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Building Subscription Experiences You Can Be Proud Of

Andriy Rudnyk is the Founder of Good Subscription Agency, a brand that assists entrepreneurs in building world-class subscription-based businesses. As a Shopify CRO expert who likes to experiment with the design of DTC stores and email marketing, he helps brands create and grow recurring revenue. Andriy is also a digital marketing and e-commerce mentor at North Forge Technology Exchange and holds a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship and small business management from the Asper School of Business.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[02:08] Andriy Rudnyk talks about the genesis of Good Subscription Agency and what it does for businesses
[03:38] The Good Subscription Agency’s ideal client profile
[05:38] The value of hiring an agency to create a subscription-based business model
[06:49] Andriy shares customer retention tips for subscriptions
[17:00] Reasons for specializing in subscription-based businesses
[22:33] How can you reduce your churn rate?
[25:49] Good Subscription Agency’s business and pricing structure
[28:22] Andriy explains how to maximize subscriptions during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and over the holiday season

In this episode…

Do you want your business to have a steady stream of revenue, predictable cash flow, and cultivate solid customer relationships? Building a subscription-based business could be the solution, but do you have what it takes to thrive using this model?

Subscription-based businesses are becoming increasingly popular, and for good reason. However, there’s an art for attracting, converting, and retaining subscribers. According to Andriy Rudnyk, building and growing a successful subscription-based business requires unique skills and expertise. He recommends hiring an agency that specializes in this area to help you develop a winning strategy, optimize your marketing and retention efforts, and reduce the churn rate to achieve sustainable long-term growth.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Pat Yates sits down with Andriy Rudnyk, Founder of Good Subscription Agency, to discuss how entrepreneurs can flourish through a subscription-based business model. Andriy talks about the value of hiring an agency, customer retention and churn rate reduction tips, and how to maximize subscription income over the holiday season.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:07

Hey folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Pat Yates 0:32

Hello, and welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Again, I’m Pat Yates sitting in for Joe Valley. We have a fun conversation today a little bit different. if you have a business that you’re doing Subscribe and Save or any kind of subscription income, we have Andriy Rudnyk. And Andriy is such a great expert in this he’s with Good Subscription Agency. And they only concentrate on subscription income not only they have the ability to help you with churn onboarding, and making sure customer experiences are right, they actually have an app that you can tie into your site that’s going to help you implement this. I think that my predetermined idea was that subscribe and save is pretty easy. Put your name up there have your product, if it’s successful, they’re gonna buy if it’s not, it’s not, but there’s a lot more nuances to it. And I think finding an agency that can help you be able to do these things will at least springboard you in understanding this kind of stuff. I really honestly thought it was an easy part of a business. But the more that I talked to Andriy, I realize it’s really complex. I think everyone’s gonna get something from this conversation today. So I’m anxious to talk to him. And again, if you have any information you need from Quiet Light on your business or want to buy a business, you can go to quietlight.com. Or you can always email me Pat Yates is [email protected]. I’m excited for this conversation with Andriy. So let’s get right to it. Hey, Andriy, it’s great to have you in the Quiet Light Podcast today. How you doing?

Andriy Rudnyk 1:44

I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on Pat.

Pat Yates 1:47

I’m really excited about this, we got a lot of people and actually have a Shark Tank company that I’m really close to that is actually a subscription-based business. So having this conversation is really kind of exciting to me, because I want to learn a lot more about how that’s changed. I know the market has changed for it. But I know everyone would like to sort of understand what you do at the Good Subscription Agency, maybe introduce yourself where you’re from and tell us a little bit of your background.

Andriy Rudnyk 2:08

Yeah, I would love to so as you mentioned, so I run the Good Subscription Agency, we started at the very, very beginning of the pandemic. I got introduced to e-commerce, I worked in both commerce before their large app developer on the Shopify space. And I just saw a niche that really was for subscription-specific agency. So essentially, we only service recurring revenue clients, businesses that have a subscription or a Subscribe and Save or a box or the month or a meal plan on Shopify. And when I say we’re an agency, we help with website design. The subscription strategy overall kind of wraps it all up by website design, development, email marketing, and subscription app optimization and development as well. So that’s essentially what it is. And what makes us a little different than anybody else is that we understand the importance of customer lifetime value. And we always kind of look at that first and foremost. And that’s really the KPI metric we work with our brands to move forward.

Pat Yates 3:13

That’s really great. So tell me a little bit. Let’s say someone comes into you and lets you shoot up the hypothetical. I don’t know what it is. Actually I talked to a company recently that did cat litter. Let’s use that as an example. Let’s say someone wants to build a business subscription around something like that. How do you analyze whether their product is actually right for that? Because some people may think they can get subscription income on anything, but it’s not something that’s really tailored to that yet they want to build it. How do you analyze what clients you work with?

Andriy Rudnyk 3:38

Yeah. So whenever we have a brand that’s just super fresh to subscriptions. One easy metric to look at is your returning customer rate is are you getting at least 30 to 40% of your repeat customers to come back within a certain timeframe. So for example, if you have 40% of customers buy twice in 90 days, you’re probably in a pretty good spot for a replenishment program are Subscribe and Save. And yes, I’m not going to pretend like every single business can start a recurring revenue model. However, there are other things than Subscribe and Save that you could do like a membership program, we’ve actually seen this work pretty well. For example, think about Amazon. Amazon’s the greatest example of a membership program with Amazon Prime. You don’t think about Amazon as a subscription business. But Amazon Prime makes up I don’t remember the exact number. But I remember something around 30% of sales is Amazon Prime revenue for their profit, obviously because all of that membership and access and free shipping is pretty heavily and pretty profitable for them, a lot more profitable than the products they resell. So a membership program like that has been also really, really effective for a lot of brands because it’s a one-time setup cost. So for example, you could say something like, hey, our brand is offering free shipping for all of our members and you get a $10 insert or credit on every single month every time your membership renews. So you have this cash-back element, you have this free shipping element. And that really incentivizes your diehard customers to spend more with you, which is really what you want.

Pat Yates 5:13

That’s a really good point. So I guess when I think about this, when I think about subscription income, let’s say someone’s doing on Amazon, I think everybody seems like, well, my product is a success, I know what I’m doing. Why would someone reach out to have another company help them with that subscription? What’s the thing they learned coming into you that maybe that this breaks down a barrier of what people think about being concerned about starting it? What are the biggest hurdles to get over to decide to work with you?

Andriy Rudnyk 5:38

I think the biggest question is, do you want to work with somebody who’s specifically an expert in this brand, in this field, specifically recurring revenue. So a lot of agencies work and implement a subscription program every now and again, our agency does that every single day. So we’re a vanilla Shopify agency would implement maybe three, four subscription programs in a year, we do that many every single month. So we just have a lot more time on stick. And what that means is, when we do projects, they’re generally very effective. And you can see 50% increase in customer lifetime value in like the first 90 days, you can see 2x growth for your subscription program within the first two, three months that we work together, because we kind of already know what the tech limitations are, we’ve basically made all the mistakes already.

Pat Yates 6:29

Right? Yeah. I think that when I was reading and checking on the website, you had one thing that you really hammered to people right away, which is you have to have a retention strategy. Tell us a little bit about why that’s important. Because I found that interesting that, a lot of times people want to think about how do I get people coming in and subscribe, but the real widget is how do you keep them around. So talk about that.

Andriy Rudnyk 6:49

Yeah. So that’s a real tricky piece for some people to wrap around. Because it’s so counterintuitive to how e-commerce worked in the last five, 10 years, when ads were really cheap, you could drive first customer really profitably and maybe get breakeven on your first sale, maybe make a little money on the first sale. Now with app, customer acquisition costs increasing, you really have to think about not just selling to them for the first time, but selling to them for the second order, third order, fourth order, fifth order, I keep banging on about that your subscribers were three to five times more than one time customer. Why? Because on average, that’s basically what the math shakes out to be a subscriber generally places three orders on average between all the brands we work with. And what that means is your profit margin actually on the second third order is so much higher. So you really have to think about it that way. So you’re not just trying to get somebody through the door, just through the checkout screen, and the thank you page, it really is about that post-purchase experience, the email onboarding, the expectations you build in the post-purchase experience, that unboxing experience, the upcoming order notification, the customer portal, and the second order coming through in the second box, and the third box. So I’m really in requires almost a mental shift from oh, we only care about traffic and conversion and average order value where we really want to take care of the post-purchase experience overall afterwards. And that generally just requires looking at different KPIs, looking at your churn rate and your onboarding and your activation period, and your activation period spent. This is actually something I’m trying to coin as APS is the amount of money a customer spends on their first two orders. Because actually, somebody might opt into your subscription program, but until they placed their second order, they’re not a subscriber, they are on trial, they’ve signed up, they might be getting a port, they might get access to their portal, they might get an upcoming order notification. But until that second order is placed, they’re not really a subscriber.

Pat Yates 8:58

That’s a great point. Because I think the one thing, I had a conversation recently about subscription and being able to retain people. Isn’t it more important probably what you do post-purchase first time to second purchase on the recurring that really sets in whether the customer is going to stay or does it build over time? Do they find that confidence later? Is it about that? For instance, I don’t know, if you send early emails of it’s about to send again, and they have a chance to cancel or whatever. Tell me a little bit about how after the first purchase, someone has to really be that attentive to a customer and make sure it continues.

Andriy Rudnyk 9:32

So great question. And the way I tend to think about it is, this is really about churn management. And so as soon as so let’s say somebody opted in to become a subscriber and have the second order automatically be placed. What you’re really trying to do here is they have an expectation that you’ve created for them on their purchase flow and in their post-purchase flow. And the expectation is, hey, we’re a reputable brand And we’ve got a great product, and you should be spending money with us. Anything that tells them differently, if you just charge their card randomly without a notification, if the second order arrives when they don’t need it, if they haven’t even gotten through half of the first product, and maybe it’s a supplement, or maybe it’s something that’s stacking up on their shelf, it’s a mismanagement of that. And basically churn really happens when expectations don’t meet reality. And then you start thinking, okay, you make promises you can’t keep. So I can’t really trust this brand, with my credit card, a sense of especially, but also to even how do I know that their product or their supplement or the gummies, or whatever they are promoting to me is actually on point. So a subscription is an additional promise you give to them that you have to maintain because if you miss manage that expectation, basically the customer loses hope, or basically trust in your brand. And good luck with that.

Pat Yates 11:01

So let me ask this, you mentioned something that’s kind of interesting there. Some people might get overlap, maybe it’s a product they didn’t use as much I have no idea what the product is, what supplements, maybe the person didn’t take them for a month and ends up with an extra bottle. How does that really affect the long term? Because I mean, do most people that get stacked up like that change the date? Do they have the ability with you, what happens from a customer level to mitigate that problem?

Andriy Rudnyk 11:22

Totally. So on the customer level, what we found is that subscriptions and actually, this is very easy to understand with things like Subscribe and Save programs and with replenishment, as good as you try to predict the customer’s consumption habits, even with daily supplements. People are not robots, it’s very hard to predict when they will need their second order. So it’s essentially key to let them so when it comes time to the upcoming order, and they get a reminder, it’s essential for them to have every single option that’s better than canceling, because the initial knee jerk reaction is oh, I don’t want this order right now. And if you can give them an easy access to the customer portal with one click in their email or through SMS, and they just click no password to remember. And then instead of seeing canceled, they’re seeing hey, change date skip snooze. That is what you want, because you want to educate them on every single action that’s better than cancel. And what we find consistently is that customer portal actions, let’s call it skips news downgrade, upgrade your plan or your amount, or change your size, your SKU, all of those are correlated with high 20 to 30% higher customer lifetime value. So the easier it is to manage your subscription, the more customers are likely to stick around and personalize it for them.

Pat Yates 12:49

That’s really great. I mean, I think the thing that when I look at subscription income, I’m always worried about that. When I think about if I’m gonna subscribe to something I’m like, how do I really know how quickly I use this versus anything else? And I think being able to be flexible is incredible. You talk a lot on the site about the customer lifetime spin and how this affects it. And do you feel like and maybe you can go into that a little bit and talk about the effects that you end up getting this long term if you’re able to get that income, but also, sort of from a standpoint if you have people that you identify that are dipping their toes, maybe they buy every seven weeks, and you’re normally set up on a monthly thing? How do you identify clients that might be candidates that aren’t really taking advantage of the savings too, maybe talk a little bit about both of those and those two different questions?

Andriy Rudnyk 13:30

Yeah, totally. So for example, we can talk about, well, I really like this idea that not all subscribers are made equally, first and foremost. So some people are really just signing up to get a trial on your order on your product at a discount. That’s really what they want. And they’re likely to cancel after the first order. If your onboarding emails are really good. So basically think about an onboarding emails from a customer level. It’s those three, four emails you get right after you place the purchase. They’re not transactional, they’re basically educational. They’re here to take care of buyer’s remorse. They’re here to educate you on how basically build expectation of what you’re about to receive. So this is something like welcome to your community, Athletic Greens has a great example of this, they welcome you to a new movement community, your gut health is going to thank you, you’re gonna have just more better energy so on and so forth. They’re building or the expectations of what you’ll get once you take this on a recurring basis. So recurring benefits of use and then they’ll tell you hey, you can manage your subscription here if you want an order sooner if you want to order later, just click here and they will teach you all of this in the first couple of emails. Now the onboarding process is essential for building a good habit of consumption and really outlining like the ideal subscriber experience for a customer same thing with the unboxing, Mod Water, I don’t know if you ever heard of them, make direct-to-consumer brand kind of an alternative to coffee. And what I really like is their starter pack is the thing you buy first when you subscribe come. So the unboxing experience becomes a big part of this, comes with a milk frother. And as soon as you open the box, and I’ve yet to ask Shane, the founder, whether this came through user research, or how do they figure and so when you open the box for the first time, it doesn’t tell you, hey, just make mud water out of water. And here’s a latte recipe. And what they found is 70% of our subscribers enjoy Mod Water as a latte. So you really have to explain that ideal customer experience to the new subscriber and try to replicate that as best as you can. So here’s why we include a frother, it probably cost them a couple of dollars, maybe $1 or two to include this frother in but it will get them three four 10 orders over that same thing with printing that recipe on the unboxing page. And then everything after that the upcoming order notifications are upselling you on creamers and other flavors of the things you’d might want to try and add to your upcoming order. So I’m a big fan of that. And yeah, Mod Water is a great example there too.

Pat Yates 16:19

You’re sort of just walking customers, right where they want to go and they don’t realize it and then you’re in a position where they have everything they need. So talking with Andriy Rudnyk with Good Subscription Agency is kind of fascinating, because, I look at your company, and I come in and talk to a lot of marketing agencies, and we have to pare down the nine things they want to talk about, you only do one thing, it’s really exciting because like, I think that a lot of times people lose faith in agencies that try to be all things to all people, it’s do everything you can possibly have done and some may do it average, what made you decide to just concentrate on this, because I’m sure that when people talk about subscription, they have other things they’d like to talk about, but you keep it very tight. What was the decision around that? And how did you implement it to be so successful at it?

Andriy Rudnyk 17:00

Well, I’m a big fan of diving into one particular subject really deeply and I would say it’s like, we’re really just starting to scratch the surface of what it feels like to be a specialist in something. And I really liked this idea like to be really good at something, you have to say no to many things. And I really do believe that good design, like the way we designed our service offering for agency is we have to say no to a lot of other projects and a lot of other clients. Just to say it’s like, no, we only work with recurring revenue brands. And as a result, we just have so many more again, time on stick, we do four to six projects every single month where other agencies do that many in a year. And it’s always the same team for us too. But the way I decided to work on this is, initially I saw through the pandemic, I saw that subscription businesses were really growing and that industry was exploding, even more than the rest of the e-commerce space. And I really had to ask myself, it’s like, okay, hold on, is this a fad? Or is there something more to this? And then what I think what hit me with this subscription economy, and I started reading a couple of books on it, too, I really liked The Membership Economy by Robbie Kellman Baxter, probably one of my all-time favorites. Same thing for your listeners, The Automatic Customer by John Warrillow. I don’t know this specifically talks about recurring revenue as a tool for hire business valuations. But general I was like, No, subscriptions are just a more natural way to deal with a brand. Because at the end of the day, I want to have a relationship with a long-term brand that will have my back for a long time. And instead of trying to pick the lowest cost or trying to decide what kind of toothpaste do I want, or toilet paper brand do I want? Or what shaving razors do I want, I just want to be with one brand for a long time and know that they have my back and I can trust them with yes, like simplifying my life. And that’s really what it comes down to. So I just think it’s a more natural way to do business. And also it builds the incentives for the business to be a better business long term because you have to have a great product and this is something that I think agencies don’t emphasize enough on it’s like you can try to market a terrible product but unless you have a great product that people actually want to buy over and over and over, there’s no lipstick on a pig like there’s not much you can do if again if customers don’t want to buy a second time.

Pat Yates 19:47

That’s exactly right. The product has to perform to a level people are gonna want to continue to buy it. As I was going through and looking at your stuff, it’s really fascinating you concentrated only on this because even broke down to where you’ll go in and help with the Shopify theme or landing pages and things like that talk a little bit about why that part is important because I feel like there’s some people think, well, I can just turn this on and off, and I don’t need a whole lot of thought to it, people are gonna buy or they’re not. But there clearly is a specific process to this, tell us about that step and how it really helps your subscription income.

Andriy Rudnyk 20:18

Well, the way I try to explain it to people is that your subscribers are categorically much more valuable than one-time purchasers. And there are many things you could be doing as a business to try to grow your revenue to try to grow your profitability. However, we know that the most profitable customers are subscribers, and that we know that the ROI on a subscriber is generally three to 5x, higher than a one-time purchaser. That’s why we tried to steer everybody to, hey, trust me, the subscription program is the best way to build compounding recurring revenue. And it sounds like buzzwords, but like your bank account will thank you later. So and in that case, it’s like, it really makes sense to try to hire an expert because I mean, one thing we have very, like businesses have limited resources, limited time limited capital. So could you go and try to grow it with better ads and landing? Like just spend a bunch of money on ads, spend a little bit of money on landing pages and see what happens? Or should you be really focusing on real bottom of the funnel, which is your customer churn? Why our customers are buying from you multiple times, leaving? Why are your most profitable customers leaving your brand left, right and center while you’re trying to chase new customers every single month, and that’s generally how, like a lot of direct consumer businesses spend basically a budget things out, here’s our ad budget, here’s our website budget, and we’re just going to try to do that. And then nobody’s really thinking about that post-purchase experience, which is actually where most profit is made.

Pat Yates 21:57

That’s really good. So again, folks, we’re talking with an Andriy Rudnyk with Good Subscription Agency. So one of the biggest things you see in this is everyone invest work. And the last thing you want to have his turn, you talked about it a little bit earlier. But I look at you have a churn optimization opportunity, you help people keep that churn down, I think most people would look at it and say, well, as long as my products good, it shouldn’t drop, because people are gonna like it. But that really may not be the case. So tell the listeners a little bit about what can create that churn. And maybe before they come into you, how do they help avoid that to become a much better agent, a much better seller on subscription?

Andriy Rudnyk 22:33

Great question. And again, it all comes back to getting good data, and understanding why people are leaving. So first and foremost, I always say look at your top churn reasons. So whatever tool you’re currently using, will likely give you some breakdown of churn causes. And people basically, this is self-reported. And you should absolutely have this as a mandatory step on your cancellation flow, and collect that data and say, okay, well, why are people leaving, what we’re seeing a lot of is people are leaving, the most common reason for churn is I have too much product, especially if it’s a replenishment brand. First of all, if it’s too much product, if that’s a genuine concern, that’s not a reason to cancel. If you have too much product, you should be able to skip, pause, snooze, postpone, size it a down downgrade, and all of that, that’s essentially one of the big things that we help with is make that process be better. But it’s basically it’s preventing that the second piece is passive churn. So that’s an easy way. So passive and active churn is two categories that we generally help with. And on the passive churn, it’s exactly that like too much product I’m moving, I just need a break, all of that should not be resulting in canceling, we should be educating them with onboarding emails, and on the customer portal on every single option that’s better than that, pause, snooze, skip, and you should be offering all of those. On the passive side when customers credit card expires, or they’ve marked it as lost and they just simply need to update their credit card, you have to have done in processes and credit card recovery processes, because these could be actually your most profitable, happiest customers, but they simply forgot that to update their credit card. And this is actually what we found the passive churn causes generally 40 to 50% of your highest loyal customer churn. Because if somebody’s placed order, like on orders 10 to 20, like these people have been ordering from you for a while. The most likely reason that they’re canceling is because the credit card didn’t go through. So we want to facilitate that as best as we can to recover a lot of that. So that’s another piece on the term, but generally speaking, and really about is about data and understanding where does your term come from? And what is it that sometimes if it’s, for example, if the reason is too much product, or if it’s product quality, you can find really good valuable feedback or product feedback that you can then take and implement and improve your product as a result. So, that’s essentially it.

Pat Yates 25:20

It’s great. So I know that a lot of people out there may or may not think, look, my business may be too small, I may not be able to support this at this point, what kind of levels of inventory? Sure, there’s all kinds of reservations. Maybe tell us a little bit about, I’m looking at your pricing, it seems as if you have something that’s flexible for anyone, if someone is just starting their business, say they’re six months in, and they’re trying to grow, do they feel like they’re ready is there a certain time or level you need to be to work with the Good Subscription Agency.

Andriy Rudnyk 25:49

So ideally, what we generally work with everybody, first of all, I love working with small businesses, we are a small team or a niche team. And I love talking directly to the business owner. As soon as the business becomes about I, we have an e-commerce manager and we have a marketing manager and we have this, it just doesn’t it’s not a small fun of the running this agency is I get to talk to other small business owners directly and get to know them, because it takes a certain kind of person to be a business owner. And that’s just a fun crowd to be with first, so we help anybody from just starting their Shopify store to businesses that are multimillion-dollar subscription or subscription businesses. And our sweet spot, I would say, to work with us as an agency is somewhere between half a million to a million dollars in sales. So you can spend a little bit of money into investing for two three four months into a subscription program that really pays off. But even then, the return on investment is two three four x, okay? I can’t promise these things nobody can. But we do. Like we have processes that now work. On the other side, though, we have also we’ve recently launched an app that is basically the $20 a month app that helps you self-serve a lot of the things that we do on the agency design side, the good subscription upsell app, it basically is designed, if you have no time, no money or no coding skills, it’s essentially designed to better upsell your Subscribe and Save program. So that’s a really easy way to take a poke at that when it essentially so it works with your any existing subscription apps. And it’s designed to just properly promote your subscription program.

Pat Yates 27:40

And if you’re listening on the radio, if you get a chance to look at the video on this, I’m showing the page that they have on there for the upsell app, this is really cool. So you develop something that actually helps them implement it. Sometimes that makes it even easier for an individual and looking at the interface of what you do. It’s obviously very clean. Very awesome. This is great stuff. I have to order some of this full-spectrum CBD. Yeah. So I guess as we’re going through, and we’re continuing to talk about subscription, I think you and I talked a little bit about a Black Friday and holiday stuff coming up just a few weeks away now. What is it that you would like to tell people they’re looking at working on their subscription income? How do they prepare to make sure they maximize and hit the ground running with that?

Andriy Rudnyk 28:22

Yeah. So, what I try to remind people especially around Black Friday, Cyber Monday, is the importance of building recurring revenue through this period, because what we see generally is people and brands gravitate to promoting one-time purchases and like kind of stocking stuffer-type things. Maybe it is maybe they run with a big promotion of their main core product. But what I would recommend is promote a subscription but bill of subscription promo. So for example, for this Black Friday, Cyber Monday, this weekend, save 25% on all future orders only available and then as opposed to 15. So and this is only for five, only runs for five days or four days. So this that or you can do a stacking discount. So say 15 on your first order and save 25 on every order after. So some apps will allow you to do that. And this is again, you’re not sacrificing profit margin on your first purchase. And then you’re getting them to purchase the second, third, fourth and fifth time. So again, generally, what a lot of businesses see is what will what happens after Black Friday, Cyber Monday stock sales slump well, what’s why? Well, obviously because everybody you’ve promoted you’ve exhausted your email list, you can’t really drive as much revenue through email. However, if you promote them a recurring purchase that January, February, March all of a sudden seems a lot healthier cash flow wise and you can actually reinvest all that money back into oh, listen, we need to make a better upsell flow for our subject. fibers and a better customer portal and a better account. And maybe we need to throw in some digital products that they can download as soon as they purchase before their first box arrives. So all of that stuff to me is really key to growing your business year over year is how you play your Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And if you can get recurring purchases incentivized through this season, you will have so much more dry powder to spend in the first in q1 of the next year to really, really again injustice for good growth next year.

Pat Yates 30:34

Yeah, that’s extremely interesting. When I think about the recurring revenue and subscription, I think in my mind, if anyone would have asked me what period would you like to see one sign up for? I would have probably just shouted out three months semiannual or annual one full payment but it seems to me you’re saying that probably if someone has an extra one they may end up canceling the whole thing and then you got a problem how to rewind a year is that suggested anymore because I used to see that as the standard now it’s something where it looks like it’s only monthly so you don’t feel like someone’s really hamstring and has to stay there. What’s the best philosophy?

Andriy Rudnyk 31:08

So, it really is actually we recommend both it really depends on your model, and how well can you fulfill so for example, if your Subscribe and Save program, it’s really tricky to build a prepayment for the whole year. So for example, like buy a bulk of your next year supplements. First of all, yes, it wouldn’t be great for the business model to get all of that cash upfront and reduce that churn. However, the hurdle rate for that like because now you have to sell somebody 12 orders, and that average order value is like it’s not a $10 purchase or a $20 purchase now it’s 100 or 200 or $300 purchase. So that conversion is tricky to handle. And that only generally works with repeat loyal customers. So you could say hey, prepay for the whole year if you’ve bought with us for last three months, you know you want to save or maybe not even a saving maybe he’s like hey prepay for the whole year and get a free gift I like that instead of a discount. Because a free gift is a much better for your margins. So if you’re a subscriber, so for example, if you sell Subscribe and Save the one-time purchases, promote Subscribe and Save as a Black Friday thing if you sell subscriptions, exclusively promote a prepaid package. So instead of going monthly, promote a three-month or six-month or 12-month pre-payment with a free gift. Same thing with subscription, gifting, send a three, six, 12 month plan as a gift. So all of those are really, really key for sales.

Pat Yates 32:44

That’s great, I think we’ve touched on so many great points today, like subscription income seems on the surface, like it’s easy, just put it up there and people subscribe, but it’s really not there’s obviously nuances to it, there’s way to market it, there’s a way to interact with a customer that makes a difference. And obviously, as you guys go through this, you guys continue to make them even leaner and you’re in a position to where as it grows, the customers are only gonna make much more money. So good subscription is obviously in a great position to help them. I know we’ve hit on a lot of things. Are there other things that you’d like the listeners to know about Good Subscription Agency?

Andriy Rudnyk 33:16

One thing so about us, it’s like, yeah, the Black Friday, Cyber Monday is generally the busiest time of the year. We’re pretty much like if people are looking for agency work, I’d say reach out sooner than later. Because first of all, if your site needs big overhauls, don’t leave it to last week, don’t leave it to the week up, reach out to us sooner. However, we are always offering a couple of free things. The first of all, we do free tear-downs, which is a 15-minute video that I always do as a teardown of your existing website. I’ll just simply record a user session, you’ll get it for free. And you’ll just get my opinion on how you can improve in actionable ways your current subscription, signup flow. We also offer audits start to finish on your Shopify and set up your subscription app setup and your claim to setup. And all of those are our full potential customers who want to end up who are interested in working together and a good brand fit. And also our app is another one that you can pretty much I mean, the sound takes 15 minutes. So yes, you could set it up for the night of Black Friday, Cyber Monday to Friday, or Thursday night. But I would highly recommend doing that sooner. But generally speaking, never hesitate to reach out to us. And find I think that’s…

Pat Yates 34:36

I think that’s a great suggestion. And even if people are not ready yet to that level of revenue, it’s good to plan at least you’re trying to think about your customer experience that will set them up for that. So Andriy, be sure to tell everyone how they can get in touch with you.

Andriy Rudnyk 34:49

That’s where to find me is on LinkedIn. Andriy Rudnyk Good Subscription Agency. Just look up Good Subscription Agency and find me there. And that’s primarily where I live. Also just check out our website, goodsubscription.agency, the free tear-downs for the websites are on there. So that’s again, a 15-minute user session, you’ll find it on our website. And generally I’m able to turn those around in a week or so. And that’s just a little bit of yep, free advice. And take it forward have it

Pat Yates 35:20

Right. And for all our listeners we’ll have the information of his LinkedIn and his email here on the web on the page for the subscription or for subscription. I got it all on my mind for the podcast. So Andriy has been amazing having you in today. I appreciate all the time. It’s been a great conversation. I appreciate you joining us on the Quiet Light Podcast today.

Andriy Rudnyk 35:36

Thanks for having me on Pat. It was a real pleasure.

Outro 35:40

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast, subject or guest, email us at [email protected]. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.