Subscription Radio

Beyond the Hype: A Data-Driven Look at Subscription Fatigue w/ Matthew Barnes

Meet Matthew Barnes. He's a mechanical engineer who knows DTC subscriptions inside-out. Brands like Jot, Earth Breeze, and Fat Snax hire him to scale & optimize their business. His key insight? Focus on lifetime revenue, not just new subscribers. Why? Think of a bathtub. New customers are water flowing in. Churn is the drain. To fill the tub, you need more flow in vs out. Eventually, churn caps growth. So get new customers while minimizing churn. In this episode, Matthew reveal...

The Role of AI in Shaping the Future of eCommerce with Mikko Rekola of Woolman

Mikko Rekola is the Chief Evangelist of Woolman, a Shopify Plus design and development agency in Europe. Woolman has established itself as one of the biggest agencies in its field, catering to renowned brands such as Mars Pet Food, Daniel Wellington, and H&M. In this episode, Ben and Mikko dug deep into the current trends in eCommerce, including the use of AI to improve product discoverability and customer conversion. They discuss the potential of chatbots and semantic websites to ...

Cracking the Code: Effective Strategies for Facebook Advertising

Charles Tichenor, founder of Disrupter School and a partner at Underoutfit Inc, a DTC brand specializing in undergarments, is a strong advocate for embracing change and evolving strategies in response to ever-changing technology and marketplace dynamics. With a deep understanding of the intricacies of Facebook advertising, he has achieved remarkable success in helping businesses navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape. In this episode, Charles uncovers valuable insights, debun...

Living Life as an Unconventional Entrepreneur: How Eric Gower Built a Unique Subscription Experience

Eric Gower, founder of Breakaway Matcha, is an unconventional entrepreneur & CEO. In a world that celebrates moving fast & breaking things, Eric's mantra is to slow down and enjoy life. And with 20% YoY growth for more than a decade, it seems to work. Breakaway Matcha isn't (just) about building a tea empire; it's about fostering genuine connections and enriching daily life. Tune in to the latest episode of Subscription Radio to uncover the secret behind their thriving business: t...

Hacking Anxiety: Inside My Ketamine Therapy Subscription

Ben has struggled with anxiety for his entire life. He's tried everything from therapy to, prescription medication, to mindfulness, none of which totally relieved his anxiety. Recently, Ben explored alternative options and decided to try ketamine therapy. This consists of a series of sessions where the patient is injected with ketamine, goes on a psychedelic "trip" and then talks through it with a therapist. Ketamine therapy isn't for everyone, but Ben found healing and emotional r...

Developing effective ad testing frameworks & the role of AI

Testing structures that are not tailored to the specific needs of an account can lead to inefficiencies by wasting valuable time and resources. To create an effective testing framework, it's essential to consider the unique characteristics of the account to create a customized testing structure. Landon Shaw, the co-founder of SweatPants Agency, lays out his roadmap for developing effective Facebook ad testing frameworks and how AI can streamline the process. Key points covered: G...

How to stand out in the ecommerce subscription market: Insider tips from Eric Carlson at SweatPants Agency

The average US household spends $200 on subscription services. Ecommerce businesses compete for their share of this figure. Eric Carlson, co-founder of SweatPants Agency, reveals his strategies to gain and keep customers, as well as layout techniques to stand out in the current populated market. Tune in to this episode to learn: The challenges of the ecommerce industry in 2023. How to improve the customer experience for subscription businesses. How to predict customers' needs. ...

Quickfire Digital's Nathan Lomax on ecommerce agencies as a tool for Shopify brands

As a Shopify business scales and generates millions in revenue, it's easy to feel like things are running smoothly and that there's no need for change. But complacency can be a dangerous trap in the fast-moving world of ecommerce. To keep growing and thriving, Shopify brands need to evaluate their strategies. This is where a skilled ecommerce agency can help. Nathan Lomax of Quickfire Digital explores ways ecommerce agencies can help even the most successful Shopify brands continue...

How To Know What Really Matters In Your DTC Company

When DTC brands zig, Daniel Toft zags. He’s built companies from both inside and outside of them. Now, he helps them grow in a more scalable way through advising. In this conversation, he shares lessons he’s learned from all of those experiences. Topics Many ways to do many things Find the real retention signal Growing AOVs for subscriptions It’s not about the numbers Different problems at different moments Lean into experimentation Enable insights from data Show Links Che...

Special Office Hours with Elizabeth Ng Glock

Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes, they work in Operations. Without folks keeping the trains on track, the customer experience would crumble. In her time at Stryx, Elizabeth Ng Clock has seen this firsthand. In this conversation, we unpack timeless frameworks that anyone can integrate into their work. Topics Build the plane as you go Be intentional with spend One-way and two-way doors Start documenting processes yesterday Anyone can do a job well Who makes a good Operation...

What Separates Good Subscriptions From Great Ones

Andriy Rudnyk, founder of Good Subscription Agency, has established himself as a top agency for Shopify brands. He’s learned that subscriptions are powerful—but only if they create value for the customer. In this conversation, Andriy and Ben unpack where brands go wrong with the customer experience as it relates to subscriptions and what to do instead. Topics Understanding your business before deciding What are your jobs to be done? See yourself as a software company What "The ...

How to Reduce Churn Through Your Subscription Strategy

Jack Rubin, Co-CEO at Purdy & Figg, knows how important strategy is to reducing churn. The top priority for every subscription-based company is keeping its customers. The lower your churn rate is, the higher your long-term gains will be. So, how do you convince subscribers to stick around? Jack turned his company’s churn rates upside down by changing his strategy around frequency and price. On this episode of Subscription Radio, Ben and Jack chat about his tips for reducing churn ra...

How to Work With Investors to grow your DTC Business

Rick Watson, ecommerce influencer and strategy consultant at RMW Commerce Consulting, has helped many growing DTC brands navigate subscription strategies. It’s a challenging market because not all subscriptions are created equal. So, how do you create a subscription worth sticking around for? Give your customers access to something they can’t get anywhere else. The best subscriptions rely on variety to maintain their audience’s interest. On this episode of Subscription Radio, Ben an...

Ascertaining Attribution: How to Build a Survey That Offers Insight into Customers

Matt Bahr, founder and CEO of Fairing, understands the importance of attribution. This is why he chose to focus his company Fairing, formerly EnquireLabs, on collecting data to help companies understand the attribution of their customers. The goal at Fairing is to bring speed and scale to survey data in an effort to help solve the issue of attribution. The company helps its clients design surveys that help them determine who their customers are, where they came from, and what will k...

Preserve Recurring Revenue: How to Keep Subscribers Coming Back for More

Subscriptions are your best source for recurring revenue. So, how do you keep customers from churning? The key is flexibility. Some people want their subscription to be as regular as clockwork, while others want to pause and pick up at their leisure. A flexible subscription model will help you keep both sides of your audience coming back for more. In this episode, Ben Fisher shares his experience as a serial entrepreneur, the importance of flexibility in subscriptions, and how conve...

How to Build a Sustainable DTC Brand Model

Mike Duboe, general partner at Greylock, is an expert on DTC trends. As a growth leader in user acquisition at multiple ecommerce companies, Mike has seen the evolution of DTC firsthand. Today, DTC is less of a category and more of a channel. Whether it’s a new subscription model or NFTs, if you want to grow your DTC brand, you need to diversify your channels. On this episode of Subscription Radio, Ben and Mike discuss what growth looks like in a DTC brand, the rise of NFTs in comme...

Webpage optimization: how superior site speed can elevate your brand

Shawn O’Neill, founder of SpeedSense Web Performance, is a web performance guru who works with ecommerce brands at the enterprise level. If you’re wondering whether to optimize your website, Shawn is the person to ask. Because the faster your website is, the easier it becomes to hold the attention of your customers. On this episode of Subscription Radio, Ben and Shawn chat about how to speed up the loading time for a webpage, whether or not to go headless, and when to build a custom...

How your subscription model builds customer loyalty

Matt Mullenax, Co-Founder & CEO at Huron, understands how important it is to be there for your customers. Since Huron carries personal care and skin care merchandise as a subscription, it’s crucial for customers to have enough—but not too much—product on hand. One of the challenges of a subscription model is knowing when your customers will need to order more product. But if you know how to manage shipment timing well, they’ll always have the right amount. On this episode of Subscri...

How to find the right ecommerce tools for your stack

Tim Masek, founder of 1-800-D2C, wants to make life easier for ecommerce founders. Through his experience as a growth operator, Tim discovered the difficulty of making decisions about stacks for ecommerce brands. Many founders don’t have the specialized knowledge to be able to pick the optimal tools for their team. So Tim created a service to help ecommerce founders identify the best tools for their stacks. On this episode of Subscription Radio, Ben and Tim discuss how to pick the r...

How to level up your subscription service

Matthew Barnes, founder of Proteus Digital Lab, knows how to help DTC brands optimize their conversion rates for subscriptions. A conversion isn’t just an event; it’s part of a larger customer experience. If you want to get a customer to commit to a subscription, you can’t just focus on the conversion point. You have to consider the entire life cycle of the customer. On this episode of Subscription Radio, Ben and Matthew talk through ways to sweeten your subscription services for cu...

How to turn one-time customers into long-term subscribers

William Hicks, co-founder and president of Magic Mind, knows the value of turning one-time customers into monthly subscribers. The more subscribers your company has, the better your retention rates will be. But getting customers to commit to a subscription requires strategic action. You have to prove to your customers that a subscription is worth the commitment. On this episode of Subscription Radio, Ben and William talk through strengthening your subscription model, how to get cust...

How Paying Attention to Subscribers Can Lower Your Churn Rate

Matthew Holman, Head of Growth at QPilot, believes communication is the key to keeping subscribers long term. Most people don’t cancel their subscriptions because of the product itself. They cancel their subscriptions because they aren’t getting the right amount of product at the right time and in the right way. But if sellers listen to their customers’ needs and adjust their subscription packages accordingly, they’ll be able to keep their subscribers happy for longer. On this episo...

Why the Subscription Experience is Just as Important as your Product

Taja Dockendorf, founder and creative director of Pulp + Wire, knows the ins and outs of creative marketing strategies. If you want your product to stand out in the online retail world, you have to give your customer not only a great product, but a great overall buying experience. Everything from advertising to the packaging to your loyalty rewards contribute to the customer’s experience with your product. On this episode of Subscription Radio, Taja and Ben talk through strategies t...

Can Brands Balance Consumer-Centric Subscriptions and Consistent Revenue?

Patrick Johnson, CEO at Progress Labs, is a brand-building and ecommerce expert. Subscription services are a major part of ecommerce, but are often underutilized and poorly managed. The key to success is finding a balance between subscriptions that are consumer-centric, while still providing a brand with the dependable recurring revenue they need to survive. On this episode of Subscription Radio, Patrick and Ben brainstorm how brands can walk that fine line. Patrick shares his insi...

The Evolution of CPG & Consumer-Centric brands with Scott Norton of N+1 Ventures

Scott Norton, co-founder of Sir Kensington’s and founder of N+1 Ventures, knows a thing or two about marketing consumables in an online world. The internet has changed everything about the way we shop: how we buy, where we’re most receptive to advertising, and who we get our information from. The food industry is no different. From social media posts to internet cookbooks, the internet has shaped the way people buy and consume food. If you want your CPG company to keep up with the t...

Navigating a changing DTC landscape with Patrick Johnson of Progress Labs

High-growth DTC brands encounter roadblocks and questions on a regular basis. That’s because technology is often moving quickly, but different platforms and DTC support systems don’t always talk to one another. Patrick Johnson is an engineer with a background working for Red Antler and the CEO of Progress Labs. His work has attracted clients like Huas, Soma Water, Andie Swim, and many more. He’s found that the key to navigating the DTC landscape lies in educating clients on their op...

Keep reducing friction in CX and try new things with Dean Bakes of Co-op Commerce

Are you feeling subscription fatigue? With the subscription world getting more competitive, it takes more for brands to stand out. Rather than focusing on making a quick buck, brands need to recognize the need to promote long-term loyalty. That starts with simple things, like not pissing off your customers by shipping without warning, and ends with innovative tactics like data-based reminders and gifting programs. Dean Bakes, Chief of Staff for co-op commerce, has a long history of ...

Subscription experience & buy vs build with Alex Malamatinas of Melitas Ventures

What happens when a subscription aficionado becomes a DTC investor? Alex Malamatinas is the founder and managing partner at Melitas Ventures, a VC fund that partners with innovative early-stage food and beverage companies like OLIPOP, Verb Energy, and MUD\WTR to take them to the next level. Alex joined us on Subscription Radio to share why customer experience is so important, and the different ways that the brands backed by Melitas are standing out to customers and investors alike. ...

Scaling DTC nootropics with Dan Freed

Sometimes a scotch-taped-together tech solution is just what you need to jumpstart your subscription services. But if you grow fast enough, the tape won’t hold up. Dan Freed experienced this firsthand as he grew Formula, an incredible company specializing in personalized nootropics. In this episode, Dan shared how he’s reengineering Formula’s operations to provide the very best customer experience possible, and learning from the customer and competitors every step of the way. Show ...

Ep.9 - Scaling DTC nootropics with Dan Freed

Pre- and Post-Pandemic Coffee with David Silverman of Brewbike Coffee

Brewbike's pandemic pivot with David Silverman

David Silverman is the VP of Brand + Digital at Brewbike, a mission-driven coffee company that exists to empower young people through entrepreneurial experience. Pre-pandemic, that was accomplished by giving students the keys to their own coffee business on college campus. That all changed in March 2020, when campuses closed and revenue went to zero overnight. Brewbike quickly created a Shopify store and launched a DTC model that remains a thriving sector of their business over one ...

When you need 32 apps to scale your subscription brand on Shopify Plus

When you need 37 apps to scale your subscription brand on Shopify Plus

Streamlining workflows is a common business need. Consolidating the suite of apps you use for your subscription service is no different. Whether you are a brand or a developer, there are increasingly more and more ways that you can take the dozen isolated apps you currently use and turn them into a handful of hardworking, integrated solutions. In this episode, we explore what caused apps to become so soiled in the first place, and emerging ways to integrate them. Show Topics The c...

Shopify Unite 2021 highlights, recap + predictions

Shopify Unite 2021, the annual partner and developer conference, delivered much to get excited about. It also left us with some questions. How will bespoke themes transition to Online Store 2.0? Now that merchants can create payment gateways as an app, will there be extra fees? What is the future for Shopify Plus? We discussed the highlights and did our best to give you our predictions. Show Topics Troublesome theme transitions to Online Store 2.0 Enhanced developer toolkit with ...

When to buy vs build w/ Ben Kochavy

Should you buy or build? Hire an engineer? Go headless? These are the questions that can consume DTC brands, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. We were joined once again by Ben Kochavy, who helped shed light on the questions above. The key takeaway is this: there’s a time for brands to live on a platform like Shopify, and a time to go custom. There’s also a middle ground, where you can build custom apps for your Shopify-based business. What you don’t want to do is drown your e...

To subscribe, or not to subscribe, that is the question w/ Ben Kochavy of ColdBru Digital

DTC brands might see subscriptions as the go-to framework, but it’s not so simple. For supplements or other easily-timed products, they work great. But for other non-linear products, subscriptions are hard to get right. So, what’s the solution? Ben Kochavy of ColdBru Digital talked with us about the benefits of bundles, why cash flow needs to be taken as seriously as LTV and CPA, and how brands need to bring a VIP experience to reduce churn. Show Topics Subscriptions are a tradeof...

Improving the customer experience of subscription

Subscriptions may be the future. But that doesn’t mean they’re perfect for every brand. Some products and services lend themselves to subscriptions more easily than others, period. Other times, it’s simply in the approach. For example, is the delivery cadence appropriate? Is the customer ending up with too much or too little? Is an on-demand option possible? We don’t have all the answers, but we explored those questions and more in this episode. Show Topics The issue of subscripti...

The future is recurring

Subscriptions are becoming more popular than ever before. In fact, a recent report estimated that 75% of businesses that sell direct to consumer are expected to offer subscriptions by the year 2023. So what exactly counts as a subscription product, and when does the user benefit from a subscription model? In this episode, Ben and Joel dig into where subscriptions win, and where they sometimes fall flat. Show Topics The three types of subscriptions Impacts of the hosting platform The...

Nuts & Bolts of Subscription eCommerce

Subscriptions are becoming more popular than ever before. In fact, a recent report estimated that 75% of businesses that sell direct to consumer are expected to offer subscriptions by the year 2023. So what exactly counts as a subscription product, and when does the user benefit from a subscription model? In this episode, Ben and Joel dig into where subscriptions win, and where they sometimes fall flat. Show Topics The three types of subscriptions Impacts of the hosting platform ...

Hello World

In this inaugural podcast episode, Ben and Joel dive into their shared obsession with subscription eCommerce. While Ben comes from a background of deep Shopify expertise and Joel has spent his career on custom builds, both entrepreneurs are passionate about creating a stellar experience for brands and customers alike. In the world of subscriptions, the landscape is particularly interesting. Ben and Joel discuss everything from the birth of subscription DTC tools to recent changes at...