Episode Summary
In this episode of 7-Figures and Beyond, host Greg interviews Matthew Holman, a multifaceted entrepreneur deeply involved in the subscription-based e-commerce industry. Matthew shares his personal journey, which includes overcoming significant challenges such as incarceration during his younger years, and how these experiences shaped his drive and passion for entrepreneurship, particularly in the digital and e-commerce spaces. He highlights his current projects, Subscription Prescription and Commerce Catalyst, where he aids direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands in optimizing their subscription models and fosters a community for e-commerce professionals in Utah.
Key Takeaways
- Background and Drive: Matthew’s background of overcoming personal challenges has fueled his dedication to providing support and creating opportunities for others in the e-commerce space, demonstrating the power of resilience and second chances.
- Focus on Community and Collaboration: Through Commerce Catalyst, Matthew emphasizes the importance of community and collaborative growth among e-commerce entrepreneurs, addressing the common feeling of isolation in the industry.
- Subscription Business Insights: He shares specific strategies for subscription-based businesses, including the importance of customer retention and customized experiences, which are critical for sustained growth and customer satisfaction.
- Marketing and Customer Insights: Matthew discusses how understanding customer needs and preferences is crucial for optimizing marketing strategies and product offerings, particularly in the subscription model where customer longevity is key.
- E-commerce and Technology: His insights into the dynamic nature of e-commerce highlight the necessity for continuous learning and adaptation, especially in leveraging new technologies and platforms to keep up with market changes and consumer behavior.
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Matthew Holman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/holman-matthew/
Subscription Prescription: https://www.thesubscriptiondoc.com/
Commerce Catalyst: https://www.ccatalyst.co/
Episode Transcript
Greg: 0:27
Shuey. Hey everyone, welcome to episode 20. Episode 20. How about that? We made it. Congratulations, yeah, buddy Of the Seven Figures and Beyond podcast. Hope everyone is having an amazing day today.
Greg: 0:43
Today we’ve got a pretty awesome guest. His name is Matthew Holman. Matthew, he has a ton of irons in the fire right now. I actually had to reach out to him, I think it was on Monday. I said hey, man, how do you want to be introduced? I’m going to do my best here. I’m actually just going to read what he sent me. How about that? So Matthew’s the founder of Subscription Prescription, where he helps D2C brands who are either already in the subscription game or wanting to get into it, get better at subscriptions and subscription marketing.
Greg: 1:18
He is also the founder of Commerce Catalyst, which is a local e-commerce community here in Utah. This guy he’s running a million miles an hour right now trying to build the best e-commerce community through live events, virtual events, running our Slack channel, et cetera, and I, for one, am truly appreciative of him and all of the efforts he puts in every single day to bring us all together Because, as we all know, running and growing a business can be lonely. If you’re a founder, you know an e-commerce founder. It can be incredibly lonely, that’s true, and we need each other to be able to build and grow together, so we need more amazing people like him. Thanks, greg, I really, really, really appreciate you and everything you’re doing.
Greg: 2:11
Man, I appreciate that that’s really kind of you say. Yeah, so I will. I’ll add those two links to subscription prescription and commerce catalyst. I’ll add them in the show notes so everyone has access to those. And, uh, thank you, Matthew, for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today. Absolutely, I’m excited to talk, Cool man. Well, before we dive into subscriptions, why don’t you just take a few minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners? And I’d love to hear your story, like your personal story. How did you get to where you are today? I know that you and I have kind of talked about that story over pizza a couple of months ago, but let’s have you share that with our listeners.
Matthew: 2:52
Yeah, greg’s teasing at a, at a, at a big reveal or a big thing, but yeah, I mean I definitely have a, a typical story of how I got to where I am, and part of that is, you know, as a young man making some really dumb decisions and some bad stuff happening, and was incarcerated for most of my 20s and some of my 30s, and so it’s funny. I’m 43 years old now, but in many ways I identify with 25-year-olds who are just getting out of college, a couple of years in their job trying to figure things out, and part of that is because I spent years dreaming about what I would do, and when I was younger, I loved books and wanted to be an English teacher or something like that, and the longer I was waiting on the sidelines, the more I kept thinking about entrepreneurship and business and trying to create things right, like trying to create something, and and so part of like my drive is wanting to overcome my own past and mistakes pave the way for other people that are like me or that are struggling. You know, have have that, have a record or something like that. But so, yeah, I actually the funny story is I’ve always loved marketing and then always thought e-commerce was so fascinating just because it’s like just moves so quickly, it’s always innovating, it’s always changing how people are buying, it’s all about like the psychology of selling and at like light speed with technology, which is I’ve also kind of like love geeking out on and so.
Matthew: 4:21
But when I got out, I was scared that I was like 37 and I was like, well, there’s no way I’m going to go into marketing because I’m old and everybody else is like knows marketing better than I do. And so I was going to school and I was. I got a degree in information systems and technology because I felt like I, you know, new stuff’s coming out all the time. Yeah, don’t need to have 10 years of experience. And then, through just like you know, a series of just kind of random events, running into an old friend, I end up, you know, working at this tech company. And then, you know, when they decided they decided they wanted to pivot into some more marketing stuff, like they looked to me to do some of that. So I ended up marketing at a SaaS company in the e commerce space. So it’s kind of like you know, I tried to avoid that passion for a little while and then just through. That’s the way the you know random, you know winds of change or whatever brought me back into it and then doing that for a while.
Matthew: 5:17
That was an e-hub shipping technology company here in Utah it’s actually where I met my wife, love those guys over there and everyone there and then wanted to go the entrepreneur route, joined a little small startup called QPilot to do subscriptions and that’s where, kind of like, my life really started to change was the first, the beginnings of Commerce. Catalyst started while I was there because I wanted to. Just I felt alone as a marketer and wanted more people to talk to and have as resources. Hey, lonely, loneliness, right there. Yeah, I mean, that is that’s. I mean you mentioned it. That’s the entire reason catalyst exists is because, why? Why would you go read a blog when you could go ask your neighbor who’s, like you know, done that before?
Matthew: 5:57
And they’re done that, used five different landing page builders, like go ask them what they like and why, and then got into subscriptions and same thing like as a SaaS marketer, I had a good time. But the more I did community stuff, the more I worked one-on-one with brands and subscriptions, the more like my own passion was unlocked and so now I’m kind of like walking that and that’s why I say like I’m trying to still figure out who I am and where I fit into the professional world like everybody. But a lot of that is helping directly hands-on problem solving. That’s why I love the subscription stuff so much, because I think it’s an amazing space and sometimes just requires a little bit of a mindset shift to do it really well. And the community stuff so, yeah, that’s kind of it in a very brief nutshell, but yeah.
Greg: 6:42
I love it. It’s such an awesome story and like, uh, you know, like you mentioned, e-commerce is so fast moving. We’re learning every day, we’re testing every day. Um, and that’s why I love e-commerce so much as well is because it’s just you wake up and you literally don’t know what you’re going to tackle the next day, because Google changes the rules, facebook changes the rules, like, whatever. So it’s awesome, all right, cool. So let’s jump into our conversation. I would assume that most brands know what subscriptions are. There’s obviously brands out there who don’t do subscriptions or probably even need subscriptions, but there are definitely some that they can leverage this tactic or this tool to be able to really accelerate their growth.
Matthew: 7:31
So I think most people kind of Well, so it’s interesting, because what you’re saying is always makes me think of this as subscriptions. The whole goal behind subscriptions is repeat revenue, right, like you’re trying to build up right, and sometimes there’s a misalignment between what your customers actually want to buy from you and what you’re trying to get them to buy right?
Matthew: 7:59
Yep, there’s a subset of my customer group, whether they’re customers now or would be in the future, that would pay me more for more stuff, that those are my VIP customers, my really really tight ICP. How can I enable an experience that’s driven for them? And so when you come out with that mindset, then you’re talking memberships, certain loyalty programs and potentially subscriptions, because subscriptions are really they’re either about like convenience or some kind of value unlock, right, like you know. And so if you think about it in that way, like it actually starts to like create, I think, a little bit more clear vision on what you should be building and offering is how can I get people to spend more that want more from me Got?
Greg: 8:42
it. Okay, I like that angle and that’s exactly what I was trying to get at, and then I kind of lost my train of thought there for a second.
Greg: 8:52
No, I like that angle. So it’s a direct play into growing lifetime value and there are a lot of different ways to be able to do that. Okay, cool, all right, so can you help us understand what actually makes subscriptions grow Like? Can you walk us through the acquisition funnel, the retention funnel, of a subscription-based brand and kind of help walk us through that and figure that out?
Matthew: 9:16
Yeah, absolutely, and I think some of the ways that I like I mean that I start when I really started, feel like I was unlocking subscriptions with the brands I was working with is we actually started on the retention side. So if you actually walk backwards, you start to kind of understand everything. And, and an example I really like to use is um, I heart dogs. They’re a pet food company. Um, and they’re they have their mission driven. They donate a portion of every sale to um feeding, shelter pets, so they so a lot of brands. You need some branding, you need that mission, you need that kind of like higher, higher goal that you’re working for the reason you started the brand in the first place.
Matthew: 9:50
But what happened was is they were, they were churning customers because they had too much product, Right, and that’s a really common issue. So what? But what happens is is you start to dive into why they have too much product. It’s because dogs come in different sizes and they and people weren’t sure how much to order. And so when you understand that the limitation was, we didn’t know what to order. They go back to the product page and they redesign it so that you select your dog size and that changes the amount you should buy and the frequency you should get. It’s a lot of customization to make that happen. It was expensive, but when they did that conversions conversions went up like 30%, Retention went up like 40%, and so the whole idea with a lot of this like subscription growth is, I really says, like you want to learn from what people aren’t getting, Like they’re either they don’t see the value and you need a better job of demonstrating value, or it’s not the right frequency for them.
Matthew: 10:40
Maybe they don’t need it every month, Maybe they need every other month. But when we walk backwards, it all really revolves around and the thing I harp on all the time is the offer. The offer is what people get when they buy and why are they buying it. And so if we’re just talking pet food and the only reason I’m buying is because I’m getting a 10% discount, you’re going to struggle to convert subscribers and build a program. If it’s not something extra the quality of the product, the convenience, the extra perks you get with like a doggy treat every time, or you get access to a community or some other element you’re going to lose out to Chewy, You’re going to lose out to your local pet co. Because people aren’t going to see a ton of value there, and so that’s what you have to focus on to offer the value and where you’re positioning yourself in the market.
Greg: 11:24
Interesting. Yeah, we do a lot of customer research on our side and I think that probably plays into that. Right, Because you’re trying to figure out who your right fit customer is and build your offer, build your messaging, build everything to almost repel the wrong people as well. Right, the people who are coming for a one one time buy, who are looking for a deep discount. And once you know who those people are, you can kind of back that out and really build something of value that will help kind of grow the revenue for you, the subscription side for you as well, Absolutely Cool, Absolutely Cool, cool. So you know, talking about the customer, I know that the customer experience is just a massive driver to growing and keeping subscribers. Why would they continue to give you money if they’re not having a good experience? So I think we can probably spend a fair amount of time here. But can you talk about that? Can you talk about, you know, getting insights from your customers to help guide your strategy and how you go about doing that Right?
Matthew: 12:32
Yeah, it’s unfortunately like. I mean, it’s it’s something that gets talked about all the time, like know your customer, talk to your customer, and it’s. It’s a lot harder than just that. Right, I think that there are some, some like, some, a lot of the basics things and, and, and I would. I’m going to list a lot of things that probably people have already heard before but maybe add up and that will extra reason why right Quizzes on the front end. Right Quizzes are great, not just because they drive higher conversions, but they allow you to ask more personal questions around different people and you can tie those answers into lifetime value. To start, like understanding hey, if I’m selling a sleep supplement, people that cite that they’re 40 and older and married, like spend more with me. Okay, now I can make better ads.
Greg: 13:15
I can make a better offer, so I’m going to pause you right there. I’m sorry, but uh, so quizzes and or just asking questions and collecting data up front, right? Did you know? I know that we both like Sendlane. We’re both fans of Sendlane. Did you know? They just launched forms and the ability to be able to collect data up front. So I had Jimmy on last week and he’s like we just launched this and it’s brilliant because you can collect those data points, push them right into Sendlane, create your segments and speak these people’s language and add to their overall customer experience. So, dude, I love it.
Matthew: 13:50
And quizzes are great because it’s even if somebody doesn’t buy from you. You can still learn, like you want to learn, about the audience, like the types of people that are visiting your site and that something about the ad they resonated with or found you in an article. So that’s one touch point. Um, what people are actually purchasing on the site can give you some feedback based on how you’re testing copy and stuff. Um, post-purchase surveys. Everybody always asks where you do you hear about us, but ask more use case related questions. So I use the sleep one as an example.
Matthew: 14:18
You know, um, are you hoping for more energy the next day? Are you? Is it because your spouse snores like um, you know? Or a workout supplement? Are you trying to get in shape Cause you’re single again, right? Or is it just because you’re just your doctor or your kids are keep telling you you’re, you’re, you’re unhealthy, like understand that basic reasons why people are buying something that are fundamental to how you can sell and how you deliver more value. So there’s that you can ask more surveys throughout the buying process through email Cancellation surveys within subscriptions.
Matthew: 14:48
You get a lot of information A lot of brands struggle to. Maybe you can test more questions. There are some newer tech related to AI that’s coming out. That’s more interactive. And then talking to customers customer support tickets more interactive. And then talking to customers customer support tickets that’s like the bigger of a brand you get, the more data you get, but also the farther you are away from like when you’re a founder and you’re selling like you’re getting like five sales a month cause you’re like getting like people at you know your local farmer’s market to buy from you. You hearing directly from them about what they like and what they don’t like about the brand.
Matthew: 15:21
When you have 5,000 customers a month or 50,000 customers a month, you’re disconnected, but you have a lot more data than you can get as well. So that’s one way to think about it, and I would say one of the things you talk about data like. An example that I love using is a local Utah company called Mixers, and so if you think they’re selling a women’s supplement, a hormonal supplement, her time and it’s what’s interesting is, if you look at their marketing funnel from, like you know, just taking a step back, is there a lot of women have never taken a supplement for, for their hormones to try to like help regulate that. But there’s a ton of content. Mixers does podcasts, they have community, they have referrals. They have a huge marketing motion going. So when you come in, though, even if your other friend has told you they like it, you still have a degree of skepticism or uncertainty, but you buy it, and so the customer data here is like understanding that women might be skeptical, they might be uncertain, means Mixers needs to spend time on the subscription experience enhancing, like user experience, right, like so instead of like hey, here’s your new frother and here’s your new life. It’s more like hey, when Sally, age 52, started taking this, she’s noticed X, y, z.
Matthew: 16:34
When, when Brenda, age 42, out of Florida, started using it, she saw it, took it. I took it for three weeks and then started to feel differently. Like you start to set expectations around what people are doing, and so so that’s where, like the subscription experience, like customer experience, like starts to change. Is knowing, like, have they ever used your product before? Are they familiar with, like your solution? Right, like what? What’s? What other like hurdles might there be? How do you deliver immediate value or like immediate wins, so that they start liking the product right away? Because then, when the first renewal comes, they’re not thinking about it because they’ve already decided they really like it or they’ve been seeing some success, or maybe they haven’t seen it quite yet. Maybe it’s like a weight loss supplement and they’re like, you know, maybe it’s working, it’s not, but I’m going to.
Greg: 17:24
You know, everybody said to give it three months, so I’m going to give it three months. You know, that’s that’s kind of what you want to have happen. We want to set expectations, educate, continue to build trust, and all of that compounds over time. For sure, absolutely, absolutely. One of the things I like to do lately to collect customer data and to also give me some really good assets to be able to use in ads, but also an email to educate and build trust. Have you heard of video? Ask? Yeah, so I’m loving doing video. Ask interviews, right, very similar questions that we might ask a customer when getting on the phone with them, but we can record their video and we can take that and we can use that to again create those assets. Yep, and then here 52 year old.
Matthew: 18:09
I can filter it for sentiment, so that you can get responses, yep.
Greg: 18:12
And then we’ve got this video that we can put in an email 52 year old, so-and-so like here’s. Here’s the testimonial video, and so I love to be able to do that for sure. Yeah, absolutely. So. What are some of the less known tricks, or even well known tricks, I would say, to really help add fuel to the fire when it comes to subscriptions?
Matthew: 18:31
Yeah, I’d say the biggest thing is like trying to change how people are buying it. And so and this is where I say, like the offer, like so, let’s just say as an example, you’re selling protein powder. Okay, Like a basic, very basic supplement. Yeah, there are lots of different ways you can sell that. You could sell a bundle of three at a three month renewal, instead of one bag every month. You could prepay for six months. You could add other supplement products in there to like enhance the value instead of using a discount. And so I think where the secret comes in is like you’re trying to figure out what’s going to get you, what’s going to get people more, a little more excited, or at least feeling like that there’s a getting them to buy what they, what they believe is going to work best for them, right, so, like so, if I’m selling three bags of protein at once, I can actually probably afford to give a bigger discount, because the shipping for three bags is not that much different than one bag. Maybe it’s 20% more, but instead of me shipping one bag three times, I’m saving money. You’re saving money, and then I’m getting more cash up front because I’m getting a three.
Matthew: 19:39
So there’s a lot of different ways, I think, just to approach like, don’t think of it all. Has to be like this product on 30 days, right. So there are ways to think through, like what makes economies of scale right For your business. So that’s. That’s one thing. Is like just maybe testing different ways of people trying things, whether you wanted to offer a starter kit? The other thing is is really just trying to get deeper into like, um, no, no, I’m losing my train of thought, but it’s.
Matthew: 20:12
It’s really just a question of like trying to like enable the right purchase experience for what people like. That takes time. Like you think every brand has an assumption around. Oh, it’s like a pill you take one a day like and then so we’re going to ship you one bottle a month Like that’s your assumption, but maybe that’s not actually how people want to buy it. Like people are like you know, that seems weird, or to me, like. So there’s just a lot of different ways you can position your offer as well. Um, you know, buy one, get 10% off. By two, get 10% off. Buy two, get 20% off. Buy three, get 30% off. There’s a lot of different ways you can start positioning subscriptions, but the hard part is that when you’re dealing with high CAC which that’s hard enough in e-commerce and subscriptions typically have higher CAC anyway you have to come up with more creative ways to try to capture more value upfront, whether you’re doing cross-sells, trying to offer a bundle um, trying to get somebody to opt into a membership, or something like that as well.
Greg: 21:08
You know you mentioned um starter kits. Those seem to be pretty popular in terms of being able to kind of launch subscriptions. Are you seeing that as well, or is that just on the 10 sites that I look at and I’m like holy crap?
Matthew: 21:27
starter kits are a big thing. Starter kits are really good. Just because I mean they’re good and they’re bad, the problem is. Well, the problem the good thing is it’s smaller, they’re cheaper to make and you can usually either break even or be somewhat profitable on them, and that’s the main reason to be using them. Yeah, um the the.
Matthew: 21:42
What makes it hard is if somebody buys like a, say like a tea starter kit and they’re getting like 10 different teas and stuff like that, they may only like two of them. And how do you make a process where now they’re getting those two on full size bags, on a subscription and so like? Even if you invest in the tech and the email marketing and everything you might get like, maybe you get a 10 or 20 percent conversion. Like you could potentially get higher than that, but that’s pretty standard. So the conversion rates off starter kits can sometimes be hard. So there’s a mix. So if it’s like already preset, like hey, starter kit is, we’re going to send you like a bunch of small samples, but it automatically converts into this bigger thing and you have to opt out or cancel, that works better because then you’re getting people to opt out after the fact. But I would just say they work really well.
Matthew: 22:29
But sometimes there’s a better difference than somebody who’s just interested a little enough to try a starter kit versus somebody who’s really interested in committing and so they’re willing to buy the full-size product, yeah.
Matthew: 22:41
And so, like a brand I was talking to about this, like just yesterday, was they actually a lot of them have been doing, a lot of brands have been trying the free plus shipping thing where we’ll send you the product for free if you pay for shipping yeah, and it’s not working out really. They’re not getting good conversions out of it because the people that are opting into that are just interested in as a sample, right? So again, it’s like understanding like the mindset of, like the buyers. Like this is somebody who’s just exploring something, and so to me the offer would be here’s the full product and then maybe, as like a you know um, using like retentioncom or something like that to identify site users, or maybe they took a quiz or something like that, you’re marketing them the starter kit after the fact. Like, hey, you didn’t buy this, maybe you’re a skeptical, here’s a way to test it out, but you’re trying to push hard on the bigger product and get people that are serious about it upfront, because you want that commitment and that bigger revenue.
Greg: 23:34
It all comes back to that ideal customer right, you can get a bunch of not ideal customers with these little starter packs, but that makes a lot of sense actually. Cool, awesome. I’m glad I asked that one. So, like any other kind of marketing, you’re going to have peaks, valleys, and you’re also going to plateau from time to time. So when a brand plateaus with their subscriptions or they feel like they’ve started to plateau, what should they do? What do you recommend they do?
Matthew: 24:08
Yeah. So, honestly, this comes back to this main thesis that we’re talking about is doing more for your best customers. But usually what’s happening with subscriptions is there’s a point where forgive everybody sitting at home for me doing a simple math exercise but let’s say you lose 10% of your subscribers every month Okay, but again, a thousand subscribers every month, okay. So eventually those a thousand subscribers are going to equal 10,000 subscribers, okay, and if you lose 10% a month, you lose a thousand subscribers every month. So at that point, when you hit 10,000 subscribers, you bring a thousand in and then you lose a thousand. You’ve plateaued, and so when that happens, it’s really difficult to break that because you start spending a lot of money on trying different creatives, trying different offers. What I would recommend at that point is, if you have 10,000 subscribers, you have an audience of people that you most likely are not getting a ton of feedback from that. You should should be surveying them more, finding out more things. So that comes down to researching new products. You can launch into that, into that group or as a brand. Looking at membership options, where there’s like VIP stuff, there’s ways that you can try to enhance the lifetime value, the average lifetime value of your subscriber to make the program more profitable, and that profit you can put back into different types of acquisition stuff. The other thing would then be like looking at different segmenting, like right, like, so you maybe have been selling again. If we’re talking supplement stuff, maybe you get 10,000 subscribers and they’re all bodybuilders Okay. Well, now let’s start looking at, like, endurance athletes. Maybe we can start selling to them and sell a slightly different experience, test a different land or test some different copy to try to go after them. So that’s where you start. That’s the next step of like trying to segment, going after different users. But that’s some of the.
Matthew: 25:52
I know I made it sound simple, all that, really simple. It’s actually very, very hard to kind of figure that out. I know it’s frustrating, but I would say anybody who’s feel like they’re approaching that point is spend more time researching your customers, talking to your customers. Is there community efforts you can build? Are there membership offers? You know, out of those 10,000 subscribers I would hope there’s a thousand or 2000 of them that are like big, huge fans of your brand. Like, do you have a good referral program in place? Are there community actions you can do? Can you do like retreats or some other things to try to like change the game. Use all that to create more UGC, to like lower your CAC, because now you have organic marketing in place, right Like. So there’s a lot of different ways to like approach that as a problem, but that’s how I would start. It’s like research, information gathering.
Greg: 26:35
Interesting. Do you find that certain size brands or certain it’s not like length, like you know, two or three years down the road, like are there? Is there a certain point in time when brands start to plateau, or is it all over the place?
Matthew: 26:59
over the place. It is all over the place because it just depends on how quickly you grow. Like I’ve seen brands that, like when I was talking to a couple weeks ago, like in 18 months they went from like no subscriptions to like 15 000 subscriptions, right. Another brand went from like they. Another brand, like they doubled in a year, yeah, and they were already at like 80 90 000 subscriptions. So, and then you have lots of others that are growing a lot smaller.
Matthew: 27:18
The ones that are growing the fastest are because they spend a ton of time testing ad, ads, creative and offers. Yeah, they’re, they’re testing their bundles and their subscription offers and they’re testing it at 20% off, 30% off, 40% off, to try to see what’s going to get the most best acquisition and then start and then they watch LTV on the backend. So I think it just depends. But like that’s why I always say like if you should be testing the offer, you should be testing why people buy and the price points and whatever else they get to it, because that’s what’s going to unlock growth for you. If you get 5% better on retention, like that can be really good for your base business. But if you get 5% better at acquisition, like you can get more subscribers in the funnel period, so so that that’s kind of like one way to think about it.
Matthew: 28:01
The time factor Otherwise, like it does. I think it’s just like anything in business, like the more you build and the more that goes on, then you start to uncover, like where there are problems and where there are opportunities. So it just kind of depends because everybody’s a little bit different. I’ve talked to brands that are good on both sides of the equation but a lot of times they’re either really good at acquisition and retention is suffering, or they’re really good at retention and acquisition is kind of suffering. So interesting.
Greg: 28:25
Yeah, from an ad perspective, do you find that one channel outperforms another? These days.
Matthew: 28:33
I mean just in general, facebook is still the. I mean meta is still the winner. Just because meta is the winner, I haven’t necessarily done a ton of research on channels and, like retention side, I mean that might be an interesting project to go after. But yeah, it’s just typically because, like, most brands are getting 80, 90% of their customers through Meta anyway, so that’s usually the top performing channel. Sometimes affiliates can do really better, like we did a project recently where we were studying, we studied all the affiliate codes and track lifetime value on subscriptions for them, and so we started to identify within their affiliate group, like this group of five does a really good job of people on their audience, convert more to subscriptions and last longer. So maybe it’s worth investing in like a dedicated subscription focused landing pages for these affiliates, since they’re already good at it. So that’s again, that’s kind of the approach Start to see what’s working, what’s not, and then try to lean into it a little bit more.
Greg: 29:27
That’s cool. I know a lot of brands are leaning into TikTok and TikTok shops Like is there, is there a subscription play there? I haven’t, I haven’t gotten really deep into tiktok shops so I don’t, I don’t know well, what.
Matthew: 29:41
What I would look like is. What I would look at is battle box, and so battle box is a subscription box. Right, it’s a premium um. They have several different tiers of, like, outdoor goods and stuff like that. Yeah, um, and they’ve gone all in on tiktok and I think they I think their founder just said they did it like they’re at now at a million a year in sales on TikTok Um, and they’re like a $25 to $30 million brand or more um in general. So, um, for them, though, it’s like content focused. They are doing TikTok shops, they are doing some sales and stuff, but they’re testing like a lot of different like. In fact, there’s a I’ll send you the article cause he does a blog called online queso. Um, john Roman does, and he breaks down like three different posts that they had that they boosted to see, like, the impressions they got and the sales they got from them. So there’s a lot of stuff to play with. You just never know what’s going to work Like never yet, ever.
Greg: 30:29
Like anything you do from a marketing perspective. Who knows?
Matthew: 30:34
I don’t understand why this drove all these extra sales. But yeah, I think the hard part is like you can’t get people necessarily to opt in TikTok shop. Is somebody? I don’t think they’re enabling subscriptions yet, so they’d have to either buy from you and you remarket to them or they just click through to your shop. They click through to your shop and the subscription option is available. But if you’re doing straight TikTok shops or affiliates through TikTok, I don’t think you can. But maybe you can soon. But yeah, tiktok would then have to have a subscription platform and that’s not the easiest thing to build. Maybe I should reach out to them, you should you should become like their subscription guy.
Greg: 31:08
You should own that Cool man. Well, you know if we’ve learned anything last year and even for the first quarter of this year? E-commerce is still pretty volatile, right. Like some brands are killing it, Other brands are really suffering and struggling right now. So, when it comes to subscriptions, do you have any predictions, kind of for the rest of the year and even into 2025?
Matthew: 31:31
Yeah, absolutely. I think we’re seeing a big shift on the app space and we have been for a while where, you know, a lot of um recharges kind of like the, the king of the game, and a lot of other brand apps have been popping up um and going after like that part of the piece of the pie. And now um recharges started to push back a little bit. They’re starting to catch up on some of the feature set no-transcript. So I think from a brand perspective, it’s a good time to reevaluate how much you’re spending from your app maker kind of thing. So there’s that on one side. The other side is, I think the competition in the space is like creating tons and tons of like new features, like new ways to like try to sell, like you know, like looking at, you know, the A-B testing behind Stay AI like Sceo set, like Yacht Pose, integration with SMS and email and loyalty like Loop and Atomic.
Matthew: 32:39
There’s so many out there that I think are doing really cool stuff.
Matthew: 32:42
That if you’re a brand on one of those platforms or if you’re trying to find a better way to enable a certain experience, right, like if you’re trying to build Dr Squatch’s, build a bundle experience like that step by step, like it’s a lot easier to do that now. You don’t need to invest 100K with the developer and build a custom of recharge. You can do that for a lot less off of atomic or you know, or do it a lot less so. So I think that’s what’s kind of exciting to me is like more, more enabled experiences, and so I’m excited to see more of. Yes, there’s a lot of fluctuations, a lot of brands are capping out on subscriptions, a lot of people are sick of subscriptions, but I honestly am very bullish on the market because I think the smarter brands are investing more and more in experience and investing more and more what people want, and I think, as that continues to happen, there’s just going to be a lot of wins for users in the market and for brands that are trying to do it that way.
Greg: 33:35
I love that and I think that’s a perfect kind of closing to our discussion is that a lot of brands are investing in experience. A poor customer experience will kill a brand, whether it’s a subscription or not. It’ll kill it so fast. And so the smart brands, even if they’re having a down year, are the ones who are really digging in and working on figuring out what their customer experience looks like and how to improve it. So I love that. That was awesome, man. Any final words of wisdom for us?
Matthew: 34:06
I mean it’s hard, but I think you know, listen and try to keep it as simple as possible. That’s my biggest thing is just try to figure out what’s really moving the needle for you and work more on that. And subscriptions a lot of like, you know, snowball effect Other things will start to cascade for you if you can start just working on some of the simple things that are working for your business.
Greg: 34:28
Cool. There you have it. Keep it simple. Awesome man. Well, thank you so much for being with us today and taking time out of your schedule. I really appreciate it.
Matthew: 34:36
Absolutely. I feel like next time you wear glasses so we can be twins. Hey man, I’ll grow my beard out a little bit more.
Greg: 34:41
Let me put these on. We’ll do it for the last, the last 22 seconds.
Matthew: 34:46
There you go.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
