Why Discounts for Subscriptions Matter

Why Discounts for Subscriptions Matter Speaker 1: Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of the Chew on This retention and subscription podcast. As always, I'm your host, Gina Pirelli, and I'm joined here today with my lovely long-term friend, also retention specialist, Audrey. Thank you. Speaker 2: I'm so excited to be here today. Speaker 1: I'm excited that you're here today. Audrey and I had the pleasure of working together back in the Lunar Solar days. Audrey actually was an intern there first when you were still in school, then worked at Lunar Solar for a couple of years, went in-house, worked at a supplement brand, and then maybe like a year You're into me running Stay? We were chatting, we had dinner, and I was like, I really think you should come. And you were kind of like looking at that, hey, how do I bridge acquisition to retention and come into a new role? And I'm so excited about the work you've been able to do at Stay and the new role you're in now leading the entire strategy team. So if anybody needs retention tips, it's no longer me that you call, this is your girl. So excited to hit on everything we're going to chat about today and the next couple episodes. Today, the focus is acquisition. When we say subscriber acquisition, we're really thinking about everything from if you don't know if you want to offer a subscription program, we're going to cover that. If you're already offering a subscription program and you want to up the subscriber retention, We're going to chat about that. So landing pages, what the discount should be, how you can get purchasers that maybe purchase one time or a couple times on one time into subscription, that's all going to be covered. So let's just take it from the absolute top. Somebody is thinking about launching a subscription. Should we do a discount? Should we do a gift with purchase? Should we do a million and everything? How do you decide what the offer should be? Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, we see a range of things with brands, especially on Stay. If it were me, I would probably start with 25% off and free shipping. I think those move the needle the most, but obviously it depends on the brand's margins and things like that, cost of acquisition, but it's something that is worth testing. The discount, what makes sense for your brand. Obviously, it's about finding the right balance between high value subscribers and those people that are just looking for a deal. But I think the higher discount you can offer, the better. I think brands that are crushing it on subscription right now are making it Like the obvious choice to subscribe versus purchase one time. I know you talked about that in the last episode and like all of the levers that then you can pull later on in the funnel, but I am of the camp that like you should just get people in the door, get them to subscribe and then can go from there. But yeah, there's a lot of things that you can play around with in terms of like how to position the discount, how to display the discount, but I would just go the highest you can for your brand. Okay. I love that. Speaker 1: And I think 25% makes sense. Sometimes when I do see it at like 50%, like we see that fall off and it totally depends on the metrics of the brand. If you can afford to have a 50% cancel rate after the first order, because that's enough to get people in, then that might make sense for you. But really think about yourself, your metrics, like how can you do it? And it's fine to start with something and then change it to something else or even test. 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: Do you see brands testing different subscription offers and how, like, what kind of, like, are they testing 10 versus 50? Are they testing 20 versus 25? Like, what kind of things are you seeing people test? Speaker 2: I'd say people are testing within a smaller range, 10 to 25%, but I think a lot of the testing comes more so in how you're displaying the discount, how you're talking about the value of subscription within the buy box, because at least with the merchants that we work with, they'll come to us saying, this is our subscription discount. There's not much that we can do to change that. But what can we do to improve the opt-in to conversion rate there? So testing how you're displaying the discount, whether that's. Speaker 1: I love that. Speaker 2: Dollar amount off or the price per unit of the product in the buy box. I think those small tweaks, people often overlook them, but they can make a huge difference when you're adding them up. Just consistently testing those and pulling in the things that improve subscription conversion rate the most. But yeah, I think testing is key. But again, if it was my brand, I would Make sure to do 25% off and free shipping. Speaker 1: Got it. Yeah, I do love the free shipping. I feel like it's like a nice touch on subscription. Nobody likes paying for shipping. And then also we'll see different rules sometimes. So sometimes the brand will be like, yeah, 25% off and free shipping. But if you're just buying one time, maybe there's a free shipping threshold that's like much higher. We're all subscription. So I think that all makes sense. Have you ever had people ask, I feel like I know I have, percentage versus dollar amount? Speaker 2: Yes, I personally think percentage scales better, especially if you're trying to keep like the overall subscription program more simple, like just 25% off regardless of the product. I've seen brands do like higher discounts for larger bundles or a build your own bundle or something like that, where like you're getting a better AOV on that first order so you can afford to do a higher discount. But ultimately, I think that the percentage but you can again test displaying that as like the dollars that you save per product. Speaker 1: When the selling plan is a percentage amount, and then you can test how it displays. I think if you have a higher AOV, sometimes the dollar amount can be more compelling on the PPP, but that doesn't mean that you have to change the whole selling plan to just be dollars off. Because yeah, I've just seen it where people are like one packs, two packs, and then what is the discount? How many dollars off is it on the bigger plan where it just kind of can be a nightmare? Some people do it well, but yeah, it's harder to manage where I think like the percentage wise, but testing and displaying that dollar amount that they save, I think can go a long way, especially when you're talking about $100 AOV to save $25, like to me feels more than, like, don't make me do the math, but if you have a $30 AOV, Maybe, it's just better to say 25%. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I love when brands like have multiple pack sizes, like a one, two and three that correspond to different frequencies and you're displaying the savings per unit and also displaying like which one's the most popular. In that case, you'd be using different selling plans and different discounts. But again, I think it just comes back to like keeping it simple and the percentage discount definitely helps you do that. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And then how do you feel about gift with purchase? Do you think that, so if a brand didn't want to offer a discount, do you think that free shipping and a gift is enough to get people into subscription? Speaker 2: Personally, no, I think there needs to be a discount. I think in this day and age with so many subscriptions, so many brands like in front of you all the time, it's like, Again, the reason I say 25% is just that's what I see most commonly. And like, if you're not offering that, I think people are going to go find another brand. But I am a huge fan of gift with purchase. I think it's another kind of lever that you can pull. And also when we're like kind of thinking about like lower in the funnel, once you do acquire that subscriber, the gift is like such a fun way to like keep the product top of mind. I love when brands do like a supplement brand as a shaker bottle or a whisk or something. Tenzo actually does this really well with their whisk and scooper with their different starter packs. And you're kind of setting the customer up for success from the very beginning there, because not only do they get this product, but then they have this like fun accessory that keeps it top of mind, which is super important, especially with supplements and things like that. Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like it's also you're fighting for counter space where like if you can get on the counter and you can stay top of mind like that is a huge advantage. I see my Tenzo whisk every day and I have to pass it to get to my coffee machine where I'm like, okay, Gina, just Just make a matcha. Speaker 2: This is better. The other example that I love, which I believe we talked about on another episode, is Alice Mushrooms. They do the best starter kits and the goal of those starter kits is to really help the customer build a routine from day one with those products. Speaker 1: It's so smart. Speaker 2: Chocolate, they give you a sleep mask. So like that's automatically also going to help improve your sleep as well. So like if you're taking the product using the sleep mask, you see it on your nightstand. It's definitely like a win-win both for conversion for that first subscription and then also just for like consistency of using the product for the customer. Love it. Speaker 1: And then gifts, like yes, definitely makes sense sometimes on the first order, but I know a lot of brands are worried like, hey, we're giving a discount, we can't give too much on the first order. So the brands that choose to test a gift or use punch cards or things like that, where you're going to get a gift or incentive later, Have you seen people like, how do people push that on the first order? Do they say it? Is it always a surprise? Like, yeah, how do you use that? Speaker 2: A lot of brands will like tease that in the buy box. And I also think that helps with subscription conversion because when you like select the one time over the subscription option, like you're seeing all the benefits that you're missing out on. So like free samples, free gifts, like subscriber exclusive product launches. And digital punch cards for sure. I think a way to kind of pull that in is just like loyalty incentives. The more you purchase like will reward you. Almost kind of like teasing that so then when they do subscribe, you can send them more information about the punch card. Speaker 1: Okay, amazing. Any brands that come to mind? Speaker 2: I love First Day's Buy Box, specifically. Big First Day fans. They do a great job, too, of not only showing all those benefits in the Buy Box, but when you actually select the one-time option, they have red X's showing everything that you're going to miss out on. So again, just another reason to push customers to subscription. Speaker 1: That's a great point. I feel like we see a lot where it's like, oh yeah, when you select subscription, all the things come up, but then when you select one time, like they kind of go away. I love the X out or grayed out of like, oh, hey, like just an app, like you're going to lose all this. So it's really, really intentional. That's an awesome tip. Speaker 2: Just because someone has selected the one-time purchase over the subscription option doesn't mean that you need to like collapse the buy box. You can keep it expanded. You can make it really obvious that like you're not getting these benefits. Speaker 1: Oh, okay, that's a great tip. I love that. And so then, okay, we're talking a lot about the buy box. We're talking about the traditional PDP. Are you seeing a lot of brands send traffic to the PDP? Are people sending traffic to landing pages? How should brands be deciding? Is it really just a budget thing? Do they have budget for someone to go spin up landing pages? What are your thoughts, PDP versus landing page? Totally. Speaker 2: I think for brands that don't have the budget, I think making sure your PDP is optimized is key. And we can definitely talk about that next, but a lot of brands that are spending at like a higher scale or really like interested in pushing subscription are using landing pages. And this is anywhere from being like, It's very subtle where like Dose, for example, does a great job of this where they have specific landing pages talking about benefits and their first order subscription discount is 25% and all of their CTAs link to that save 25% and bring you down to a PDP that's automatically selected for subscription. Again, you're seeing all those benefits, you're seeing the cost savings. So they're not like directly pushing subscription, They're educating the customer about the product and kind of naturally guiding the customer there. But then there's other brands that I've seen like Mars Men is like hitting subscriptions so hard and they have this incredible subscription offer for their launch kit. And I think they have a lot of landing pages. Speaker 1: They're crushing it. Yeah. Speaker 2: I'm obsessed with everything about their funnel, their landing pages, their ads, all of the emails that you get afterwards. I don't personally use the product, but I literally bought it just so I could go through the whole flow. And yeah, they're crushing it on that. Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like a masterclass in how to scale a subscription program. That's awesome. Okay, and so then messaging on the landing pages. What is the most important thing? If somebody came to you and they were like, hey, we're gonna invest a bit of money. We're gonna make some subscription landing pages. We only have budget for two. What would you say has to be on these landing pages or what's most important? Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I would say one, obviously defaulting to subscription or like only having a subscription modal there. But then I would also say creating messaging around building some sort of like habit with the product or the benefits of subscription. Obviously the habit part of that makes a lot of sense with brands that you consume or like supplements, for example, where like consistency is key. But yeah, I think the goal is to get customers to continue to take the product and realize that not only are you just saving when you buy a subscription, but you are more likely to experience the positive effects of this product because it just makes it easier to get it delivered to your door. And then another thing that I think is important up front is setting expectations about how you should feel at certain steps along the way. Speaker 1: Yes, say it louder. Speaker 2: Going back to Mars Men, they do such a good job. Obviously, it's a long-term product where you're not going to take one dose of it and like feel the benefits. So yeah, they tie it into their branding and they kind of have this launch checklist that outlines exactly how you're going to feel 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, etc. And then throughout all of their email communication, it's like the same graphic, the same imagery. So you're kind of just treating the customer from that very first touch point. Speaker 1: That's amazing and we'll get into it in a later episode, but I keep screening that the cancellation and retention does not start at the cancel survey. That is not where to attack and deal with churn. It's all these things. And so I bet if we were to look at Mars Men and see like, oh, I just don't feel the effects. I bet they have a way lower rate of people that cancel versus another company that doesn't do any of that brand building and really pushing like, hey, here's and setting expectations because it's just so important. So yes, please, if you are just attacking churn at the cancel survey, like absolutely not. You need to start at the beginning. Mars Men, great example. Shout out to you guys. When you go to check out on the landing pages, any tools, tips, tricks? I'm teeing you up here. I'm hoping you get it. There's a good one with Stay. What are we doing to check out from the landing pages? Speaker 2: You can use checkout URLs on the landing pages. I'm a huge fan of this to pre-curate a bundle of products for the customer. So like going back to our example of a supplement brand, we'll probably talk about that a lot. If your hero product is protein, like why not also get the customer to take the creatine and the collagen along with that because they're gonna feel the benefits of the protein even more if they're also taking these products. So I wouldn't be afraid of like queuing customers up with additional product if those products are designed to like take together and ultimately they're going to consume them all on the same cadence and then need to kind of replenish. The benefit of that too, and our checkout URLs make it super easy, is you can just I overlay a Shopify discount code. So the customer clicks a CTA on the landing page and they're already in the cart with the appropriate products and the discount applied right on top. And the reason that I also like the checkout URLs is because it adds everything as just like an individual line item. So you don't have to get crazy with bundles and new variants for bundles and whatnot. So it's really kind of like low, level for for entry there. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And also just makes it easier for the customer to manage because then they have these like individual line items and they can skip and remove and swap and whatnot. Speaker 1: Totally. There's been so many times where I subscribe to a product and even like shampoo and conditioner, like when I get them together, you would think you use them at the same rate. But like dependent on the girl and dependent on the hair, like I will rip through conditioner way before I get to the end of my shampoo. Speaker 2: Totally. But that is a example where it makes sense to sell someone shampoo and conditioner subscription from the first touch point. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I love when it's like broken out like message the same and with the checkout URLs you're saying so they can, you can make it one button where it's like, you know, and you can have a discount to it because they have those two products present, but if, you know, down the road, they're like, they have a subscription, they need one, they can skip the shampoo, but then get the conditioner. Okay, love that. 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: Something we didn't touch on somehow, I know that we're both passionate about this, but didn't on the PDP, like defaulting to subscription. When should you do it? When should you not do it? Speaker 2: I think you should always do it. Speaker 1: I also agree. I feel like we get so much pushback on that of like, oh, I'm scared. What if conversion rate drops? I mean, I need to test this. Just do it. Speaker 2: Just do it. Test it at least. It's something you can A-B test if you don't want to roll it out. Like for all of your products, it's something you can test on a per product basis, but I either don't see the conversion rate drop at all or I see the conversion rate improve more than the churn rate increases. And I think it's all about just like measuring the net difference that you're getting there. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And we have notes up and laptops up because we don't want to miss anything in this pod. We have a lot that we want to cover. So don't mind me as I make sure that we hit on every single piece of this. What are, okay, we talked about downsides of having the subscription benefits not in the buy box. Anything else on the buy box PDP front? Speaker 2: We talked a little bit about having multiple pack sizes, so like a three pack versus a six pack and positioning maybe that middle one as like the best value. I feel like it's like a psychology trick with people where like there's the lowest price point, then there's the highest price point. And because that other one is positioned in the middle, like that's what they're most likely to pick, especially if you have like a most popular bestseller badge. On that as well. One other thing that I really like is showing multiple purchase options in the buy box. So CBDMD is a great example of this. They have just like their standard, like one time obviously standard subscribe and save. And then they also have a checkbox for their prepaid subscriptions. So the prepaid subscription is a little bit of a higher discount and the customer can like toggle between those. So it almost is like, because there's two subscription options, The customer kind of forgets about the one-time purchase option and is then deciding between these two these two discounts. Speaker 1: Yeah, also to your point of like having a suggestion for like best one and usually it's in the middle. Do you ever hear that if you're at a restaurant, you shouldn't order the second cheapest bottle of wine? Because that's usually the one that's marked up the most because they know that people like don't it's like a weird psychology thing. Maybe it's like different because you're like when you're shopping online in the privacy of your home, you're kind of like great to get the cheapest deal. But I think there is an element of like Have you ever heard that? Speaker 2: I haven't heard that, but that makes me feel better because I'm always ordering the cheapest bottle. Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll continue with that behavior. But yeah, somebody told me that once. They're like, yeah, the most marked up is always the second cheapest bottle because people want to pick something and they don't want to go to the cheapest one, so they'll pick whatever. So interesting. Yeah, so I do wonder how that psychology works. I feel like it probably skews a little bit. People are way more comfortable picking the cheapest one when you're online shopping because you're not sitting at a restaurant in front of all of your friends. But yeah, having that like little indicator of best value, it's such a small tweak, but it gets me also every single time. I'm like, okay, well, that's the best option. Speaker 2: But I also think a key part of having those multiple pack sizes is also making sure the frequency matches because you don't want to start a customer off with three packs of your product on a one month cadence when that should technically last them three months. So it's almost like rewarding the customer for committing to your brand early on, but you want to make sure you're positioning them in the right way so that they take the product consistently and they don't end up with too much when their next renewal comes up. Speaker 1: Totally. We just had Shaq from Breeze on the podcast and he was kind of telling the story of like, yeah, when they first launched, he defaulted to every two weeks and it just created so much churn, so much skipping, people really freaked. If you're going to do every two weeks, you really need a small amount of the product. There should be a reason why you're shipping every two weeks. It almost needs to be a perishable product or something. Yeah, it has to be or else four weeks really should be the better discount or the better cadence. Last thing on the site, subscriber save page. So we see some brands will do this dedicated. What are your thoughts on a subscribe and save page? Speaker 2: I love a subscribe and save page. Of course you do. Obviously. I think that it's important to have that because In an ideal world, a customer sees your ad, they see your amazing landing page, and they purchase a subscription right away. But that's not the case, as we know. So when a customer comes back to your website, again, you want to just make sure that subscription is top of mind. If they're still deciding between like, maybe I'll purchase one time, maybe I'll subscribe, I think it's important to make that information about the subscription readily available to them in the header of your website. I like when brands say, subscribe and save 25% and that links to a page. I like when all, it can be like a collection page. Feels has such a great one on their site that I think they also use in their ads. But yeah, when you go to this page and you are shopping the collection, you click add to cart, it adds as a subscription because you're on the subscribe and save page. Speaker 1: Amazing. I also think that's like such a subtle, easy change outside of just subscribe and save, subscribe and save, whatever the discount amount is right in the header. Like I know that we're all fighting for space in that header. But that, I love that. That's a great tip for anybody who already has a subscribe and save page just to go add that right in the header bar. Speaker 2: Another great example is Happy. On their subscribe and save page, they have a lot of information about like helping customers find the perfect cadence for the product. Again, it's like a consumable product. I'm kind of asking how often you take it, what the consumption cases are, and from there just kind of prepping the customer to like go make a decision when they are in the buy box. Speaker 1: Love that. We also have something coming out called Perfect Cadence. We can't get too much into it today. Speaker 2: I didn't know if I could say anything. Speaker 1: I know. I think perfect cadence is very, very important. I'm very excited to see it productized. Yeah, we'll have a couple customers that will be testing it in the wild very, very shortly. But I'm excited just to see the test results from that because I do think that getting people into the perfect cadence from the start is just a huge advantage. All right. I think we've covered everything on the PDP, landing pages, subscription discounts that we wanted to do. What about if we didn't get them on the PDP? So they add to cart and they've just added one time. How many more chances do you get? Speaker 2: There are a lot of chances. I think you should be taking advantage of every single one. Some brands will do like a custom pop-up even like as soon as you click add to cart for the one-time product. Speaker 1: I have seen this. Speaker 2: It pops up and says are you sure like want to add it for a subscription and again show the discount. And then obviously there's the cart like there's so many great apps for this. Rebuy, Aftersell, all do cart upsells and I think that especially for like smaller brands that are like how can I improve subscription acquisition it's just like make sure that you have all these upsell touch points enabled. Another great one is in checkout. You can do that with stays easy upsells. That's great. It's literally only like a few clicks to just show like an inline subscription upgrade. Again, the last touch point before the customer hits checkout, they're like already poised to like put their credit card information. So if you can show them what else they're going to save, like I think that is probably one of the most powerful ones. And then the last option is post checkout. Again, if you can show the customer like that you're going to like refund them or that they can still save after they've already purchased, I think that's a huge opportunity as well. Speaker 1: Yeah. Shout out post-purchase upsells. It's so sneaky, but I do think it's like really important. If you don't have post-purchase upsells turned on, you really, really should. I know there's a lot of different things that people want to put on that post-purchase. Like you want to survey people. There's a lot of, you're kind of fighting for the space there in the real estate. But if one of your focuses is getting more people into subscription and you don't have like, you know, if you've less than a 50% subscription opt-in, you gotta just do post-purchase upsells. Speaker 2: Totally. And I don't think these things need to be like complicated. Obviously you can get super detailed and test a bunch of different things, but like just start by enabling it and like see what the lift is. And then from there, focus on optimizing it. Speaker 1: Okay. Amazing. So now we've gone through what the discount should be, everything on the website. Now there are gonna be brands out there that are like, okay, but what about the people that already bought one time? Like, I didn't know any of this now, but now that I know it, what can I do? Email, are we sending them snail mail? Are we showing up at their homes? What are we doing for customers who have bought one time or continue to buy one time but aren't on subscription? Speaker 2: We're knocking on their door with our protein powder and we're saying, it's time for gains. At 3 a.m. No, but I think the customers that have purchased once or even twice without converting to subscription are the most valuable customers. And I know right now on Meta and all socials, CPMs and acquisition costs are so high. These are customers that have already purchased and maybe with a few emails and SMS, you can convert them to sub. So I think it's super important to target first-time and second-time purchasers with post upsell emails. And these should definitely be flows. You should have, at the bare minimum, a small block in every single email you're sending to a customer post-purchase. Speaker 1: Conditional blocks. If someone is an active subscriber, show this block. Once you get in the habit of doing that, it's so easy. The first time setting it up, you might struggle with it. Maybe it'll take 30 minutes. But once you know how to do those conditional blocks, like Enclave or whatever ESP you're using, you should always have something for subscribers. Speaker 2: Definitely, definitely. And then kind of going back to the idea of like, the subscription is not only about the discount, but it's about getting the most out of the product. When the customers like, coming up on when they would maybe be up for a renewal, you should still kind of be sending them an upcoming order notification where you're like, hey, this is the time that you should have gone through the product. If you don't want to think about it, if you're feeling these benefits, if you're loving it, just sign up for subscription right now. And that's kind of where checkout URLs come in again, because These customers have tried the product, they don't need to go through the PDP again, so just put them right in the cart, maybe give them another discount. Oh, I love that. Speaker 1: So I've seen brands like do obviously a post-purchase flow, but even positioning it like, hey, like you probably are about to run another product, like these are the benefits of subscription. I love that messaging. Yeah, totally. I can see why that would work. All right. We touched on it a little bit with the checkout URLs and how you can kind of make, you know, pretend bundles kind of, but I mean, like, I feel like when somebody comes to me and they say bundles, I'm like, all right, but like, let's actually figure out what you mean, because there are so many different types of bundle. You've got build a bundle, you've got like different line items, you've got a prefixed bundle. There's all these different, I guess like three main different things. That people have where like build a bundle, there's a parent object on it. And so that way, you know, there's like a fixed minimum and maximum. Usually it's like a four pack and it's like build your own four pack or six pack or whatever. Then there's the prefix bundle and that's where it's just one SKU, one line item, but there's multiple products in the shipment. Then there's like, you kind of like, fake bundles feels negative, but like it's true. Like it's like fake bundles where like maybe you used a checkout URL or something like that to, you know, have one add to cart button, but then there's multiple different line items and people can easily like break that apart. Best time for each one, like what do you think? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we could do a whole episode unpacking bundles. It's like a loaded question. But I think build your own bundle is great on like the front end, even for new customers. I think customers love flexibility. So like, that's also something like love gamification. Speaker 1: They just love where they can like fill anything out. Totally. Speaker 2: And going back to like the subscribe and save page, that's something that you can include there. I think for if we're still like talking in the context of like how to win over existing customers to subscription, using the checkout links to build the fake bundles is my preferred method because again, It just lowers a lot of the friction. You can say, oh, you bought the protein, like you'd also love the creatine and this product and we'll give you a discount on top of that. And then they have the flexibility in their portal to remove things or take things out. You could also even add products as like one times. I got a such a great subscription upsell email from Feels. I am a loyal subscriber. Speaker 1: I love their emails. Also a loyal subscriber. Emails are Oh, chef's kiss, fantastic. Speaker 2: But on my personal email, I'm not subscribed so that I get both sides of the comms. But they did a campaign where they were like, oh, you loved the regular gummies, subscribe and we'll throw in like a sample pack or it honestly might have been a free full pack of the sleep gummies, just as like a one time, like it didn't go onto the subscription, but it was kind of like a BOGO situation. And they weren't offering an additional discount, but they were giving away a free product. So again, another kind of like lover that you can play around with. Speaker 1: Okay. Amazing. I feel like we've like, if you're thinking about launching subscription, I hope that we covered everything that you could possibly be thinking about. And if you want to up your subscription acquisition, I feel like we, we really covered it. Speaker 2: Um, we talked about free gifts and gifts that make the product a routine, but I think a starter kit is also a great option because again, you can bundle more products together and improve the AOV. And, um, there's a bunch of ways to do that, which you kind of talked about with bundles. There's like the, It's a single variant. You can use a workflow to swap them to the individual line items. Speaker 1: The power of workflows. I think that's what people don't realize. You can do a sample kit to a full-size subscription. A good example of that would be if you sent somebody maybe seven servings of something and then after 10 days it flipped into a 30-pack every 30 days. There's different ways that you can play with that. You can do multiple different products where some products don't make sense to get a million Sometimes we talk about the shaker bottles and things like that, but a lot of the devices, where it's some type of device and then just a refill kit, really getting creative with what should be in that first subscription order and how to message that, especially if you can't, I'm thinking maybe a supplement company, if they go really deep on it, maybe they're doing a 30, 35% off subscribe and save, so they can't afford to do the shaker bottle and this and that, but it does make sense for them, you can do a starter kit that flips into a cheaper refill. I also love the brands for the margins, like how First Day does it, where they'll ship like the plastic, you know, container and then in a package, they'll just do the mailer and the refill. So like, yeah, where can you use workflows for refills? I think like those Don't sleep on workflows. Really think about what you could be changing with workflows because you can swap, I mean, you can swap SKU, you can swap frequency. Speaker 2: Yeah. You can add products, remove products. The possibilities are kind of endless there. Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. So what do you think is your number one hot take for subscription acquisition? Speaker 2: My hot take is that retention starts before the customer purchases. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: Yeah. I think not enough brands are thinking about it that way. And when you see churn, most brands default to what can I do to fix the save rate or the cancellation survey? But my first question is always like, well, how are you framing that from the very beginning? Speaker 1: Amazing. And mine is default to subscription on your PDP. Knock it off. Just try it. So thank you so much. Tune in to the next episode. We're going to kind of take it the next step further now that you know how to set up subscription. Then we're going to talk about how you should optimize subscription now that it's set up. So thanks so much for joining us today. We'll see you soon. 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.