DTC Subscription Model You Need to Follow in 2026: Operators Build (E6)

Okay, welcome back to Operators Build. This is episode 6. Today it is Cody and myself. We have Aiden from Skio, we have Bernard from Omnisend. We are gonna talk all things subscription business model. Why are we building Wink subscription first? What is the whole purpose of this? Why is predictable recurring revenue a good thing? Is it more profitable than one-off sales? Less profitable? How do we think about cohorts? How are we thinking about messaging recurring fees? Everything that is the subscription economy, we are going to cover in this episode. We are talking pricing a little bit. We're gonna actually even, uh, you're gonna see Cody actually pull up our buy box and show you how we're thinking of our subscription offer out of the gate. Aiden may roast us a little bit. You're gonna love this episode. It's a bit of a fire hose, so I'm gonna warn you right now as you start to listen or watch. By the way, you should watch. I'm telling you that now. You should watch this one on YouTube. It's a lot that's gonna come at you. Uh, and then Cody and I are gonna do a little recap at the end because, uh, we have a lot of work to do after this episode. Let's get into it. So boys, the reason that we got you guys on, since neither one of us has built a subscription-first brand before, we thought this would be an opportunity to have you guys on and kind of school us a little bit. You guys get to see a lot more. than brand operators do. You guys have like data on hundreds, if not thousands of brands. We've got a product, it's a sleep supplement. We're selling it as a daily. It's very sub— it's built for subscription. And we want to, obviously, like our goal is as many subscribers as possible, like as many quality subscribers as possible. And Bernard, I kind of want to, I want you to like help us think through communication. So maybe Aiden, take us away. Let's start with the very basics of what we should be thinking about.

For sure. And what I will say is like, one, having access to all of this data makes you realize like one thing, and that's there is no silver bullet, if I could talk today, silver bullet when it comes to everything in subscriptions. And that's why if you spend a bunch of time on Twitter, like we all do, everybody's gonna tell you like test everything. And I can just tell you having come from like the messaging world before I got into all of this. Subscriptions are no different. It's test everything and then keep it stupid simple. And what I mean by that is like we have brands come in and it's like, I would say not just keep it stupid simple, but don't get lazy too. Nobody wants to do the hard work. Everybody sees like, hey, Skio, Recharge, whatever platform you're on, we've all done a good job kind of building out the features that make this stuff easy. just because it's easy does not mean you should be spending time there. So upsells, cross-sells, these sort of things, they're exciting, but if you don't have a large subscriber group, they're not gonna do anything for you.

Mm-hmm.

So if you think about this, like I would say simple, stupid basics, or as all of our podcast people like to talk about first principles, it's like, hey, you guys are a brand new brand, right? What I would prescribe and like what anybody in this space is gonna prescribe is gonna be completely different. If you're a brand with, let's say, 50 or 100,000 subscribers, right? Yeah. Because then we're gonna go through, diagnose, you might have some sort of great offer, um, and you're bleeding out in a different way. You're not doing enough upsells, you're not doing a good enough job with messaging. But Winx being a baby brand, you have no subscribers, you're, you're net new. Uh, what you are about to have is a bunch of traffic. So it's like, hey, think about it very plainly. We're driving a bunch of traffic to the site. What's the one thing that we want to do? We want to convert as many people as possible. So that's where offer testing becomes the most important thing you can spend time on and like literally test everything, like make sure you have great testing software in place. The offer, I would say the subscription core offer is the most important piece, right? And that's going to be, what do I get as a subscriber when I sign up? The unfortunate like approach that a lot of brands take is they start to discount. They start to discount way too early. And if you look at a lot of our brands that have, I mean, you're seeing the billion-dollar home runs that are starting to get hit across the space. None of these guys are going discount heavy, right? What they're doing is they're trying to value sell. So we see a lot of brands come on and they'll test with the basic buy box, which is one-time versus subscription offer, right? If you have a product that's really meant for subscription, It's not scammy. You just wanna be very upfront with the communication and just go all subscription offer. So let's just say like, hey, if you're buying this product, I mean, think about Winks. You guys are, are better sleep. You can't expect to take this product for 1 month, be like, hey, you know what? I'm sleeping better. I'm gonna cancel my subscription. It's like, hey, I would almost communicate to your buyer, if you're thinking about buying once, just don't buy at all. Like, this is a supplement, this is a commitment.

Yeah.

You're in, you're investing in better sleep, and then you're gonna communicate that in all facets or aspects of your messaging. Then you're gonna say like, hey, not using that sort of discounting play, testing, can we go all in on subscriptions? Does that— and when you're doing this testing so that we can get really into the sauce, you wanna look at like, because the unit economics or just economics of a subscriber are a whole lot better than a one-time purchaser, you're not just looking at that conversion rate like you would if you sold pants, right?

Mm-hmm.

Because you can take a little bit of a hit on the conversion rate if you're picking up a meaningful more amount of subscribers. And what I mean by that is we know that LTV as a subscriber typically gonna be, or inherently gonna be about 2 to 3 times higher than that of a one-time customer. So we're essentially doing a little bit of arbitrage there and figuring out, can I take that hit and still come out in the green, right? What I would do there is start to experiment with interval testing. And then free gifting, because free gifting is one of the best ways to create value for a customer without deteriorating or starting to discount train your customers. So we wanna say, hey, we're Winx, we're a premium brand. What do we wanna do? We wanna give you, I wouldn't go with a shaker bottle. You guys are not a protein brand. We see everybody just try to like copy the shaker bottle.

Yeah.

Like think about what are things that are going to be A natural part of your subscriber's investment. For you guys, I'll just throw this out there. That's a sleep mask, right? Like, hey, Aiden, you're on the Wink site. You're somebody that cares about sleep enough that you just clicked on our ad. Here's a mask. Then maybe you try, try, try adding a few other things on there, right? Once we've tested the right number of gifts, and this is where you'll see people do like sleep guides, that's a free gift, but you're going to see these things stacking cart. So the people feel like they're getting even more value or the subscriber feels like they're getting even more value. And you get to the point where you're like, okay, we have our offer dialed in. And then once you have that offer dialed in, then you can start setting up surprise and delight, which are offers down the road on order number 2, on order number 5. What are those meaningful drop-offs for you? And then the last one is getting into like the minutia of the buy box, which is, I think the days of auto-ship are over. Don't test on that. Testing the verbiage and essentially saying like, subscribe, become a routine customer, like add this to your daily cycle. These are small things that can influence the conversion rate in a meaningful way. And then you'll know, hey, here's where everybody is. And you can start to work on the other parts of the process, meaning messaging, which we can talk to Bernard about, and cancel flow, which are obviously going to be huge.

How much does the copy matter? Like what you say, like, do people test a lot of this at the front end? Because I suspect when we get to like the emails and the SMS that we send, that matters quite a bit, but on the front end, like in that buy box, how much of that is copy?

Immensely. Um, like we're seeing, but again, you know what I mean? Like you're going to get anywhere from Like we've seen, I would say you test that buy box, right? And definitely look at Amazon, by the way. I know we're talking about how much data all the tech bros have access to.

Yeah.

Because we look at thousands of brands. Amazon has millions, right? So like even Skio as a subscription company, we're looking at those guys and like what sort of messaging are they using in their buy boxes? Because they're just running, it's a numbers game and they're running way more through it. So like look at what they're communicating to their customers. take advantage of that and then kind of put your own brand spin on it. But we're seeing about a 3 to 8% sort of incremental lift when it comes to conversion rate, not by changing the offer, not by doing anything, just changing the messaging that you're going to see in that buy box. So I would say it's huge, but it's not going to be as huge as that offer. So start with the offer. Once you have the offer nailed, then you essentially earn the right to get into messaging verbiage, that sort of stuff and copy. Like you said.

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What were you saying about auto-ship? You were saying, Help me understand, make sure I got it correctly. Subscribe and save does better than auto-ship usually?

I would say so. Yeah. I just think like, I know everybody loves blanket statements, like they do well in absolutes. Like I think the days of auto-ship are dead. I think auto-ship feels very boomer. It's, you're not gonna see that on, I don't think like Amazon seems to be doing away with it. And a lot of the other, I would say like large subscription houses that are outside of Shopify seem to be moving towards like this sort of subscribe and save world. But again, going back to what I said at the beginning of the call, there is no silver bullet. So like test it. Maybe you have a customer that's 55 plus, they've grown up with auto-ship, they feel comfortable with it. You'll figure that out quickly. But like, yeah, subscribe and save. I think a lot of people are talking about the routine economy now. or the recurring economy. That's what like the e-com people would call it.

Yeah.

The routine economy are all the people that are like health maxing and optimizing. For those people, I would say like, make this a part of your routine and even invest in your sleep. Get this monthly. Like these are all different things you can throw at the site. And again, none of us know what's going to stick, so just throw 'em up there. Anytime anybody has an idea, no matter how stupid you think it is, Just test it and see if it gets you an uptick in conversion or subscription take rate.

Do we have any sense, guys, on like benchmarks that we should be aiming for, for take rate on subscription? I think just for both of you, Aidan and Bernard, we're starting with a, it's a 4-week, right?

Matt, how do you feel about if I share my screen and Just show them and get feedback. 'Cause like, I think like, Aiden, like, I love what you're saying is like, you have to test it like that. That should be the advice, but it's kind of also like, all right, we don't have any data. We need to know what we're going to go with, um, month 1. So yeah, let me, I'll just share my screen and kind of walk you through what we're thinking and would love for you guys to just give us some live feedback if that works.

Okay.

So Cody, you're sharing your screen right now and you're showing the buy box. So by the way, for people listening, this is why you should go to the YouTube channel and also watch the YouTube channel and subscribe there. 'Cause you will get the video part of this. Um, so Cody sharing your screen, you're looking at our buy box right now, but what I'd love your feedback on guys is just like how this thing is sort of constructed right now. Like we've got an every 4 weeks, so like the most popular option. Then we have the quarterly, Aidan, which I think came at your guidance last time.

Yep.

Um, and then we're gonna do like a bunch of free gift stacking inside the quarterly. Right. So every 12 weeks. But what's your, I guess, like maybe let's start with like, what's First Take on this? Language, comms, like structure, all of that.

For sure. I think it's a good starting point. You know what I mean? Like my initial—

First draft is what it is.

No, no, no, no, no. Definitely better than you guys are. You guys are like learning from the best. So it's good and it's better than where most people are in 2 years who are not kind of like being observant, like testing things. Like again, you called out some of the best brands out there. The whole thing is like, one, you have to look kind of like 2 steps back behind the brand. Like, what are you— do you believe in your product, right? If you guys have an amazing product, which I know you spend a bunch of time on formulation using high-quality ingredients, like, We, again, we see all the macro data. Um, you can only get so far with a product that doesn't work that well. That's part of why I pushed you towards quarterly, right?

Yep.

And what you're doing with quarterly is you're not just getting that customer to pay you more money upfront. It's a bigger psychological commitment. Essentially what you're saying is instead of, hey, I'm trying this thing, and then you're gonna see a subscriber that's like, all right, maybe I'll take this on weekends. I'll mix it in. They're forking over a lot more cash and they're going to start to actually identify as a subscriber, somebody that's investing in their sleep. So they're like, all right, I'm going to take this thing every day. If you look at like, I mean, the company everybody's talking about right now, IM8, I think IM8 pushes toward, I think it might just be a quarterly offer on their site today, which is like—

They have both, but it's like biggest, they have like quarterly here.

It's very geared towards quarterly. Okay, I forget, I think they're testing all the time too. I forget which like version I saw their site last, but it's like, it almost makes you feel stupid. And Matt, kind of going back to what I was talking about with the one-time purchase, I think Beam, which is another big subscription brand, does a great job with this. It's like you almost feel stupid buying the product as a one-time customer. They're like, hey, no discount on the one-time purchase. You can try it once if you want to. But again, like people that are picking up this product, they're picking it up on a recurring basis. They're becoming subscribers. And then what you know is with quarterly, We see much higher retention on the backend. One, due to that sort of like psychological commitment and people are like, hey, I'm really like leaning into this. I'm trying it more. And 3, the way I would say any supplement works, and that's why having a great product is so important, is that's typically when they're going to start to recognize the real benefits. One or 2 weeks in, you're trying to train them. And we can get into that with Bernard where you're like messaging and being like, hey, do you want to sign up for check-ins over your first 3 to 4 weeks so that we establish the habit? once the habit is established, we're waiting almost through that entire second month to get into the third month where they're like, hey, benefits kick in. So if anything, I would almost like put the quarterly box above.

Yeah.

I'm looking at IM8. That's kind of what they do.

Yeah.

I didn't want to go that early from the beginning. I don't know. So at first, because I also part of it, like we don't know our numbers and data. So I think that's like such a great first test. It obviously can help because all of the reasons you're saying, plus like getting cash up front. Um, I feel like that can be one of our first tests. A, it's probably a higher CAC. And so with low ad budgets coming out the gate, I think it might make more sense to not have that be the first one just to get a little bit lower CAC and get some more volume coming in. That's like my thought and then test into that. Um, yeah. Again, I'm, I'm, I'm open to it, but part of the goal here was to have that. Obviously if people take it, great. But to have a high number that then makes the, you know, the other one look a little bit cheaper. Um, but, but obviously seeing a lot of people pushing that, I've heard, I've heard, I would say mixed things where it's definitely really common. A lot of people are doing that as like post-purchase upsell as well. But for some brands, like they're trying to push that after like a month 2 or a month 3. Um, and then the other thing we did, just 'cause not everyone's gonna see it, you know, we originally had the idea to have like, you know, a one-time here, but we're like, let's, Matt, Matt had the idea. I was like, Not sure how confident we want to be. He's like, hey, if this business, like this business really is supposed to be subscription, like let's really de-emphasize it. And, um, question for you, Aiden, like, so we just have one line here, right? It's a pretty high price. Like we're trying to really de-emphasize it. What are like, do you, what are you able to do legally? Like, are you able to just show subscription and not even have one time? Is this what you would do, A, from what you would recommend and also like what you're able to do?

But I would tell all brands, like, make sure that as, like, if you're launching a subscription brand, make sure that you have some sort of counsel on speed dial, right? And that's because, like, if you look at what's going on in the SKIO world, like, we have our own counsel behind the scenes because the rate at which subscription models are changing is insane. And there's some pretty awful people out there that are like, this is just kind of like a small call out, ambulance chasers. Um, that have now, they've essentially turned from ADA compliance, which like is awful. They just attack like small family businesses and now they're weaponizing subscription law, specifically in California. There's one of my least favorite people based out there, but, um, Wyoming, all these other states are kind of like rolling out their, their laws on a state-by-state basis, which like, yeah, it makes it really tough for brands. Skio doesn't touch any of the front end. So like, fortunately we're kind of like removed from this part. What we do have to touch is the cancel flow. So right now we have about like 8 different versions of our cancel flow. You can turn them all on in the backend of your account. I think they're enabled by default now just for like legal sort of like coverage sake. But be very careful. I would say always do the one-time purchase. Like again, you guys are not running a gray hat subscription brand.

Yeah.

And we all know who I'm talking about there. I think having that sort of like perceived optionality is a great way to win trust with your customer. 'Cause essentially what you wanna be doing the whole time is being like, hey, we're gonna bet with our full chest on this amazing product that we've made. We know What's going to help you improve your sleep. Even having the one-time purchase there at the bottom signals that where you're like, hey, you can buy this if you want. It's going to be super expensive. It's like kind of a stupid purchase to make, but like you're always going to have those people that are like natural skeptics or whatever. And if they want to pay that inflated price and try it, then just hit them. I mean, talk to Bernard and the Omnisend guys, hit them in the background. with some sort of retargeting campaign and be like, hey, you tried the product, do you wanna opt in? The big thing though, big call out there, we see so many novice brands like kind of fall under this perception or misconception that like, hey, we got somebody to sign up, we'll just get them into subscription. That opt-in rate tends to be below 40%. It's not like a—

Oh, wow.

It's not a common thing that people are, and like, I'm talking broad strokes here. Like, I know we're always gonna have people that are like, well, I got 70%, and it's like, cool, Like the data at a really, really high level shows sub, sub 30%. It just doesn't happen. So it's like your time to strike is really when you land them on the site and they're making that first subscription purchase. And it's better to get them on, Cody, like you said, a monthly subscription, which you guys are doing here. And I agree with the thinking behind it rather than kind of like letting them hop on that one-time purchase and assuming that you can convert them using a bunch of email flows and retargeting. Which is not true.

Hey, Bernard, uh, question for you, man. So it's just looking at the buy box now and Cody, I don't think we've actually talked about this. You'll notice that the product is very like sleep, family sleep oriented, right? And that one of the things in our buy box, guys, is like how many sleepers are in the house? Because the product is formulated to be like kid safe over 4. And one of the things I'm thinking about here with Omnisend is depending on the, like, if somebody just buys for themself, to me that's like one kind of welcome flow, right? And how we educate. But if somebody is saying like, I'm 2 or 3 or 4 sleepers, that is probably somebody saying I'm buying for my family. Like, we're all going to take this, right? We're going to have to, I think with Omnisend, tell me if we can do this, but like, somehow we gotta send the appropriate content based on how many sleepers are in the house. Like, I don't wanna send out like kid content if it's like one single sleeper. Does that make sense? Am I explaining this right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, this is an interesting behavior.

You wanna be like segmented flows based on quantity because you're assuming that, you know, they have a different interest. We can also, I mean, yeah, I wonder, there's probably some other data points we could get. Like, I'm thinking like maybe That's like a, you know, like a lot of the popups people will have, they'll ask like a question before it. That could be another thing we ask to segment.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, I think that, that, that was gonna be one of my first kind of talking points, or just that maybe there is another way where you're not assuming that 4 equals definitely kids. Maybe there's another way for you to gather that kind of data point and saying, okay, this person definitely has kids and therefore it makes sense for us to put them into this segment. with kids and then to have that flow going out to them rather than to, you may, I don't know what the setup would be where there would be 4 sleepers in the house without kids, but it could be some other situation where somebody's living with some roommates or some other setup where the messaging then would be pretty irrelevant to them. So I think if there's a way for you to kind of confirm that and then put them into that segment, into that flow, I think that could really pay off.

[Sponsor Content] Yeah, it's also like, I mean, I'm hesitant to put too much friction at the front of this too, right? So like, I would love to just, you know how when you guys, when you book flights for your family, it like, it asks you like, you got to put your name in for each person and like, how old are they? And give me their passport. Like, you kind of don't want to do that on the front end. But it would be good just, I think from a product experience, like I'm just coming at this, if I know that it's like a mom and a 6-year-old, We would actually educate and tell them more. Like we tell them something different than it's just like a grownup, you know, adults taking it. I guess that's a broader thing also, Bernard, for you is we're gonna be coming out of the gate testing multiple sort of like ICPs or personas and angles with multiple landing pages. Like we're gonna be pretty congruent. in the funnel. So like what they see in an ad to what they get to. And Cody, I don't know if you have a strong opinion or Bernard or Aiden, but like, should we actually be thinking of the email post-purchase as well to make sure that we're like onboarding that ICP in the right way? Like if it's a perimenopausal woman versus a, you know, 30-year-old mom to a 4-year-old, like those are 2 very different people. With two very different problem sets around sleep. Most AI tools right now are all promise and no delivery. You know exactly what I am talking about. Super fancy launch videos. This is why I'm loving what Rich Panel is doing. They have AI and support smashed together, made it practical, made it useful, made it valuable to brands today, not on some future promise. And instead of asking you to spend weeks writing prompts and uploading help docs and babysitting, They flipped the whole script. Their AI builds your support team for you and everything it needs. I've watched it. It works. It's freaking amazing. Richpanel even guarantees 50% of your support volume will be automated by AI within 30 days or your money back. I call that a no-brainer offer. If you are interested, go to richpanel.com/demo, not for some generic demo, but to actually book a call and watch them build your actual support team.

I, I think Definitely, without introducing too much friction, like you said, I don't know how you can collect that, if it's some sort of quiz or some other way that you can collect the insights you have.

A quiz might be an interesting way to do it, yeah.

Yeah, I think that personally, as a user, I don't mind quizzes at all, especially when I'm very interested in the product and I want to get sort of, if I can understand that the quiz, that the questions in the quiz are actually gonna be relevant in order to provide me with an answer at the end that's gonna provide me more value, I don't really see a problem as a user from taking that quiz, especially if it's really focused, really concentrated, and then gets me the answer on screen immediately. And then if you can get that data at the subscription point, then you can use that data further along. And I think especially with kids, personally, I'm a parent, so I'm pretty skeptical of giving my kids sleeping pills.

Yep.

So that means that there's going to be a great amount of education that you have to give for someone, like I said, perimenopausal, it has a different educational flow versus someone who has kids, someone who just got married and the first time sleeping with a partner, those kind of things that can really impact your sleep. I think those data points, if you can collect them, then we're sending them into different sort of flows. And, a really big important part of this entire communication and of the flows is this, like you said, this post-purchase sort of educational content that you're sending them constantly to remind them why they bought it in the first place, and then to give them some sort of really valuable insights in how to best apply it or some other related tips about how to improve their sleep that goes a little bit beyond the product that you're selling.

So—

Can I ask you guys both this on that, Bernard? The marketer in me does not like sending people A lot of messages and inviting people to churn. The, I want the customer to have a great experience part, like hat, if I was to put that on, it's like, no, I actually really want to onboard this person. Is this, do you, either of you have a strong opinion on like, if we get a subscriber, how much do we communicate with that subscriber in the first week, 2 weeks, a month? Is there a, is, are we shooting ourselves in the foot if we're trying to be too nice and like onboard? Like if we're trying to be good stewards of the product and make sure they have a good experience, like, uh, I don't know who wants to go first here, but like, do you guys have opinions on this or is there data on this?

I'm happy to take that one. Um, everybody's gonna tell you something. Everybody's gonna have a little bit of a different opinion here. Um, I would say 2 things. So one, like you gotta think about your type of brand, right? You guys are selling to like, it's very fun, it's very family friendly. friendly, like you have this little like cartoon man on there. You want to think about like moms. Moms are going to be typically engaging with email on the higher end of the spectrum, right? Totally hear like the marketer in you, but almost going to play that back. So one of the biggest mistakes, again, just kind of starting like broad strokes. So this is really helpful for everybody and then getting into the weeds and answering your question. Like your subscriber list should automatically become one of your like muted audiences over, over in your Omnisend account, right?

Um, what does that mean? Sorry, muted.

You're not sending to them unless it's an upcoming order email. If I am a like, oh, gotcha.

Yeah.

I wanna play this.

Like you don't want to be sending them campaigns and like all the other crap that you're typically marketing to.

Exactly. 'Cause think about it. You guys are like, again, like use basic, basic thinking to think about this. And it's like, you're, you guys are a one product company, so it's even easier if you're like a Thorn or someone like that. It's a little bit different because I would argue you could make a play If you're educating me like, hey, Aiden, you're on our fish oil today. If you add in collagen, whatever else this is, you'll get more benefits out of your fish oil.

Yeah.

If you think about Winks, I'm like, all right, I saw you guys all over Instagram. I saw you guys all over Facebook. I came to your site, I gave you money, I made a purchase. Shut the hell up. You know what I mean? Unless you're telling me, unless it's like subscriber-specific stuff, I'm going to be like, why are you still marketing to me? That looks like a sloppy brand that doesn't know what they're doing. And you'll actually see this in your data. You'll upset your subscribers. Our stupidest brands, you'll actually see them send out offers on like Black Friday and Cyber Monday being like, hey man, opt in at 60% off. Hey man, that signed up 6 months ago.

Right, and they already signed up at something else.

At a lower offer. And they're like, dude, what the hell? Like, I've been with your brand since you guys had 100 subscribers. Like, people notice that stuff. They know when you're a baby brand and they're just like, what is going on here? And then you'll create this problem where people are canceling. Going back. So you want to make sure that like Black Friday season, those sorts of things, you're always hitting them. But going back to your initial question, in the first 30 days, everything I just said gets thrown out the window. And again, that's like, that's broad strokes because first I just made a purchase. I'm brand new. Like I, maybe I visited the site 5 times. Maybe you ran ads all over everything that I click on. Now I'm like, I made that commitment and I'm invested in sleep. And that means that I view you guys as my sleep experts, right? So what you're going to start to tell me, and like, it doesn't matter because you can test this. What Bernard was saying about the quiz, I agree with. If you guys are a skincare company, if you're a multi, multi-SKUs supplement company where it's like, hey, we're going to personalize this flow for you. For me, working with a lot of like just the subscription maxers, like the guys that are all trying to Chad scale, like That's friction. Any friction from the process, you don't, you don't want it in there. You want to throw it out the window. Like, if I could buy in one click for a brand like yours, I should be able to buy in one click. And then you can try to siphon information out of me on the backend because it doesn't matter if I am that like woman entering menopause, right? Like you talked about, or I am that like 29-year-old dude that's trying to like biohack. The benefits are the same. I want to sleep better. And what you want to do is say, hey, Aiden, you've started your, your 30-day investment in sleep or 90-day. I would filter based off the interval count. And then what I would do is educate them through it, right? Your biggest fear is that I start taking my supplement late. I'm 5, 6 days behind.

Yeah.

And then you ship me my next order and you get that immediate first order fatigue where like, I'm a great fit customer. You, like, I would've stayed subscribed, but because I started a little late and we'll talk about like skips in the first order messaging and all that sort of stuff. But like the best thing I've seen brands do is essentially sell me on the benefits, but in a way that almost FOMOs me into taking my subscription. So it would be like, hey, Aiden, it's day 7. And you can also ask people if they want to sign up for text reminders. I think Gains and Bulk, another really cool brand on Skio, did a great job with this. They were like, sign up for our text flow and we'll send you a t-shirt if you like actively take your supplement for the first 30 days and they check in with you. Right. But let's say they don't do that over email. I'm like, hey man, it's day 7. If it's day 7 and you can look at Gray Matter, they do this in their portal too. It's like if you've been taking your supplement every day, you're starting to wake up, you're starting to sleep deeper, you're waking up with a clearer head.

Yeah.

You're more focused at work. Like sell me on the life benefits that come with taking my supplement because then then if I'm taking it, I'm gonna be like, hell yeah. Like, I'm, I'm starting to feel like that. If I'm not taking it, I'm gonna be like, whoa, I'm missing out on all of that stuff. And the last thing I'll say, and then I'll shut up and hand it over to Bernard, is like, on that first order, again, I was, I was traveling. And this happens all the time, by the way.

Yeah.

Like, most people sign up, sign up on a Wednesday, product comes on a Friday. I'm gonna go be at For the weekend. And then Monday, that's when like healthier me starts, right? Like top of the month or top of a new week. I'm now 3 or 4 days behind. In that first email, everybody's like, we want to sneak that first order through or that second order through, right? Just give them, hey man, your next order's coming. Hopefully you're feeling all the benefits and loving the product. If not, let us know. Here's our help address. If you need 5 more days, click this button. You'll have a fast link that Skio, Omnisend will work to bring to life for you. 5 days, 7 days, 10 days, and just be like, we'll bump your subscription out so that we're on a cycle that works for you. If you can nail that cycle for them on the first 2 to 3 orders, again, we see the retention rates on the backend are a whole lot higher.

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So there's, so Bernard, what's your take on the whole like, um, education in the first 30 days? Yeah, the new thing is actually great, Hayden. I like that a lot just from like regular marketing emails. That makes sense. But education is like such a big thing around products like this. Like you, you need people to take them. As a daily for them to really feel it?

Yeah, so I really definitely agree with most of what Aiden said there, right? And I was gonna challenge him until he said about the onboarding, that's an exception. And I 100% agree. For that first 30 days, you need that onboarding flow for these new users who may not have enough information yet about how or when or why they should be taking these sleeping pills. And they may not even have the schedule yet where they are reminded. Take this every day. And as you mentioned, I think previously, you're not going to really feel these effects until month 2 or month 3. So maybe priming them for that expectation that you're going to be at your healthiest if you continue to take these pills. And then by month 2, month 3, we can send you another message that says, by now you should be feeling XYZ. I think that within this onboarding flow, definitely you got to set up the confirmation You're confirming that they are getting what they wanted to get and when they're going to get it and some of the options that they have, whether that's skipping or pausing or managing the subscription one way or another, setting these expectations. And then definitely the next thing, as you guys mentioned, would be that education. I think that educating the customer gives them a sense of what kind of value that they can expect and also give them some tips on how to extract the most value from it. If, you know, based on all the information that you have about your product. And then from time to time to do those sort of check-ins, right? Like Aiden said, you know, after 7 days, you know, how is it going? Are you taking your pills, et cetera? You know, that 2-month period when most people are feeling this really strong health benefits and they're starting to notice that they're sleeping a bit more consistently, you may wanna have a check-in then and say, you know, is it going great? You know, ask for some social proof or provide some social proof. Just to keep that touch going. Overall, just to go back to the first principles here and talking about subscription models and non-subscription models, we're all doing this because we're establishing these hopefully lifelong or long-term relationships with the customers. And great relationships really depend on great communication. And great communication is not a one-size-fits-all. Every single person that you have is communicated to in the same way, but rather, who is this person and what are their points in life and what are their ICP kind of profiles and what are they trying to achieve here? Taking all that into account, you're going to kind of mold your communication for that particular customer profile.

Okay, so Bernard, real quick, it's not a pill, it's a powder. It's a sleep powder. Just for your language. I know it's fine. It doesn't matter. I get it. Just for people listening. So the second, okay, so both you guys and Cody, you know, what's top of mind for me right now is like, we, because we've got this like sort of family brand, family, like it's fun. It's like, we're gonna use a lot of humor in our ads, like all that stuff. I sort of think that we can incorporate that into every, like every message that we send out is like, let's actually have some fun with it. The other thing that we've got on our side, and I don't know how, if this changes what you guys are thinking, is unlike a lot of supplements, the first night you take this is, you're gonna feel it. Like you, it would be shocking to me that like you would take this and not be like, oh, that felt different. Like you're gonna wake up in the morning and be like, oh, okay.

Mention that versus like I, an IM8, you don't know anything. Or groans like, yeah.

Like you just don't know if it's working or not. Right. This is like very fast. You know, it's not a knock your ass out. There's no melatonin in it, but it is very much a, like, I mean, Cody, like, well, we got a review this week.

It's, it's just like— I mean, my first night taking it, my son woke up and I couldn't get out of bed because I was just in such a deep sleep. My wife had to get him. So yeah, you can, you can feel something. No, cause yeah, even like, that's a good point on that one. Like, you know, I've talked to people about when they try to convert their one-time customer into, you know, subscription and like they've tested various things. And I think to Bird Dog's point, like, sometimes it takes longer. You have to hit them later. Like we might actually have more success doing it in the first week because that's when people might be consistent on it and be like, all right, cool. This is working for me. Let me, let me stick to it.

Yeah.

And I, and I'm probably overthinking this, but the sleep is such a universal problem. Like there's so many, it doesn't spare anyone. Right. Maybe Sean, Sean seems to be the only person in the world I know that sleeps. Uh, all the time. But, uh, we have, I think it's like this, I'm probably overthinking it, but like, we have so many different types of customers that we could be getting here, right? Like there's the traveling woman, there's like, there's her husband, there's her 6-year-old who's like suffers with anxiety and like, there's so many different profiles of this customer and how they use the product is just so different. So, I mean, there's like this generic onboarding that we're going to have to do. And then there is part of me that like in that first email, it would be great if we could somehow, I don't know if this is possible with Omnisend, but like, I would love to learn a little more about who this person is. You know, like, can we have links in the email, which is like, who's taking this?

Is it you?

Is it a, is it a kid? Is it like some way that we can just segment them and put them into the appropriate flow? Again, I'm just thinking of like, I want to make sure that the product gets used the right way. Right. And, and that we help people. Like, I think as a brand, one of the things with the brand is like, we will have better LTV if people feel like we are the sleep expert and that we are helping them. And that it's not just the product. It's like, what can we send them? Like, Aiden, one of the things that we're going to do is like, we're going to have our own sleep app at some point.

Right.

Like, here's, here's the, you get an Here's the app with the product so that we help you build better sleep hygiene and better habits. But out of the gate, it's like, this is an Omnisend thing. This is a Skio thing. Like we got to use what we can to communicate with everybody. But yeah, the immediate effectiveness part, I'm curious if you guys have a take here, if this changes how you think of things, because like you're going to feel it. Everybody's going to feel it the first time they take it.

I think this one, actually, this is a great kind of point to bring back about this onboarding flow. Like, you know, I don't have sleeping problems. My wife has from time to time, and she takes melatonin, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So if she went and started subscribing to Winks, I think this would be kind of a very important thing to sort of prep people. You know, this is what you can expect on your first night. You know, we're not gonna— it's not gonna take you 7 days for you to start feeling the effect. You're gonna be knocked out immediately that first night.

Yeah.

And to present it, of course, in a good way, in a positive sense. So this kind of expectation setting, it doesn't just tell them what's gonna happen tonight, but it also differentiates your product from another competitor that might not be able to do the same thing that you're doing, and then reminds them that this is actually what I initially bought this, I doubled down on the subscription just for this particular reason. And I think that going back to definitely the marketing brain on my side is that when a customer makes a purchase, there is some sort of emotional, there's some sort of bigger reason behind that person. It's not just something functional. Hey, give me some medicine so I can go to sleep. They want to go to sleep for a reason. They have this, like you said, could be traveling, they want to catch up to the jet lag, could be some other situations. And then to continuously throughout your education and throughout your marketing materials and even on your website, just focus more squarely on that reason and then find different ways to remind people That this is what problem they wanted to solve, and this is how your product is able to solve that problem in a consistent and high-quality way.

It feels like it's expectation setting, right? Uh, and I think that that's the, you know what this makes me think of? Uh, and thank you for that, Bernard. Aiden, you made this comment, I think on our last call, that like there are things about subscription companies that are not obvious that can bite you.

Right.

And what I'm trying to avoid here with this line of questioning is just like, because we're selling a supplement where the effects are felt pretty quickly, do we have to think about the business differently than if I was selling like a multivitamin where you don't feel it?

Right.

And that's kind of why I'm asking all this is like, what are we just not thinking of where it's like, like if they feel it right away, do they Do we run the risk of like, they don't take it as consistently, right? You know, part of the reason we put it in a stick, like it, it's stick packs, is it's also travel friendly. So like, if you are gonna go on the road, you know, like you do go from Miami up to the Hamptons, like you just grab a few and you go, as opposed to like scooping powders. So that's kind of why I'm getting at this is like, I want to be thoughtful with how we onboard. Because I think that, that my view with even non-subscription products is retention is largely about the buying experience and the initial experience of the product. And then that's what keeps people around, right? It's not, it's actually not like no knock on Omnisend or Skio. Like your retention is not gonna most, is, is, is like 90% of it is not in the technical implementation of this. It's like, is the product good? And did, did they have a good experience buying it? Like, did they feel good buying it?

I mean, you can have the best marketing in the world, but if the product sucks, I mean, there's nothing we can do. Yeah.

If you also have the best marketing in the world, you can make people feel not so awesome in their buying experience.

That's true.

[Sponsor Content] Right? Like if you're optimizing for short-term money. You have been listening to us talk for years about building 9-figure durable goods brands, HexClad, Ridge, Simple Modern, Pela. When we sat down to build Winks, there was never a question. It had to be a subscription brand. And being the veterans we are, we could work with anyone, but we decided to work with Skio to build Winks. Working with the team over at Skio has been awesome. We get to see all of the stuff that the fastest growing CPG brands are actually doing to acquire more subscribers and keep them longer. My favorite example of this has been incentivizing new customers to go from a monthly subscription to a quarterly subscription right after their first purchase, but before they get their first order. The team at Skio has been sharing insights on how much in-portal flexibility to give subscribers, when to change frequency, when to offer product swaps. When to do gifting, what rewards should look like, what is cancel flow optimization? The list is freaking endless and they have shared it all. They have been incredible to work with. They are bringing so much value to this partnership. It almost feels a little unfair. If you run a subscription brand, you should be talking with the team over at Skio. They know their stuff.

Can I ask a, um, like a tactical question on this? What are, what are some of the metrics that we should be thinking about and optimizing for? Like what? Are, Aidan, if you have like benchmarks for, and again, I know everything depends, but like 30-day retention, like what are some of like the bigger subscription KPIs that we should be thoughtful about?

No, for sure. I mean, I would say for you, again, being a baby brand, like remember, answers are going to change, but like new brand, I'm looking at that first to second order, um, rate. I think that's one of the most important things. Because it kind of like Matt, going back to what you were just talking about, I think that's a signal of, did I do a good job with everything that, everything that you're talking about? Did I make it easy for somebody to subscribe? Did I make it easy to manage? And did I sell them on the benefits of the product? And Cody, I'm going to answer kind of like both of the questions that you guys posed at the same time here. Just because you feel the effects immediately, I wouldn't market this any differently. Because if you market towards the immediate effects, you've now created like a tchotchke product, almost like the— everybody knows the sex chocolates that blew up. You guys are not a sex chocolate company. Like, that's not something that people are using on a routine basis. You want to sell them on the lifestyle. You want to sell them on becoming a subscriber. And if you do a good job, I mean, good marketing all backs into psychology. You're trying to get that person to stop saying, I take this product on a daily basis, or I take this product to sleep better, right? Like, Matt, I have a bunch of my friends steal, I take a bunch of magnesium glycinate. I am like your ideal customer.

Yeah.

I became obsessed with my sleep and I give it to them and they're like, dude, I had a great night's sleep last night. I'm like, cool. then they don't take it. They don't go and buy it. And what you want to do is you want to sell them on the long-term effects, the invisible effects, which are like, dude, 30 days from now, you're waking up and you're 1.5 more times productive at work if you become a subscriber, if you take this every day. Because that is my, that's my biggest concern with everything that you just said is you approach this like that, you end up with a trick product and it's not a trick product. Sleep is a lifelong investment, right? So you want to say like, hey—

See, that's why I ask it. Right there. It's like, that's the, that's what I was thinking of.

Yeah. You wanna sell, sell on, sell on that like future, sell on the, sell on the routine, sell on like, you're not a Wink subscriber. You are somebody that takes sleep seriously and you're making this as a, as a lifelong commitment because you wanna, you wanna sleep better and you wanna be the best version of yourself. And then Cody, going back to your question, own, like, again, at the beginning, I care about conversion rate. Um, conversion rate, I, because you're pushing me, I'm happy to go like 30, 35 to 40%. Um, that's what I would shoot for. Um, yeah.

Of what?

Sorry. Like, uh, uh, take rate on sub?

Take rate on subs on your, on your first order. Um, with your guys' buy box, I would expect that to be a whole lot higher with like the— Yeah.

Cause we're, we're going like, you, it's, you're an idiot if you don't.

Exactly. And like, you're, you're going to see like your style buy box, like We have people doing 79%, 80% today, almost 100%. The way you guys have set this up, your style product, your style brand, the way you're going to be marketing, I'm, if I'm you, I'm just trying to set a low bar so you guys aren't like super mad if it doesn't take off in the first few days, but, or first few weeks. I would shoot for 50 to 75, honestly, like that 70 range. And then I would keep doing everything you can to try to get there. Other small note on that, because I know I said mute your whole subscriber list after your first month, big sauce that I was really wrong on. And then I got schooled by, I can't drop their name, but one of the biggest sub-brands out there. They've been around for like 12 years. Keep your, mute your subscriber list, but keep your ads running for this exact reason. They leave their ad, they don't mute their audience. Ad-wise for the first 90 days, and they saw much stronger retention because you're hitting them from one more angle or one more place, one more surface where you're doing benefit reinforcement, which is like a lot of your ads are like, buy this, you're going to be healthier, you're going to sleep better, whatever it is. And then, sorry, I know I'm jumping all around, but Cody, going back to you, try to hit that. Like if you're above 30 to 40%, you're a traditional brand coming out of the gate, great. You're doing well. If you're offering that one-time product in like a traditional buy box, your guys' buy box, shoot for 65% and above. Um, I'm really hoping you guys are in 70 out of the gate. Um, then looking at that like first order drop-off rate, you're crushing. Try to get 90%. Like if you're like Matt, you're a master marketer. You guys have too much marketing heat on your team behind this. Like, Shoot, like, you know what I mean? Shoot for the stars, land on the moon. You're trying to hit 90%, you end up at 70%. Great. And then what I'm monitoring as you start to build your first substantial cohorts, and what I mean by substantial is like bare minimum 1,000 subscribers plus in each one of these cohorts. L6 is what I really care about. L6, you're hitting 35%, 35% and above retention.

Okay.

You have like a one-of-one brand. You're up there with some of the best, some of the biggest and best brands right now. Can't share who, 7%, 8% on L6. That's not a brand I invest in.

So L6 being like 6 months, right?

Last 6 months on a cohort basis. And that's the other thing we'll see is like, again, that's why I tried like kind of guiding you at like the top of the podcast is like, hey, We see a lot of these brands show up and they're like, so because they've listened to things like this, they're so fixated on their retention and they're distracting themselves. They're losing mental cycles and energy trying to get 256 subscribers to an above 35%, um, rate of retention on a 6-month thing. That doesn't matter. That doesn't tell you anything. That's 250 people. It's when you get into, you're picking up 1,000, 2,000 customers a month that that data starts to become really meaningful. And that's why I said start to focus on everything at the top, which is your offer. Get 'em into the fold. Once you have a large enough audience, so you have 2,000, 3,000 subscribers, they're going to start to leave unless you don't do a good job maintaining 'em. Optimize the hell outta your cancel flow. And then because it hits both of us, but it's me and Bernard, The biggest one that everybody misses is then nail your messaging and nail the ability to manage a subscription without having to log into the portal through your messaging. Those are the 3 biggest things that if you get them right, because like common misconception too, people don't log into the portal. Like they, that your utilization rate on the portal is gonna be so low. If they do, their retention is way higher, but a lot of brands are lazy and they don't bring that sort of skip functionality outside of the portal. Like you can do with both of our great platforms. So like you hit those 3 things in your 6 months, you guys are gonna have a hell of a brand that you're, you're selling on.

So can I repeat back what I heard?

Yep.

Just so I understand. So at the first 30 days, Cody, I think what Aiden is saying is that we wanna try to retain, good would be like 70% of our subscribers. They retain, 70% of them retain on their first Uh, they're on their second order, right? And then at 6 months, you're saying that 35% is like insane good?

Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah. For like, again, kind of broad strokes, brand like yours. Yes. Yes. If it's like a retainer brand, um, it would be weird if they had like that low, uh, that low retention or like any of those, the ones that stop you from like grinding your teeth. Yeah. Powder, Powder supplement, 35. And again, I said month 2, I'm shoot for 90. I think 90, 90, 85, really, really good. I'm saying like, I'm not, I might be a little worried at 70, um, especially with your, your first few things. And then the big one for—

No pressure, Cody.

Yeah.

I'm surprised that's higher than I would've thought.

I'm surprised.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, yeah. For, I think that first order retention should be really high. Just with a product like yours. Again, you're like, it works. You get the immediate benefit, your benefit selling. That's why I'm setting such a high bar for you guys. And remember, I'm setting that if you don't hit it, great. You're still putting up some really solid numbers. I'm trying to think, like, after that, you can look at the messaging that you're sending. And I would also, a big thing too upfront, Try to tag, try to build as much data in Shopify as you possibly can. Not like a Skio plug by any means. We're going to allow you to build custom cohorts based off tags in Shopify.

Oh.

What I'm doing, like Cody, if I'm you, is we see so many brands get this wrong because they're, they either found an amazing ad agency They're amazing ad guys like you are, and they just get so excited about that first order, especially when they start pumping quarterly subscriptions that they're like, our average order value's so high, this is great. And they lose sight of all of this down the road because then they see that that particular ad set that they had really, really low CAC on, they're really happy. All of those guys are falling off. on their second order. And then the other one where CAC might've been 2, 3x, they might've lost money on that first or second order. Those guys are staying a whole lot longer because the way that they're educating them and the type of customer that they're attracting is a whole lot more resilient. These are the things that I'm kind of setting up in my first 30 days for sure.

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We're AI-pilled.

We, we are using it to do everything. I'm running most of our email program from Claude and Codex using the MCP, and it's awesome. We also have email, SMS, and popups all in one place. We have all of our flows, welcome series, it's all talking to each other. I love the platform. The analytics are really good. So highly recommend it, especially if you're in the position that Wings is in, new brand starting out. But if you're on a different platform and you're paying too much and you want to switch, they will do the migration completely for you. No lost data. No lossless, takes only 5 days start to finish, and they are giving our listeners 30% off the first 3 months. Go to omnisend.com/9operators to try it out for yourself.

Uh, can I ask then the, the L12, like, so at a 1 year, what would an amazing, uh, cohort retention rate be or churn, however you want to attack that? What's like best in class? For a powder, for a supplement, like whatever, however you wanna attack that.

Gimme 2 secs on that one.

No, he's like, this is why we have you on here. It's like you have actual data.

One final second and then I'm gonna have the, the L6 and L12 numbers for y'all. Yeah, see, I'm seeing like, yeah, 90 might've been a little high on the first, on the second month, but I am seeing like 80, 80 across the board. So shoot for 90, land on 80. And then 12, yeah, 20, 22 to 30%. All right.

22 to 30. I, 'cause I've gotten numbers on this a lot, like all over the place. I don't know, Cody, if you've been talking to some of our friends about like what their 12-month retention looks at, but it's like, it's all over the place, man. I've heard, I've had people tell me that like, if you can land between 12 and 20% retained revenue at 12 months on a supplement, that's like at big scale. Sorry. That the caveat would be like you're spending $2, $3, $4, $5 million a month on ads acquiring customers. And that like your 12-month is at like 12 to 20%. If you're at 20, you're insane. Like that's like world-class at scale.

If you're spending that much for sure. I remember I'm like, so, so the data you're asking, when am I checking these brands? These are, I just checked a few of the biggest ones out there. Um, wink wink. And then I also checked some of the up-and-comers, the guys that have gone from $0 to $1 million a month in their first 8 to 12 months. That's what I'm seeing. And these are the brands that are, it all depends on what you're trying to do. You're trying to cash flow this brand, dump money into it, get to 12%, that's fine. 15%, you're like probably acquirable. You're not going to get a great multiple. You want these big sexy multiples that you're seeing on LinkedIn. Those are the numbers you should be shooting for. Everybody's building with a little bit of a different sort of like purpose, intention, those sort of things. And that's why I was also saying like a lot of those brands, you're probably messaging in the background. Those guys are just like removed as a part of the process of scaling a big brand. They're probably not in the ad weeds anymore. You have Cody sitting over here, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So like if Cody can obsess over this thing, you can spend $3 to $5 million a month, whatever it is, and bring on a much stronger cohort if you figure out the type of messaging that gets you that stronger subscriber at first. A lot of those brands just went through the process of like, I'm a dude working my like tech sales job or whatever it is. I'm gonna start this as a passion project. My buddy up the road is running ads for me. I'm just trying to scale as much as I can and put money into like the ad machine. And then I think if you sat down with those guys and you sat down with the guys that are 20% and above L12 versus our 12% and be like, tell me who your best customer is, right?

Yeah.

Like, who is that? What do they look like? And by the way, not a like plug, I don't get paid for this, but like Outer Signal, those guys are getting a cracked amount of data for our customers. Um, allowing them to figure out, like, we have one brand, had no idea their, their customers, they have some of the strongest retention I've ever seen. Lawyers, doctors, big execs. They changed early days. They figured that out, changed the way they marketed to 'em.

Yeah.

And boom, all of a sudden they've, they've, they've cracked that sort of retention scheme while continuing to dump dollars into it where we see these other brands and they actually have to pull back on their advertising. Or they actually start to lose serious money because they're spending and they're spending big, but they have no idea who they're going after. And that's why it's so important to nail that.

I think Cody and I have an unhealthy level of obsession with this stuff, so we should be fine. I appreciate that though. Bernard, can we, Cody, is it cool? Can we shift to talking a little more on the messaging Part of this. So like, particularly post-purchase, uh, you know, Bernard, do you— what would you tell us? Like, we're new, what should we be setting up as like bare minimum? Like, what, what do we have to get going day one? I just want to make sure that we're not like 30 days in and being like, oh, you, you guys forgot to push the red button.

I don't want to do that. Yeah, yeah, I think that's A lot of the stuff that you need to do in the first place is exceptionally basic, and we have seen many brands who are in the business for a long time and they're also skipping the basics, right? So sometimes it's very important just to go back to those first principles, understand that we're building a relationship with the customers, and doing the basics is like the first order of business. So the first one that definitely I would recommend any single brand to do is to set up this welcome you know, email and expectation-setting email. And this is kind of the one where we talked about, you know, do we mention within that email that, you know, the first time you're gonna take this powder, you're gonna be knocked out a bit more than you would be with the other ones? You know, I think that's a bit, maybe a question for you guys to discuss.

Yeah.

But essentially you're confirming some of the stuff that they were hoping for when they made that subscription, which may not have been clear in the copy is like, you know, what are they subscribed to? How often are they gonna receive it? When is the shipment going to come? When the next charge is going to happen? And then of course, you know, how can they manage this all? How can they skip? How can they cancel? How can they pause? That kind of stuff you all want to put, you know, either if it's in one message, hopefully, or if you set that up, you know, into, you know, split messages over a few days, then that's okay. But you kind of want to welcome them because they are new to your brand. They may be new to your product and you want to give them as much context so that they can be primed for when they actually are going to receive the product. The second one is then, okay, let's conf— the first one kind of confirmed everything that you were hoping for, that you paid and the dates that you can expect or you should expect your product. And then the second one is you're like, okay, what is this first value message that's gonna hit them a bit harder? Aiden mentioned it definitely that in 30 days, in 60 days, you're gonna have 1.5, you can have 3 times as much energy. You're going to wake up with all this oomph and you're going to see that difference. And you want to emphasize again the same brand, the same story. This is the thing that differentiates Wings from the other guys. This is what you are going to get, this future version of yourself. And here's how you can use the product. And these are some of the things that you should be doing on a regular basis in order to get the most out of the product. I think with the sleeping powder, maybe it's not that of a complex product that you need to have extremely complicated instructions, but essentially one of the important things that you want to remind them is take it regularly and you'll feel better, and then within 30 days, 60 days, you're going to have this really big, what's this word, understanding that this was a good investment of your time. So some of the other ones that I think Oh, some people definitely skip is what I would call the post-delivery check-in, right? So after they get that first delivery, you can ask this question, and I think Aydin also kind of mentioned a little bit with that 7-day delay, have you started using it? Is anything unclear? Is there something that you have a question about that we didn't really answer, or are there some issues that you may have faced? you may have faced? Are you getting the result that you expected, right? So this sort of check-in gives the customer a chance to tell you something that is wrong before they go ahead and they manage subscription and then they hit that cancellation button. So you want to kind of avoid that by giving them this opportunity to explain, you know, to tell you what's good or what's bad, and then gives you an opportunity to step in and guide them towards kind of the right usage or how they can get the most value out of the product.

Can I ask you a follow-up on this? So post-delivery, uh, let's start with you, Bernard, but I'd love your take on this too, Aiden. When do we ask people for reviews? So like we got a trigger, it's like post-delivery. How long until we should basically say like, hey, how's it going?

I think this one is really, you know, different, but maybe it's a question for, for the founders here. How long do you think it takes for people to see the value? You know, is it after the first night they say, wow, I slept great that night and now, you know, the next day I'm ready to recommend this brand to other people. I think at that point where they're at this pretty high peak where you think that they would be willing to recommend the brand to their friends the way that Aiden recommended, you know, magnesium to his colleagues or friends, I think that would be a good point for you to say, okay, now it's time to see if I can get a review from this customer.

Yeah, Aidan, what do you think, man? When should we, uh, when should we ask for a review?

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Yeah, I'm glad you flagged. I would say like it all depends on what you're solving for, right? Which is like quantity of reviews versus like quality of reviews, right? And you want to rack up like really good sort of UCG at first.

Yeah.

Sorry. The thing, what I would do if I'm you guys is essentially knowing that it like packs a punch, knowing that my first night I'm going to feel really well rested. I'm probably running a few different flows here, all after, if you, I don't know who you're using for like shipping, you have that sort of like shipping subscription landed style email. I'm probably sending 3 days and these are all different groups, by the way, just like split testing 3 days, 5 days, 7 days.

Yep.

Um, and then I'm also probably running, uh, after second order renewal, same sort of thing, testing 7 days, 10 days, 12 days. Um, and then also after the third order renewal, uh, kind of like explanation behind the reasoning there. One, you have a product that packs a punch. People are going to be most enthusiastic typically when they try it out for the first time. So you're going to get a certain quality of like, wow, I just had my best night of sleep. You can start to plug a lot of that in your welcome series where it's like, I didn't know what to expect. My Oura, like people love calling out Oura and like Whoop data now, especially for like the biohacker types and just be like, this got me that plaster that all over your email, right? Then there's the second one, which is like, hey, I just renewed for the first time, right? That means like, I didn't hate your product enough that I didn't cancel, or I forgot to cancel. You're going to run that risk of getting a bad review because then they're going to be like, hey, then you just need to have a reach out flow that's like, hey, we saw you left a bad review. We want to turn this experience around. Let us know how we can make this right. And then third, after that third order, third order is if like they didn't get pissed off on the second order renewal, they're like, they're in, they like the product, they're with the company. That's where I think you're going to get some of your strongest reviews where it's like, hey, and I don't think there's harm in maybe like running subscribers through all 3 of them. Like you haven't left a, like if then you haven't left a review yet, go and ask them. That's where you're going to get those like stories, like that, like powerful stuff that you can use where it's like—

Oh, it's a good call out. What kind of review?

Exactly. And then you'll get 3 different types and then like, let's just say track what all 3 of those flows are getting you. And if you're like, dude, people on that like second order email really seem to like, we're getting a real mixed bag there, turn that one off and ask the people right after they take it and then 3 months down the road. And I think you'll, you'll, you'll sort of get a feel for it and fine-tune it over time.

Okay.

That's helpful, guys. That's actually really helpful.

Thank you both.

I feel like we got so much. I feel like I just can't wait to get, get to work on it all.

I know I'm slacking Cody notes. I'm like, We got to change language on this.

To toss on top of everything that Bernard said, one of the most, like, I keep talking about testing everything. One of the biggest things that you can figure out at first, like you're going to regret not having done this 90 days later, subject line testing on your, your upcoming order email, right? Like you want to nail that. Like why, why the hell anybody sends your next order is almost ready. Um, even if I love your product, like that does not get me excited. Like, Aiden, like a better night's sleep is on the way. Like this is getting packaged. Be as transparent as you want there. I'm not saying do anything shady with the messaging, but like, I should, like, you should be excited about your product. I should be excited about your product. Don't hit me with, we're packing your order. Um, for people that do gifting, you can be like, Aiden, you're one order away from your next gift. And then in parentheses, be transparent, your next order. Or your next order's coming, like build excitement for this. Like, I don't know, your sleep, second stage in your sleep journey, and then do benefit reinforcement in that email. But like make those things fun. And then the other thing I wanted to toss on there is just big one, why cancel flow is so important, because we wanted to get this out there. And I wanted to tell you guys, as you go and set this up, cancel flow data is gold in subscription world. You can use it for so many different things. One of the biggest things is we're working on this kick-ass integration with Omnisend right now. We're going to be able to push that cancel flow data into Omnisend, right? So what you're going to be able to do, and the lamest ever, and I'm sure we've all subscribed to brands here, is like you get an email that's like, hey, Aiden, we noticed that you canceled your subscription 3 months ago, bro. Like we're running a 20% offer. Do you want to come back today? And I like, The reason I canceled might've been, this made me throw up all over my house. I don't care that it's 20% off, or I hate the flavor lemon, whatever it is. What you can start to do is take that and in your win-back email that you should absolutely be running, probably 60 days after they cancel, again, experiment with that. You can say, Aiden, we saw that you canceled because your favorite flavor lemon was out of stock. Lemon is back in stock. I'm going to reactivate almost instantly.

Yeah.

Aiden, we saw that you canceled because The dose was too heavy. You actually couldn't get up and you missed work the next day. Hopefully that's a problem you guys have. We just launched like a lighter weight version of our product for people that are super sensitive to our ingredients. These are the sort of things where it's just like, you go that extra mile, you get rewarded with dollars by your subscribers. And I think you guys will find that, especially in your outreach over time.

This reminds me, I have one more question for you. Reminder emails. Are there different strategies there? Are there different things to think about? I've seen, I've seen, you know, very, very transparent, like, I know you have to send them, but I know there's ways to make it more visible or less visible. Is there any secret sauce to that? Do you expect a lot of churn from those or not? Is there anything with timing and just anything we should know about setting those up?

For sure. Def— again, test 1-day, 3-day, 5-day, right? Um, so 3 different cohorts. We're letting 'em know 1 day before their next order ships, 3 days before their next order ships, 5 days. And I'm not just looking for how this impacts or shows up in my retention. I'm also looking at that sort of, um, sentiment level of data.

Mm-hmm.

Did I piss a bunch of people off? Do people feel like 1 day is too fast and it's shady? Maybe for these busy moms, 'cause you guys are running this family-friendly brand, Like, don't do it. My big thing is like kind of going back and we didn't have time to get into this today. When you drive somebody to a portal, and this is not shady, by the way, there's a higher chance that they cancel. The cancel button is right there. So it's like, hey, and I always walk people through like the, the, you're having a bad day one. Like you just got—

Yeah.

Weirded by cold calls. You got yelled at by your wife in the morning. You're, you're in your car on the way to work and you get an upcoming order email or a text being like, Hey Matt, how's it going? Your next order's on the way. You're gonna be like, it won't say it.

Yeah.

Like, I'm, I'm so pissed at the world right now. I'm taking this out on my subscription, even though I love my subscription and I'm canceling. Right? Um, so I wanna think about like, how can I be as helpful to that customer, run as transparent of a brand, and stop them from getting to the portal? And that's what I was saying is like, why are, and like, look at your cancel reasons, especially on people that didn't go from first to second order. Those cancel reasons are probably going to look very different than what you're seeing on like the L2 to L12 style cohort. Solve for those things in your email. Hey, Aiden, here are common questions that people have. It's not working. Put those there with my upcoming order notification. And then the big one too is you cannot vary offers in those emails. If you want to do those, send them separately in the same flow because you want to mark this email as a transactional email. And then you can send a marketing email first or after being like, your order's coming up, want to add on a double pack, a triple pack, or do you want to upgrade to quarterly? What you can do are serve them or provide utility in a way. So look at it and be like, yo brother, loving the product. Like I said at the top, need a few extra days. Here's a button to click, 5 days, 7 days, 10 days. These are using what are called quick actions. Customer's never going to enter the portal, They're going to go straight to a nice looking branded landing page. And you're just going to say confirming you want to skip for 5 days. So like, I know people shouldn't be doing this in their car. Reality is they, they are, they're on the way to work. They're on a train. Give me a 7-day button. And that way it's like, if I was like, ah, you know what? I'm in another subscription. My next order is coming up. I'm just going to cancel and I'll resubscribe. That's the story that people tell themselves. The data shows they don't come back and resubscribe. So instead of like leaving me to figure it out, bring me that sort of proactive rebuttal that you would tell them if you were on the phone with them in an email. And that's, Aiden, trust us, stay with this a little bit longer, you'll feel the benefits, or just here's the quick skip. That way it's executed. I feel like you took care of me and you're going to see much, much stronger retention data over time.

That's great, man. I'm good. I, this is like, I got so much to think about.

I don't think I can handle anymore.

Yeah.

I have a lot to think about. I think that was such an amazing value show there. Yeah.

You guys have both been super helpful. Like I, I got a lot of, like, there's a lot on just like the whole flow, all this CRM stuff and like, where are we sticking all this data on people too? Like, that's a question. Like Cody, you've gotta look at everything. Um, this is super helpful, guys. I appreciate both of you coming on.

Very, very helpful. Thank you for having us. It's been awesome.

Thank you guys. Thank you so much.

I got a fresh coffee, Cody.

I need an— I need a new one. No, I mean, head has been— the thing is what Aiden did such a good job of is giving us like not just absolutes, but like, hey, here's a range here. Here are test ideas. Like it's, it's so incredible. And I think for us, it's like, what do we want to do at the gate? Because we, you know, we don't have the cancellation data. Like we, we have to pick our offer from the beginning.

Yeah.

So I think it's number one, and we're very close to it. I know we have other episodes and stuff, is dialing in that offer, getting just like our best guess with welcome flow from the beginning and just knowing like, here, we know it's gonna change. We know we're gonna have to test a bunch. And, you know, for the welcome flow, like how we personalize it, whether it's, you know, the outer signal stuff or popups, like we can also build on that later. Like, let's keep it a little bit simple. Like you said, let's do the basics. And I think like Let's, let's dial in the basics and not try to get too complicated now.

Yeah.

I think, I think what I got from Aiden is like, Buy Box is a good first stab. Uh, one of the things I'm going to do is I want to review the copy on the site with, maybe I'll see if Katie and her team at Kate and Lane can just like give us some input on like, just like they're all moms. Right. Uh, and that's their customer base. So like, I, I kind of want to review the copy in the buy box with them and just make sure it kind of sounds like that they like it. Right. Cause like we're writing this stuff, but I think what I got from Aiden is like our buy box and our offers to start look okay as a starting place. So like we don't need to overcomplicate it. Um, and then yeah, just the initial communication, uh, some of that setup stuff. I think we got to figure that out. The, the, the delay, those like, what do you call those? Like quick link things where I think that's really important. Um, well, it's funny though, we don't need that on day 1. We, we actually need that at like day 24 of launching the site. So, uh, we have some time. That was my, that was my other thing is like, how much of this is like, do you actually have to have on day, like literally on launch day? And how much are you sort of building in flight as you go?

Yeah, I've had to like tell myself that, 'cause like I'll get overwhelmed with like how much I think we have to do.

And it's like, we don't need it perfect from day one.

We need, we gotta have the offers. We need, you know, welcome flows, abandoned cart, post-purchase. Like, I mean, I think we should have post-purchase ready, but we don't necessarily need to focus on the long, long-term.

Yeah, we, I think that's right. We should have post-purchase ready, uh, post-delivery or whatever we're gonna, yeah, post-purchase, post-purchase. Um, yeah, there, I think it is like a reminder that first principles, just get the basics right for launch. And then we can, knowing what we know and who we have access to, like we can just iterate, uh, very quickly.

Yeah. That's what I'm excited. I can't wait to get data and be like, hey, this is then the problem we have to solve, you know, like this is, um, but I think that'll be a really fun challenge for us. But yeah, I've started working on like welcome flow. I haven't worked on post-purchase yet, so I'll flip something over soon. But I think just getting like a really good V1 of those set up and then just wait until we, we get data coming in.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. The, uh, we didn't dive that much into the cancellation flow with him. I think that'll be a, that'll be a really fun one just from what I've seen. Um, that'll be a really cool one, A, to get the data in and there's a lot you can do with it, but just to see, and like, I've seen some of the things people will do to like optimize those flows.

Dude, I actually like, I really loved the, uh, bit on product too. Like what we learned from the cancellation flow and if we can get that into, like, I'm, if If Omnisend is sort of CRM location of this data, then we need to make sure that we get all that stuff in one place that we can analyze it because like that's one of our blind spots right now is we don't have thousands of people using the product yet either.

Yeah.

And we're going to learn on where does the product actually need to iterate? Like where does that have to improve or change?

Everything.

This is the thing, right? Like everything we're doing right now, we're just, we're at assumption stage still. We're making a whole bunch of assumptions. They are best guesses based on what we know about building these companies, what our friends are telling us about building, but like, holy shit, it's uncomfortable, uh, to not have like data. I don't like this. Yeah, no, I like the running the bigger company thing when I have like 2 million customers to work with.

But it's also nice because like maybe, maybe I should have done it at Jones Road, but like I feel like we can have like 3 to 4 main KPIs for a subscription program and like just really be laser focused on that versus like when things get bigger, it's like, oh, I have so much to look at. But I think getting some of that data from him was helpful. So like 70, 90 day after, you know, 70 to 90% after month 1. Um, you know, those—

That's actually really helpful.

And just for us to just like keep laser focused on that. Right. And like, that's probably like the most important KPI that we should be thinking about right now. Obviously we're gonna have cash, you know, but just, just month 2 was like laser focused on that for now.

And what are these like subscription only numbers that we maybe haven't monitored in the past, like in Jones Road or in Pela? Uh, we did it at Lomi, like we really paid attention to cohorts at Lomi because we were subscription based. Um, but very different, like, dude, the thing that jumps out to me is his like at 12 months, if you can retain like you know, 20, 30% of your customers, that's banger in supplement. I'm like, at Lomi, I was retaining like 57 to 67% at 12 months, but it was a hardware device with a consumable attached to it. So like we just had a really high retention for a consumer good. So it just, yeah, like, I don't know, we're blind right now. I don't like being blind.

I'm excited for that, John, because I'm definitely much more acquisition focused normally. But, but to have like, you know, Ferris and their team like be laser focused on that. And you as well. I mean, I'm excited for this challenge. Like I've seen like Shaq do it a little bit and he used to be an ads guy and he's doing retention.

Totally.

I'm excited for the challenge. It'll be like how our brains normally work, but just on a new thing.

Yeah, man. This is gonna, uh, yeah, this is so far, this continues to be fun. I like it. All right, man. Let's get outta here. Let's get to work.

It's a good one. Let's do it.