Dose #84: How Tanking Improves Retention

Matt here with your weekly Subscription Prescription 💊

This week’s dose is all about what you can learn from Battlbox, a successful subscription box company started in 2015. We get into offers they’ve tested, content, the buying process, retention strategies (tanks!), and secrets from a LIVE site teardown with their CEO.

How much time do you spend poring over subscription data?

How do you know what data to pay attention to?

Would you use a system that lets you ask questions, and get data-backed answers as responses?

On December 20th, I’m teaming up with a new AI tool called Magic Dash to do this very thing. I’m doing LIVE subscription audits with AI to find what ails your program.

Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to learn more about what you should pay attention to on subscriptions and how AI can help get you there faster.

This week’s dose is a full interview you can find on YouTube: https://youtu.be/W0piuVkjZcc

Founded in 2015, BattlBox is an incredibly successful subscription box brand catering to those that love the outdoors. Interviewing their CEO and cofounder John Roman revealed some incredible insights you should test out on your brand. From great content to shooting tanks, these guys definitely know how to hit the mark.

Counter-intuitive Offer

They launched with 4 boxes. The options haven’t changed - you can see them here:

Can you guess which one was the most popular when they launched? Surprisingly, it was the Pro Plus box - the most expensive - that took in nearly 35% of their initial signups. Today it makes up 50% of their subscribers!

This is strong reminder that you don’t know what people are willing to pay for without throwing the offer out there. Don’t be afraid to offer something more - without discounting - to see how it goes.

BattlBox has a sophisticated method for getting people to upgrade. No, it isn’t big discounts or incentives. Instead, they show each and every member (every month) what each box received.

They put an in-depth booklet into each box highlighting the products. They release a lengthy unboxing video highlighting the products too. So even if you’re on the basic box, you see what was in the higher ones. FOMO is real folks.
On top of that, they only send Pro Plus boxes to influencers, so that content highlights the best of the best as well.

Two key takeaways from this: first, show people what they’re getting and what they’re missing out. Even if you sell a stand-alone product, you can make content that shows outcomes that are special. Even better if you can show bundles of products together. Second, test offers. You never know what you’ll uncover!

Content That Crushes

About 50% of BattlBoxes customers spend 3-6 months evaluating the subscription. It’s a commitment, and content matters a great deal for their brand.

First, every previous box can be viewed on the site. This way customers can evaluate what they would have gotten in the past, which makes the commitment easier.

Second, they have incredible content from influencers and the brand itself. They have a Netflix series too, but since that isn’t attainable for most brands, lets stick to the more typical content formats.

I love their TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@battlbox

One of their employees, Brandon Currin, actually started out by just making content about the box (and he was paying for the box). But the content converted so well, John and his team had to find out who Brandon was.

First they gave him a box for free each time, then started paying him, then brought him on full-time. They leaned hard into a channel that converted for them!

Strong brands make a lot of content. It takes time to start and do well, but it is a process where you learn constantly about what converts and resonates with your audience. Focus on one channel, and another for any ads you run, and go from there!

Tanking on Retention

I’m not kidding. They had customers shooting from a tank (see the video).

As the anniversary for their 100th box approached, they wanted to do something different. Something special, and on-brand. They heard about an experience you could pay for - shooting tanks - and decided to offer that to customers.

The kicker? They didn’t advertise about it to get new ones. Instead, they locked in existing customers as the only ones who could win. 100% retention play. They just wanted to increase the value of the subscription dramatically.

So they went Willie Wonka style and made some golden tickets. Totally surprised and treated some of their customers. The three months leading up the event gave them even better than normal retention numbers.

BattlBox regularly focuses on demonstrating the value of their subscription, from content and unboxing, to amazing giveaways like this one. What could you put in your next shipments to remind people the value they get?

One More Retention Hack

One thing John told me that I think is a textbook retention play for subscriptions came down to paying attention to the life of a subscription. They noticed that at 2 points they saw a little dip in the subscription lifecycle. They wanted to get in front of that, and started sending people an email ahead of those points with a discount. Shored up the dip and improved their revenue - even small wins matter at larger scale.

If you want some advice on how to identify that, hit reply and let me know your software and I’ll dive into it for you.

Website Conversion Tips

For this last piece, I have something special for you. John did a live teardown of the BattlBox site, where I asked questions and he answered. There are some golden nuggets here, including their homepage, how offers are structured, customer experience, and what product photos convert the best.

You can see the recording on our new YouTube channel:  https://youtu.be/W0piuVkjZcc?feature=shared&t=2136

That’s it for this week’s dose! If you have a brand you’d like me to interview, just hit reply and let me know!

Stay tuned for Dose #85 next Tuesday!

- Matt Holman 🩺

The Subscription Doc