Nathan Bush: Calling all brands looking to dominate search rankings in 2025 Studio Hawk is Australia's largest dedicated SEO agency, working with brands like officeworks, City, Beach, Age, Clarks, Petstock and New Balance. And they have an exclusive offer for Add to Cart. Listeners sign up for an ongoing SEO campaign and receive the content boost package professionally written copy for 40 category pages free of charge. If you want to rank and convert better in 2025, head on over to studiohawk.com and mention add to cart when inquiring to claim this offer. Plus receive a free SEO audit of your website today I want to talk about subscriptions because subscriptions is the kind of product or the kind of offering that every e commerce business wants to nail because it is a revenue of gold, but most don't actually do the work to make them stand out. I want to unpack that a little bit more to understand what you can do to make subscriptions stand out and not just be an offering that we tag on to our product pages and hope that people hit that subscribe button. The conversation that brought me to this point was my one with Jared Turkleson, who is the co founder of before youe Speak, a Brisbane based coffee brand doing seven figures in online sales, stocked in 1500 stores worldwide. And while he talked about some really flashy, excellent F1 sponsorships and their expansion into Woolworths and the UAE, what I loved was his approach to subscriptions and more importantly, the loyalty that sits behind all of those subscriptions. Like many retailers at first, before youe Speak didn't put a whole lot of effort into their subscriptions. In fact, they purposely held back because they were scared that they would piss off their retail partners. However, since then they have really flipped the switch on it, making sure that they understand the right timing, the right product and the right offer so that the subscription channel becomes one of the most powerful channels. Their average subscriber now repeats 9.7 times. Of course you're all going to say this is easy with coffee, but we've got a couple of examples after this excerpt from Jared to show that it's not just coffee. It's not just those everyday items that open up to subscription. It's any brand that that has a really loyal following. But first you've got to get that loyalty in place where we've put a
Jaryd Terkelsen: heavy focus in terms of like if we're just talking e commerce only for a minute, we've put a heavy focus on our e commerce platform with our subscriptions. Now that's something we avoided in the first probably four or five years to be honest. Like in the early days like we put them up and we just had that much backlash from retail saying if you guys are going to be 15% cheaper, like well we're not going to support the brand. So. So we had it there but we had it hidden the whole time. If anyone ever asked us we'd just send them a link like it was kind of an afterthought. We had very few that were actually on subscription and it wasn't until probably bit over two years now that we've actually been pushing it. So we've got such a strong subscription base so it's leaning into that. Like we've got a very sticky product. Like again, coffee is something that's so habitual. It's like yeah, if you're a coffee drinker you're a one or two or three cup coffee a day and that doesn't really change too much. So I was like, it's very predictable in terms of like well I know how many I'm going to go through. So our average subscriber base, I think on average Our subscriber has nine, like 9.7 repeat orders with this at the moment. So you, when you start to get that data it's like we can lean into, I guess putting more into acquiring the customer up front. But it is, it's like it's kind of to acquire those customers. It is like how do you bring people into the brand? And it is like it is east sampling, it's these community based things, these events is kind of just showing up week in, week out at different places to kind of meet new people and bring them into the brand as well as pairing that with I guess a good creative strategy and kind of pushing across meta.
Nathan Bush: So given that 9.7 times, that's a huge customer lifetime value I could imagine depending on what they're buying. How do you work out what you're willing to pay to acquire that customer for the first time, not knowing at that point whether they're going to be a subscriber or a one off?
Jaryd Terkelsen: Yeah, I guess like you can get enough data through Shopify and some of these other tools to understand even if you average it across all of your online customers, like cool, well we can afford to lose 50 or $80 to acquire the first customer or to acquire like the first time purchase and knowing that across the average we're still going to net at a positive.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I like what you're doing. You've got an offer up there at the Moment. I'm not sure if this is a permanent offer for subscribers where they get a free gift for the first time subscription. Is that something that's new or have you always had that in place?
Jaryd Terkelsen: No, like we've been running that for maybe six months now. And that's definitely been like once we've like, we pulled some of this data, like, well, cool. We know how sticky it is. Let's do what we can to get them on board. So yeah, yeah. You buy a 30 surfbox, which is normally 69.95, 15% off.49,45. You're then adding on like a $40 travel mug, stainless travel mug, and we give them an extra seven serves or like a seven serve trial pouch of that coffee. So you're pretty much buying $60, getting an extra $60 worth. And for customer acquisition, like that's been unreal for us.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, especially if you're paying a good upfront cost to acquire them that little extra.
Jaryd Terkelsen: And that's right, you've got to factor those cogs in as well. And like the extra shipping cost, that kind of comes with that also. But it's a, it's a net positive result for us.
Nathan Bush: What about on the other end of this? And I'm not sure if this is a problem for you, but do you have any flags that give you an indication of when customers are likely to churn from subscriptions and do you have incentives to keep them in the funnel?
Jaryd Terkelsen: Yeah, like we do have obviously like a loyalty program and stuff as well. So like the longer they stay subscribed and like they've got those loyalty points that can kind of build up and like add products to their subscriptions. The churns typically only like, it's if people are moving house, it's if they're, I don't know, going on holidays or something. If there's something that's disrupting routine, you'll get a little bit apart from that. Like there, there's no big triggers for us, which has been good.
Nathan Bush: That's the beauty of a routine product, isn't it? Jared's story is a great reminder that subscriptions aren't just about recurring revenue. Getting customers to press that subscribe button and have the money come through without any more effort. It's actually about building trust, consistency and value over time. And the effort actually comes in to the days, the months, the years in getting that loyalty before they hit that subscribe button. If you are just launching it as a product offering and hoping that people subscribe, you haven't done the hard yards yet and as we've seen across Add to Cart. While that is a great example from before youe Speak, there is no one size fit all playbook, especially when it comes to subscription. The key message is that the best brands don't rush the subscription. They kind of lead it in with a little bit of romance, a little bit of love. Before asking for customers to have deliveries every month or every week, they build stickiness before their customers ever hit subscribe. A couple of other examples that spring to mind in doing subscriptions just slightly different is Funday Suites. They treat their subscribers as a VIP tier. So yes, they subscribe for products, but they're actually their highest tier of loyalty customer. So not only do they get products delivered with a discount, they also get bonus merch, early product drops, and little surprises now and again that really feel personal to that customer and go well beyond that product. For a brand that trades on fun and nostalgia, that next level treatment of subscription feels more like joining an inner circle of the brand than necessarily just getting an order every month. Another example that I really love was from Bianca at Our Cow. And while yes, it's a product that you can get delivered, you can get your meat delivered every week or every month or every fortnight, whatever you need. It wasn't necessarily about the product, it was about the origin story and where that meat was coming from. So yes, while they had to get the delivery right, it had to be cold, it had to be fresh, it had to be on time. Actually, what they also had to do was have this layer of content and information running in the background to keep that value proposition and that connection going throughout the subscription. Just delivering the product wasn't enough. It's a really good insight to what makes subscription tick. So that would be my challenge to you. If you have a subscription model or you're considering a subscription model, understand where the loyalty in your subscription comes from. Yes, you can offer a discount. Yes, you can make sure it arrives every week or every month. However, what is it that gives you loyalty? What will stop people from making that same subscription with your competitors? Whether that's giving them access to new product before anyone else gets it, Surprising them with a bit of surprise and delight, whether that's through merch or special releases or perhaps just giving them extra information to constantly reinforce the value of that subscription? Think about what goes above and beyond that little discount that you give to keep them subscribed. Because yes, they can be the rivers of gold. So a couple of things I want you to Think about one you need to make it sticky before they subscribe. Don't just launch a subscription thinking it will hit straight away. Oftentimes subscription comes from years and years of brand use, brand loyalty before they even hit that subscribe button. So do the work beforehand. And number two, you need to match the vibes, not just the value. So don't just go in thinking that because you offer a percentage discount that will be enough. You need to go in and go where else can I add value? And then you need to also make sure that you have your operations in order. There is nothing worse than a subscription offer that just doesn't meet their promises. So making sure that your team can separate everyday orders from subscription orders to maybe even prioritize those subscription orders to get them out on time with clear communication is absolutely critical. So yes, different brands will have different approaches to subscription, but I want you to think about where you add value beyond just a product description and something arriving on the doorstep at a regular time. That will get boring pretty quickly. If you're keen to hear more from Jared, check out episode number 541of add to Cart. We've also linked the other episodes that I've mentioned here, Funday and Our Cow into the show notes. Go check them out if you want great examples of other subscription businesses. And of course, if this playbook helped, please hit follow or share it with someone that you know that might be considering subscriptions right now. Also, if you want to join us on the Add to Cart community, come on over. It's on add to cart.com free to join and you can share lots of tips on subscriptions and everything else in E commerce. Join us over there@dakart.com and join over 500 other E commerce professionals sharing tips and tricks every day. Catch you soon.
