911: QPilot: Start A Subscription Program and Skyrocket Your Sales With Matthew Holman

Robert Plank 0:04 Hey, and welcome back to the podcast. We are here with Matthew Pullman. And he's the co founder of Q pilot and the founder of subscription prescription. And Matt works directly with brands to launch and scale great subscription programs. So we might find out today about retention strategies, common mistakes, brands make the state of subscriptions. And what's next. So Matthew, glad to be talking to you. Hey, thanks. You're very welcome. And so with all the crazy things happening these days with subscription, and E commerce, and with all this cloud stuff, etc, what has you passionate these days? What has you fired up? What should we all know about? What are we missing by not getting on the Brain Train what you have going on these days?

Speaker 2 0:48 Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, there's certainly a subscription fatigue going on with you know, there's like a million streaming services and all these things that are happening, that people are trying to get your dollars every month. So there's certainly that happening. But what I think is exciting is that, you know, COVID, one of the things that advanced a lot was this comfortability, with people getting deliveries more and more to their home, whether that was food or something that you might normally pick up at Walmart on your way home. Now, you're just get it off Amazon or something like that. So there's a, there's a really growing trend and consumers liking subscriptions. And what makes them really powerful is it's not just recurring revenue, but it's an extra engagement opportunity. So you as a brand, have a targeted audience that trusts you and likes your products that you can sell even more into.

Robert Plank 1:33 Well, great. And you're making me think that I mean, like in my business, I probably have like 30 subscriptions, and this all digital, but they like as a personal consumer, year after year, it feels like I get a little deeper into the subscriptions like 10 or 20%. As far as like, and like Amazon, especially right and being like, Okay, well, I know that by the time the paper towels, or the toilet paper or the oatmeal or whatever runs out, it's already too late. I wish I'd had it a week ago that way, I wouldn't even have thought about it. And I feel like it's never quite there yet feels like every year it's getting a little bit closer. And then there's that thought of, you know, and almost anyone I know that sell something physical that shipped something, my number one question is like, Okay, do you have an auto ship? And the answer is usually no. And then they usually they're not even sure what I'm talking about. And even if they weren't sure, there's no even like thought process as to how to implement that. They haven't even thought of like, how would I even wrap my head around that? So are these similar questions that you get when you talk about subscriptions? It's like, where do Where does my brain even begin?

Speaker 2 2:39 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned autoship. A lot of people don't know that they think of it as subscribing say. But it's funny because we actually have a plugin called auto ship cloud. So we're very much like it's a replenishment thing. I think what's exciting too about it is the, there's so many different software that are innovating in the space, trying to make the customer experience like more powerful and more engaging. So it used to be, you know, even just like a year, year and a half ago, you'd have a subscription, and you were kind of just stuck on whatever schedule, the brand would put it on, right. If you were monthly, you kind of just would get it when you get it. And so there wasn't like a lot of timing involved. And it was really best for stuff that you wouldn't be maybe too upset if you're run out of, but the space is advancing so that you have a lot more control. And you can time things and have more personalized usage. So it's like, we might both subscribe to the same protein powder, but you work out twice as much as I do. So you go through it faster. So you're getting a bag every three weeks, and I'm getting a bag every six weeks. It's really easy to like personalize that teach each individual. And that's what I think is really exciting about it. So but yeah, there's a lot of questions related to like, what software should I use? How do I implement this? What do people care about? It's, it's, it's really common people trying to figure that out?

Robert Plank 3:46 And is the answer is your software? Is that the easy solution?

Speaker 2 3:50 For some situations? I mean, there's certainly depends on what you're offering, right like, and depending on the platform you're using, you're selling on, there's a lot of options out there. So for us, we do really well with logistic logistical oriented subscription businesses, so if like something that's changing, maybe an address, the amount, things like that we're really dynamic and work well. But you know, there's a lot of great apps on Shopify, for example, that are worth taking a look at it.

Robert Plank 4:13 And so this is an interesting idea that we're mentioning here is just kind of the ability to, to personalize the frequency. And, and this is the kind of thing we're like, you know, even if years ago, I wouldn't even have thought to provide that sort of thing. I just think like, Okay, I'll, I'll set up my shopping cart, it'll bill the same day of the month that they initially join. But then it's it seems like I've been having just more and more of these conversations, like someone was about to buy something the other day and they were like, well, will I get billed on the first of the month? Or will I get billed every like 30 days or 31 days? And so it's cool to think that okay, like you can like get the protein powder and say and even like you know, have some kind of a calculator or some kind of questionnaire and be like I work out this soften. And that means I get this many dosages, and this is how I should get it this week. So I kind of I like this idea of just like right off the bat, if someone says, I want to up my game, as far as the the personalization or the, the, I keep wanting to say autoship. But you know, the retention, the subscription, then they could like, even just try out a few of these different options just to kind of make it that much more dynamic, just just to begin with.

Speaker 2 5:27 Yeah, and you mentioned it like a great example. So the idea that people can personalize more about what they want, or they get, it's great for retention, meaning you're gonna keep people around longer, they're more profitable. But from an acquisition standpoint, a marketing standpoint, getting somebody to fill out a quiz to tell you about their goals, and what you care what they care about, and what they're willing to invest time or money in. It's an amazing acquisition strategy as well. So it's like, you're going to tell me your goals, your workout goals, I'm going to recommend product to you, you're gonna get the product on the frequency that works for those goals. And now we're having a conversation so that when I want to check in with you and say is the brand, how's it going? Do you want to try something else do you want to try add this to your order? Now, you've already started that conversation with them about how you're this resource for them on that on that type of item and that outcome. So it's, it's a great marketing strategy as well.

Robert Plank 6:15 And it's a great way to to have fun with the data. Because, again, you're making me think back to like, maybe even, I think maybe like 20 years ago, some guy said, well, at least like say you're selling only digital products, at least capture a mailing address at least asker. Even if you don't think you'll use it right away, at least start getting that and like, you know, phone number and things like that. And then when you're getting into the quizzes and these data points, you start to think like, you know, even if you don't yet know how you use the data a year from now, at least start like figuring out some of these questions. Because when you have all these, you know, all the data points, and all these people that you can kind of play around with, then you can be like, well, with everyone who answered this for question number three on the quiz, maybe we will try out this new product that, you know, as an add on or something like that.

Speaker 2 7:05 Yeah, exactly. And then you can get even more specific where you're, you're talking about, like understanding an outcome or a goal. So one of the biggest tips I give to anybody trying to scale a subscription program is go a little bit deeper on the why that people are subscribing. So it's like, you know, and when you start to get into that kind of that kind of data, and then you tie that into reasons why people don't make it, it really gives you some key insights. So for example, like, you know, protein powder, if somebody's saying like, Hey, I've got some big workout goals, you know, maybe it's pre summer, I'm trying to get in shape or something like that. And then when they churn, it's like, well, I just didn't use it enough. So now I know, as a marketer, if I'm getting more and more of these answers of people that are having these aspirational goals, but then they're also not making them. To me that just screamed as a marketer, there's an opportunity to add like content, or a coaching service or a group in there to not only make it so that they use the product more, but I can charge them more for that. It's like if you have an aspirational goal, would you be interested in not just taking this product, but being in a support group with other people that are trying to do the same thing. And now I've got a community of people that are all trying to do that they're all in a subscription. And they're all helping you to enable and engage people to stay on the product and stay on a subscription model.

Robert Plank 8:16 I like that. So it's like you're having you're just like getting more the deep thoughts that your business deserves. And it's really easy to say, I've got this product, and it's this price. And my and my only goal is just to make some dang sales. But like when you're doing this kind of back and forth conversation you're talking about you think about the micro commitments, and the reason why they're buying in the first place. And then it's like, by figuring out, like you said, Where's the bottleneck? Where did they get stuck? And then how what can I add in there to kind of get them to other goal, it's like some of these other offers in your business by might just reveal themselves just from you going through this process. Exactly. Exactly. Well, cool. We were talking about some possibilities and some funny ideas. But as you know, Matt, the catastrophic failures, the mistakes are always the most fun, right? Because that's like, what to stay away from. And sometimes it's really scary, but you can laugh at yourself and in the past. So do you have any? Do you know of any common mistakes that brands make with their subscription services that we can maybe snicker at slightly, but for the purposes of saying let's not repeat that mistake? Yeah, I

Speaker 2 9:23 think one of the really common ones is like the idea of it can be really appealing to a board or your CFO to enable subscriptions because the recurring revenue is predictable, and you can plan against it. So when you get a top down directive to enable subscriptions, it needs to be a little bit more specific than that and why. So a funny story is like, you know, last year, I believe it was BMW that rolled out a subscription to the heated car seats. So the car was getting delivered with the heating component in the seat. And if you wanted to access that part of the technology, you had to subscribe. Now I I'm not part of their data team, I can't tell you. So, you know, this is certainly just a thing to snicker at. I wonder how much utility they how much insider research they really did and trying to uncover the what would motivate people to want to do that, because it just seems like something to make people mad. So the big mistake was subscriptions is you just start offering something without actually getting into some of the data, what are your customers asking for? What actually adds real value? Right? Like, if I'm a BMW fan, I don't want to pay a subscription for a seat warmer. That's ridiculous. Why don't you charge me a subscription. So I can talk to like a racecar driver that drives BMW, and gives me cornering tips, right? Like I would pay for, like, you know what I mean? So it's like thinking about what your customers actually want, and getting into there. And so if it's like, you know, something simple, you're selling a physical good, and you want there to be an auto ship option, then cool, you're gonna give a little bit of discount, start rolling that out and start collecting data. That's, that's really what you should be doing without getting too complicated around crafting some really either complex experience that's not backed by data or, or just coming up with some random idea to see if it works. But anyway,

Robert Plank 11:05 yeah, I remember that. But I also forgot it. And when that happened, it was just kind of like a, like, bad, bad PR. And like you said, who knows, if they like ran the numbers. And they figured that, well, we know that, you know, this percent of people will use it, and they'll pay that to even if that's true, it just seems like really like bad PR all around, to have some kind of an add on like that. And like you reminded me of, like, it used to be, if you bought an ebook or software from some of these platforms, they would say like, okay, you can buy it right now for like, you know, $5 and download it. But if you want us to, like store a backup of the product you just bought for a year, it's like another like $10. And unlike. So does that mean, if I come back, and I need to get my download, I can't, because I didn't pay this weird extra fee for you to store the thing for me, like, sometimes it just kind of like, hurts the brain. And that sort of, you know, and that sort of situation. And so you have this software, you've seen all these things you've seen what to do and what not to do. Do you have any fun stories to share with us about some of these companies that like use your software and use some of your advice? Because that's always cool, right? The the real down in the trenches down and dirty stuff?

Speaker 2 12:18 Yeah, absolutely. I think one example I really love sharing is a pet food company called I heart dogs, they have a great mission, because they typically will donate a percentage of their sales to feeding shelter pets. So they are mission driven brand that's got some great product that they're giving to people. So one thing they were doing, they were running with us for about two years, and just kind of running a baseline not really investing in the program doing too much. But they were collecting data. And so one of the things we're able to help them with is unlocking that data and seeing some of those insights. And one of the things they were able to uncover is like most the number one reason most people cancel across the subscription space is typically I have too much product. Now, the why behind that, though, is different for every brand. And when I talked to a lot of brands, that's generally what I say is what's the why now let's let's ask why, again, why again, why again, and so for them, one of the reasons people had too much the main reason they were able to uncover why people had too much product was dogs come in different sizes, they weren't sure how much to order initially. And then there's then they're left with this kind of like trying to, how should I move it up? Should I move it back, they end up with too much food. So they went back and they redesign their product page. And their product page now had these options where you pick the size of your dog. And if you can go to their website right now I heard dogs.com, you can see this, it's beautiful marketing example. Now depending on what size dog you have, it pre selects the amount of product you should order and on the frequency you should have, and on the subscription option. So they essentially doubled their conversion with this and their retention, the same thing. So their sales, their subscription, sales skyrocketed, because they now had a program that was more connected with what their consumers needed. And that's kind of what I was saying about the mistake is if you start doing that, oh, I'm going to craft this product page, and it's gonna have this and all this stuff tied together. You don't really know that's the reason why people would stay or go like it's a good idea. But once you start running it, you start to uncover these reasons, and then you craft a better experience your craft better experience. And so that's a fun one that I like to share, because it just shows how you can pay attention and learn more about the reasons why customers are having problems and then you can go back and fix it. And it affects both acquisition and retention at the same time.

Robert Plank 14:27 Having that conversation that you're talking about, like iterating. So knowing that you you might say like, Okay, I want to do the do a subscription and I want to have some kind of like a quiz, you know, dog food or any other subject but I want to have this quiz to personalize it. And it's really easy to self sabotage and give up before you start and say I don't even know what this will look like. Or you might make take a stab at it and say let me just try it and see how it comes out. But what you're saying is that it might take a few go arounds right and like you you'd say, well, I'm going to lay it out this way. And we'll see how that catches on. And maybe it's almost a fit, but we'll change it. And we'll change it. And then eventually, we'll kind of figure out number one, how to get through all those wires you mentioned, like, you know, what, why are you? Why is this just subscription not working out? And why is that? And why is that, but then also how to make it look simple, right? How to have a good interface. So that way, it makes sense to someone, and then you don't have to think too much about, okay, my dog is this size. And based on that, then your packages should be this amount per time in this frequency. And so that kind of that's like the the cheat in a way. But it kind of gets us there, right? Just knowing that, okay, we need to take some action, take a stab at it, get something online, and then kind of just keep on revisiting so that we avoid the BMW mistake of just saying like, Oh, let's throw something in there. Instead, you're, you're just kind of doing the iHeart dogs thing. You're just like adjusting it every time that you're that you feel like improving it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, super cool. So we've discussed all these sorts of ideas all around the map. And now it is it is selling time. So sorta but in a good way, right? We want to find out about what you have going on about your platforms and your services. So what do you have for us? If someone says, you know, I've gotten this far in the conversation, I like these ideas for some of these subscription things. I want to apply that for my company. So how does someone know if their company is a good fit for what you provide? And what do you provide?

Speaker 2 16:32 Yeah, first of all, I'd say regardless of what software you're using, or whatever you're doing, if you're doing subscriptions in the physical goods space, you should subscribe to my newsletter subscription prescription, it's weekly dropped tips like that conversion, retention, getting into all those things. So that's definitely worth taking a look at. For for cube pilot itself. It we're a software that does a few things really, really well. So we do some things around programmatic subscriptions, meaning you're sending up product A and month one and product B, and month two, and product C and month three. So things that need to dynamically change on the back end. We also do really well with people that have shipping considerations. So if you're doing wholesale, or if you're doing something where orders are changing, and you're you're eating the cost of shipping, or trying to figure that out, we're really great solution to look to. So we'd like to say we're the more flexible platform. So anything about our subscription order with our platform can change. So we're definitely worth a look in if you're falling into those use cases. If also, if you're on WooCommerce. As opposed to Shopify, you should definitely be looking at us because I know the options there are pretty limited compared comparatively. Shopify, there's a lot of different options. So it just kind of depends on on what kind of pain points you're seeing. So if you have questions or want to know anything about that, I'm always available. And I feel like I'm probably maybe more objective. But obviously, I'm certainly biased towards cube pilot, but I can help people figure out whether they really need a software change or whether they really just need to fix something in their process, because they're not always the same thing.

Robert Plank 17:56 Right. And this is great that our conversation, we stayed away from all the techie stuff, right? We stayed away from going down the rabbit hole, you were just saying, you know, here's some ideas, here's kind of the high level concepts. And here's what is simple and make sense and will will enable your company to just get it done to just solve your problem. That way you can get to tweaking and looking at the numbers, whether you're like sending those physical products, Shopify e commerce, you said that the the website is Q pilot dot cloud, and the newsletter is subscription and prescription. So how do we find that newsletter? What's the address?

Speaker 2 18:35 Yeah, if you actually the best way is to look me up on LinkedIn, Matthew Holman, Q pilot on LinkedIn, and I've got a link to that. Because otherwise, the link is kind of long. It's like content dot this stuff. Otherwise, you can actually Google subscription prescription and Oh, come on. But that's probably the best way you can look at cute pilot dot cloud, we actually have a new site up at q pilot.com. As well, that's a little bit more just user friendly. The Cube pilot dot cloud one's got a bunch of technical stuff on it. So but anyway, yeah,

Robert Plank 19:02 well, you're all about personalization, right? So if you say, hit me with a technical stuff, cube pilot dot cloud, but you say, just make it simple for me as a business owner, shoe pilot.com. And as you know, Matthew, the people are up matters, right? It's easy to get stuck in the cloud computing and say, I've got this platform in this programming and you know, the servers, but the people are what it's all about, right? The people with the companies and the people who are the customers, these companies are helping so it makes sense to reach out on LinkedIn that way someone can, can connect with you there and they can follow you and they can see what it is that you're posting and they can message you directly. So that's Matthew Holman on LinkedIn and we'll spell it out that's m a t t h e w, last name, h o l m a n from copilot or Q pilot. Tell them our uplink sent you and that way you'll kind of enjoy the subscription advice Matthew can can drip out on you. And that way, this will be the kind of thing that's always fresh on your mind. Because in the same way, you don't want to overload someone with a whole case of protein powder, you want to just use them as a use. You don't want to overload your brain cells with all the possibilities that your company could do. So this is Matthew, doing the subscription model on the advice for your business. So add Matthew Holman on LinkedIn, and go to que pilot.com. And as we're wrapping up our conversation here, Matthew, do you have any final parting words or advice like a quote you like or advice you wish you got 20 years ago? Anything coming to mind as far as like wrapping up our whole conversation?

Speaker 2 20:38 Yeah, I think it's always really important to focus on what's actually starting to work. So I think as a marketer, we often start to chase a lot of the different ideas that we could be doing and could be trying and for me, the best advice I ever got was just keep focusing on the things that are working and making those better and better, and then you can start to figure out adding other things.

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