker: Oh, I love that. Speaker 1: Like reactivate and pause, reactivate and, oh, that's super smart. Speaker 2: And they literally take the exact cancellation reasons that they see and they bring those into that email. They say something along the lines of like, are you not feeling the effects yet? Like, well, you shouldn't cancel because you need to keep taking the product. Like have too much. Why don't you just pause instead? Speaker 1: Oh, I love that. It's, sometimes I'm like, it is common sense. Like, yes, you would need to unlock it, but a lot of this stuff, like it just makes sense when you say it out loud of just how you should treat people like people. Like these are your customers, but just think how would I want to be reached out to if this was why I canceled. Speaker 2: And also along the same line that we were talking about in the upcoming order email, I think the subject line is still super important here. Like you aren't going to win a customer back by saying like, reactivate your subscription. Like that's along the same lines of just like, we're going to charge your card. Speaker 1: Yeah. Like let us charge your card again. Not the right subject line. Speaker 2: Cleverblends has a great one that just says restart your routine. Like super simple, super casual. And I love that. Speaker 1: Okay. Love it. On slightly different, what about like people who don't realize their next order is not coming? So failed payments, the whole dunning section of the world. What do you have going on there? What should those emails be like? So we've got two different types of card failures. Like one is a soft decline, which sometimes doesn't require any action from them. And then a hard decline where like if the card expires. How are you dealing with failed payments and what are your suggestions there? Speaker 2: Yeah, just like everything else, I think it's about segmentation. There are customers where you can actually like reduce passive churn by letting them know that they need to update their card. But then on the other hand, you can also reduce just like manual churn, because if a customer's card fails and you're sending them an email kind of like reminding them of that, maybe they're just going to be like, oh, that's actually good. I didn't need the product, so I'm going to cancel anyway. So that's why I like to add some segmentation around hard and soft payment failures. A hard payment failure is like your card expired. And no matter how many times we retry that payment, This card is never going to go through, so we need to get those customers in the portal updating their payment method as soon as possible. On the other hand, though, with the soft payment failures, we might retry that the next day, and if you have Smart Denning enabled, it will optimize to retry those types of payments even earlier. Those are the ones where maybe we don't want to reach out to the customer right away. We wait one or two retries, and if it's still failing, that's when we're like, hey, you gotta jump in here and update your card. Speaker 1: Got it. Okay, I love that. And that's all stuff that we can do just right in the settings. Yeah, like check if. If this reason, retry number one, don't send. Retry number two, do send. Okay, fantastic. Love that. We passed an event like your credit card is going to expire soon. Have you seen anyone use that? What do you think about that? Speaker 2: I am more of a fan of reaching out when it has expired. I think that is maybe an email that might trigger people a little too early. Some people might already know that their card has expired. They might go in and change it anyway. I think you are probably going to have more luck when someone's not getting their order because their card expired versus trying to get them to proactively do that. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I know what, we, I don't think we can say the brand, but we do know somebody who ran a test on this. Speaker 2: I was gonna say, worth testing. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, worth testing. Yeah, without saying the brand, we do know, we monitored a test where somebody, a brand, when, and they, I think, emailed people maybe 30 and 60 days before, like they knew the card was gonna expire. So let's just say that we know that my card's gonna expire in April, and it's March, I would get an email that was basically like, hey, your card is gonna expire next month, Update it now, which in theory that made sense. Like that's a, that's one for me where like it kind of went against common sense. Like I thought a hundred percent like that was going to be a no brainer and a win, but it actually like prompted the wrong behavior with people where it was like too much ahead of it. It was like, Oh, like it just, I think it maybe just came off a little too predator, like predatory. Speaker 2: And you also don't really have a way to know like where that customer is in their subscription journey. So like if it is between someone's first and second order, like maybe they're like, well, I haven't even tried the product yet. Why are you getting me to update my car? It makes sense for customers that are like, I have been with you for six to 10 orders. But those are also the customers that are going to update their card when they have a payment failure anyway. Speaker 1: Yeah, that I would love to see more people test around this. So if you if you have the time and you are curious, that is an event that we pass over to Klaviyo is like card is going to in 60 days, I think it's okay, where you can set up a flow around that to prompt people early. Again, be warned, we did run a test with somebody else where it didn't give the best response. But that said, just because it didn't work for one person doesn't mean there's probably some other filtering that can happen. Anything else with failed payments? Speaker 2: I forget if I mentioned this already, but again, subject line is important. You can create a sense of urgency around some payment failures versus others. Like if you don't want to do those silent retries that I talked about for soft payment failures, like maybe just soften the tone of the subject line. Like, hey, your card failed, but we're going to retry it. Don't worry about it. And then get more urgent as it progresses. But like, again, if your credit card is expired, like shout from the rooftops, you've got to update that. Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely feel that. So we've talked about all the different flows now, started subscription, upcoming order, reactivation, failed payments. I feel like those are all the main flows that you should have set up, but I feel like that's only half of what you should be thinking about in terms of email and SMS. What are some good campaigns that you see in people send? Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I think the thing to keep in mind with campaigns is that you should be speaking to your subscribers and your one-time purchasers differently. I see this all the time with new product launches, for example. A brand will send out the same email to everyone and it just causes existing subscribers to create a new subscription for that product when they could have just added it to their subscription. But there's also so much opportunity to make it a really fun subscriber exclusive play. If you send a specific campaign to subs. Speaker 1: I feel like Olipop crushes this whenever they do their limited flavors. So they break it out into two different emails where if you are an existing subscriber, you get an email that has a quick action to add the product to your upcoming order. And if you're not, you get an email most of the time that even mentions, hey, had you been a subscriber, you would have had access to this earlier. And you would have gotten a discount on it, but like if you want to start your subscription here or like, and then that drives you to the PDP or a landing page. Okay. I love that. I think more people just need to segment those out and send those two different campaigns. Or again, you could use conditional blocks and you can say, if somebody is an active subscriber, do this and it would have the link to the quick action. And if they're not, Do this and it would have just the link to start a subscription to the PDP, checkout URL, whatever. Speaker 2: Definitely. The other thing to keep in mind is that you should make sure that the email creative that you're sending matches whatever you have in the banner ad, especially for new product launches. Cleverblends does such a good job with this. It's like so cohesive. I think we like to think that customers see the email, click the quick action, add it automatically, but some customers see the email and log off and then go back to the portal separately. So if that is really cohesive, I think it's a nice customer experience. Speaker 1: Consistency is key in your creative and I just think it's the same concept of if you have an ad that then kicks to a PDP that looks totally different and the benefits aren't there and whatever, it's just not gonna convert as well as if you have an ad where the creative perfectly matches the landing page and the story is really consistent and the branding is really consistent, that same thing happens with email. So if you are sending an email and then you go to the portal and the portal feels totally different, make sure that that matches up and use the banner. It takes less time to design a banner in a save portal than it does to design an entire email. So please don't get lazy there. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Where else have you seen campaigns really be good? Speaker 2: Yeah, for sales. Sales and product launches are kind of similar where you want to treat your subscribers a little bit differently. Yeah, to like incentivize the right behavior. So yeah, campaigns are super important for sales, especially during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. One example of this I love is Graza always does like a spring giving sale. I love that. Instead of their like Thanksgiving Black Friday sale and for all of their subscribers, they just go in and add the discount code that customers on the website would be getting and then they email them out saying, hey, We added this for you if you process your order like in the next however many days. So that again prevents customers from going, checking out with a new subscription just to take advantage of the sale and canceling their old one or having multiple and kind of messing up your analytics. Speaker 1: I talk about a program where I never thought I'd be subscribed to olive oil. Loyal subscriber here. I've gifted my olive oil multiple times. If I do get it before I run out, so many people get olive oil from me because I'm just now at this point so loyal to it. It's a good experience. Every time I log in, it's just really well done. We're like, that's like, it's one of my subscriptions that I seriously don't mind if I like forgot to there, I have too much or whatever. Cause I'm, I, I can always give it to someone where I, yeah, I just, it's the brand loyalty element. Um, where, yeah, they're on all the different platforms. I mean, I see them on TikTok, like I see them everywhere and it's just so good. But I think that is a masterclass in how all these different things like play into retention that even if they're not, you know, it's not just because they have a good cancel flow. I've never made it to the cancel flow. I have no idea what's going on. They might not have a cancellation survey. But all the touch points before I would even think to cancel are so good that I've never gotten them. Speaker 2: And speaking of new product launches, they just launched glass bottles, which is incredible. Speaker 1: Oh my god, just the TikTok with the ass thing was so funny. Shout out Graza if you guys are listening to this. Keep doing what you're doing because it's inspiring. Okay, what else? Who else? Things that you've loved around campaigns that people have done. Speaker 2: If you don't have a new product or if you're not running a sale, this is a great time to pull in kind of what we talked about with the banner ad and add-ons and just like pick a product that you already have and spin up some like subscriber exclusive deal around that. Speaker 1: Yes, do you remember two years ago, Shirley Wines, maybe they did it this, I just like, I think we were small enough at this point that like I might've been their CSM, like this was like early days of stay. They did a Black Friday promo that was fantastic. So two months before Black Friday, they emailed the entire customer base and they were like, we will not be running anything Black Friday on our website. If you want a Black Friday deal, it's for subscribers only. It will exclusively be found in the subscription portal, which I thought was, I was like, okay, I'm dialed in, now I'm a subscriber, what's gonna go on in the subscription portal? I think they hyped it up even more. And then they loaded in these pre-fixed bundles that they made, and they made the titles of them Black Friday, Cyber Monday exclusive. And it was only in the portal, and it was so good, where I was like, what a great way to run a campaign, to bring in sales before the Black Friday, Cyber Monday period, two months in advance, so that way people would become subscribers, so then they could spend more. Amazing, fantastic, chef's kiss. Speaker 2: Yeah, another like even simpler example is like if you have a bunch of flavors of your product and one kind of makes sense in the summer or the winter or something, just like take one of those hero SKUs and make a big campaign about it for subscribers. I think it trains that like positive behavior in the portal and the emails. I think these campaigns are super important because They train the customer to see your emails as a positive, fun experience versus the, hey, we're going to charge your credit card or your payment failed or something like that. So while it may not seem like it, these types of campaigns, I think, do a lot to build a relationship with the customer. Speaker 1: Absolutely. I also think it's like, don't get discouraged. If you, the first time you use a quick action, it doesn't have a high take rate or it doesn't have a high click. I do think a lot of that is trained behavior. Like the brands that we see have the highest conversion rate. I think we might've just put something out with Olipop where they had like an 80 something plus percent conversion rate on the quick action. That was like an ad product one. Speaker 2: But their customers know what to do. Speaker 1: Exactly. Their customers know it. So don't, if you, if you send one and you have an ad thing and you're like, Oh man, like only 10 people took advantage. It is a trained behavior. If your subscribers don't know that they can add things because you've never pushed cross-sells and you've never sent quick actions, it's fine. Stick with it. Keep going. Keep pushing those. You will start to train the subscribers to get excited for new drops, to add things to their portal. It takes a minute sometimes. Speaker 2: Yeah. And also, don't forget about SMS in these instances. You can do both, you can do one or the other, but the keywords that trigger the quick actions I think are really fun here. Like if you launch a new flavor, a new orange flavor, reply orange and we'll send you the link to add this. The secret exclusive VIP link to like add this product to your next order. Speaker 1: I love the replies because I think it just drives such good engagement. Years ago we did, and I think this is actually pre-stay, this is more just like a It was with postscript keyword thing, where I was launching a new flavor and they made people guess and like reply this or that. It was like two different flavors and they the keyword responses set up based on this. And then when it launched, they did this whole campaign using all the people who had responded those keywords. They got these like tailored and it was just so well done and so engaging where yeah, like this is like the type of stuff that I think people like there's levels to it. There's levels to this shit. Like it starts with figuring out how to start like Get something on subscription. What are you gonna offer? What is in your buy box? What does your PDP look like? Then you have to optimize your program. Then you can really start to get creative with this. But if you've had a subscription program for over a year, there's no reason why you can't sit down for one to two hours a month and just be like, okay, what are we planning out for our subscribers? Speaker 2: Yeah. Some really easy segments that you could pull too if you wanted to test this out is pull everybody that is not subscribed to your hero product and send them a campaign to try that out. Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. Speaker 2: And then on the other hand, anybody that is subscribed to your hero product, maybe you test some different upsells to them. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: And testing doesn't have to be like, I mean, you could send two different emails, A, B tests, different products in them, or you could send almost like a little catalog of products that you recommend based on the one they're currently subscribed to. Speaker 1: Okay. Amazing. I feel like we gave a lot of different tips on what to do in email and SMS, so please If you didn't have your laptop up during the session, like lay it back, pause, like start to make a list. Be like, hey, what do I have set up? What do I not? What makes sense for my brand? So much of this stuff, it does really make a big difference at the end of the day. And even if you just do it one time, like you gotta just keep at it, keep repeating it. And it'll get easier and it'll become more natural to you to get, use the conditional blocks, to set up these flows and to think about like, oh, how could I have done this better for subscribers? Or how could I position this to get more people into subscription? Okay, we have covered a lot today on email, SMS, everything. Audrey, SMS, email, retention expert, what is your hot take? Speaker 2: Yeah, my hot take is that you should be sending more emails and more SMS. Speaker 1: Yes! Okay, what is my hot take? My hot take is... Build a reactivation flow. Please, if you are not winning back 10% of your subscribers, build a reactivation flow right now. Thank you. Thank you for coming to our TED Talk on email and SMS. I hope that you guys absolutely loved it. Please comment, share, let us know what you wish that we covered this season. If you have questions, reach out to us. Audrey will almost always get on the phone with you if I don't answer, so call one of us. We'd love to chat more. Bye, guys. Unknown Speaker: 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.