Eric Berkhinfand (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to episode two of the Metorik Podcast. I'm Eric and today I'm joined by Mike Halligan, co-founder of Scratch, an Australian dog food brand that's built its entire business around subscriptions. Mike, thank you for joining me today.
Mike (00:14)
Hey, how we doing?
Eric Berkhinfand (00:16)
Good, how are you?
Mike (00:17)
I'm good, I'm good.
Eric Berkhinfand (00:18)
Excellent. just a little
summary from Scratch's resume. They've delivered food to over one hundred thousand cute dogs, past thirty million in annual recurring revenue last year, and have been profitable since year two. They're also longtime Metorik customers, so some pretty nice numbers there, Mike.
Mike (00:34)
Yeah, probably like literally month one, I reckon, straight on Metorik. and yeah, the business we've been we've
Eric Berkhinfand (00:39)
Amazing.
Mike (00:40)
been really fortunate. Australia loves the dogs. no shortage of them. We've got more dogs per capita than kind of any country on the earth, I think. and so, you know, we've been lucky to kind of be in a really good category where people care about them so much and they play a really unique role in our homes and lives, and and people care about what what they want to feed them and how they want to live with them. So
we've built a brand for those people and yeah, we've been fortunate to have a little bit of success. It's not like a crazy massive business and we love it that it's not. so yeah, it's been a good ride good ride. I'm excited to talk about some of the things that we've learned are about actually making the business run beyond food.
Eric Berkhinfand (01:15)
Amazing. And and I think like as you said, like you've been Metorik customers from early on, so we've seen the journey. But I think one thing that's obvious is how much attention you've put into the branding and especially when you guys launched, the way that kind of Scratch positioned itself is just so different to all the other classic dog food brands.
Mike (01:35)
Yeah, no, I look, thanks. I I guess from the beginning it w that was that was like a deliberate thing, I guess. you know, branding and the experiences, everything. It's a boring old category. It's easy to it's easy to disengage
Eric Berkhinfand (01:46)
Yeah.
Mike (01:47)
with dog food because if your dog likes it, you know, they're not yeah, that that seems like half the job done. so yeah, branding and branding and the tech behind it made a big was like a big focus early on. So yeah, let's get into it.
Eric Berkhinfand (01:58)
Nice, so I guess to start for listeners outside of Australia who maybe haven't heard of Scratch, do you maybe want to give just a bit more of a rundown kind of of the business, of the ethos, how you guys operate, how big the team is, just yeah, so they can get a bit more of a mental idea.
Mike (02:15)
so we built the business from the get-go to have one to make the best dog food and to two to give back as we did. So we give two percent of all revenue and kind of like those two things, dog health and then whatever business success we're able to make from that, be able to make sure that we're kind of giving back along the way has been just like central to our ethos. Day one. We've never wanted to be the big business the biggest business in the category. We think that sounds pretty awful. So
A lot of the decisions we've made, whether it's product line, whether it's the fact that we're still eight years in and D2C only and subscription only, like a lot of that has been built around this ethos of like being able to put dogs first, not having an overcomplicated business, not trying to be the best and do absolutely every idea under the sun or every channel or every, you know, whatever. and so that's kind of how we've operated the business. And that's kind of led us to, I guess we started with kibble. We wanted to make the best dry food possible.
the big retailers in Australia who dominated, you know, I guess much like around the world, every dog food was just sold at retail. And I knew the prices the stores were buying food for and what they were selling it for. And it was like it was like unbelievable to actually think about you know, how much it cost to actually make the food, like how many corners are cut to be able to, you know, like have the stores make their margin, the brands make their margin, everyone, you know, distributors make their margin, all everything, you know, all the business along the way. and it just seemed wild. So
that kind of pricked my ears up as I actually had two sick dogs at the time. so it was it's just, I don't know, just one of those really unfortunate things, but something good came out of it. And I just sort of turned my attention to making the best dog food, knowing that, okay, there's this emerging world of D to C of selling direct over the web. Subscription otherwise was like you can sell over the web far more easily. and if we could do that and have like a lot more, you know, all this retail margin
just put that into better ingredients.
And we ended up we made one recipe for the first year and a half. Then we had this crazy idea. We had two recipes.
and so still dry food. Yeah, it's a revolutionary strategy strategy. So I hope everyone's right. I
Eric Berkhinfand (04:06)
Yeah, wow.
Mike (04:11)
hope everyone's writing notes on that one. that carried us through for about four years with two recipes and and we just had like one or two treats along the way. So I guess at four years in, you know, we're a pretty like a very simple, stable business. and we kind of just built that around just an easy model of like good, you know, great suppliers that we have a great relationship with. We just make sure that we have amazing customer service.
efficient marketing and we know the business and how it works, that we are amazing at quality control and making sure the recipes are exactly the same every time. And so everyone buying from us is going to get a consistent thing.
And yeah, we kind of just bit by bit just you know, like our actual growth chart is ridiculous
most brands, you slow, slow, slow, and then it ramps up. Ours are just like consistent, just like the same, you know, like the chart is just so linear, it's ridiculous. which is, I guess, somewhat by design. And but being able to maintain that is something lately is something we're really proud of. But yeah, that's kind of how the the business is run.
We're big enough now that to be able to take some risks. We've always been this bootstrap company. we're really focused. but we think that, you know, there's definitely a trend with people willing to spend a lot more money on their food to be preventive about their dog's health. So we ended up ended up sort of innovating a little bit and made a type of raw food that, you know, doesn't exist in Australia. Didn't until we made it and so we
manufacture that ourselves. We made a kind of a state of the art facility for it. And so now we have raw food, you know, frozen raw food that we ship to the two biggest cities, Melbourne and Sydney. And then we've got dry food, which we ship all around Australia.
Eric Berkhinfand (05:41)
Love it, amazing. It's a it's a really great story. And like if you're listening in from Australia and you've got a dog, there you go. You know, might be time to give Scratch a go.
so I guess talking about subscriptions, we kind of chatted a bit earlier when planning for this.
And I thought that since Mike kind of lives and breathes subscriptions, it would be really interesting for us to focus on that for the kind of main theme of this podcast. But specifically, I guess what subscription brands should be thinking about each stage of the subscription lifecycle. So by that I mean like acquisition, onboarding, renewal and retention, and cancellation and win back.
Because I think they each present different challenges, right? Like
A business could be doing really good on the acquisition and have no problems in kind of getting new customers in the door. But if you're not able to maintain them and you know have them continuously, renew and they're just churning, it's a completely different issue and like vice versa, like a business that like can hold on to customers well but can't get new customers through the door. so yeah, that's gonna be the main theme.
How come you guys chose specifically to only do subscriptions? Like that was really not something that was done in the dog food industry at the at the beginning when you started.
Mike (06:56)
Yeah, no, it wasn't. But it was one of those things that once we thought about it, like it made so much sense that it felt like it would be stupid not to not to only focus on subscription because it was really like I I think a lot of businesses have come to think of subscription as like a billing cycle kind of thing or a way of like locking in a certain amount of revenue
or a multiple or whatever. We just thought about it through a customer standpoint. Buying dog food's annoying. You buy the same thing all the time, dog gets the same amount all the time,
like it's made for subscription.
We actually then kind of built that in to say, like, all right, well, if we know that information, so if we just focus on subscription only, one, we can
just focus all of our energy on customer service and being amazing for our customers instead of win back, here's a sample, email cycles, building funnels, like that kind of stuff. We
just focus our energy on being awesome for the people who expressed interest in wanting it for the first in the first place. and then we could also like take
frequencies and building cycles and stuff like that to better manage our operations and to be able to send you fresher food, I guess, than what you would get in a store. Like again, it was everything's sort of like in many ways, it's being the opposite to a big business retail model where it's just like the food was made months ago for a shelf. They've got no idea what dog it is.
So yeah, it kind of just made sense and we just wanted to be able to like make a better product for everyone and and so now I guess from that, from the beginning, like we sent food that was far fresher than anything that you could get in the store. you didn't, you know, we knew exactly when you would run out. And so we sent it just before that.
Eric Berkhinfand (08:23)
Nice, makes sense. So then let's maybe focus in on I guess acquiring new customers. and we can talk about this in a general sense, but also from from Scratch's perspective. So I think with acquiring new customers with a subscription brand, you're willing to pay a little bit more than a one-off brand to acquire the customer with the hope because the hope is that it's not just gonna be one order, it's gonna be, you know, over a longer period of time. So
My question would be, how do you attract subscribers, you know, that are gonna be long term customers and stick around and not just purchase and then churn after a month or so?
Mike (09:00)
That is a r that's a really good question. It's even relevant now to us, you know, in different levels of scale or scaling further. So a lot of it is about finding customers with suitable intent. Like they wanted to succeed. They're not just like wanting to window shop and just like buy something different.
Eric Berkhinfand (09:13)
Mm. Mm. Yeah.
Mike (09:17)
So we've never all the like let's say if you're desperate for a sales, like if you're a brand desperate for a sale, desperate to get a new dog trying your food, the things you could do are very different from if you are desperate.
for a healthy customer who's there after a year and LTV. Like the just the mindset is very different. So we've never
promoted sample packs as our like ads, for instance. You know, like our entry point is basically being like, hey, here's our food. We're gonna focus on communicating it so clearly and confidently and making an amazing product that you want to buy it and that you're and we we're not really wanting to worry about tyre kickers in a sense.
So if you want a sample pack, yes, you can have a sample pack, but it won't be in the you won't find it in the ads, you won't find it in the menus. You'll have to ask our customer service team and then and then we'll give
you one. if you want a discount, look, sorry, that's not us. We just focus on kind of like making the best quality food all the time. So we sort of have never really
done the activities that the, I guess, like acquisition, growth focused teams would do. yeah,
Eric Berkhinfand (10:19)
Would be doing. Yeah.
Mike (10:21)
and and even now, if we even play around the edges of of
offers like on our raw food for instance, we sell we sell it in multiples of three because you you know, it's like just the the size of the bags we ended up doing and and everything like that. But you know, it has to go in the freezer. So for some people that's a that's a potential barrier. We made a a Facebook
offer recently about like two bags for ninety nine dollars. So essentially it's like almost almost similar to the same price per bag, but just you got two of them instead of three.
we ended up getting completely different type of customer with that offer.
Because it was just
a lower dollar value, there was just more people like, I'll just try something new. Not just like I want to get the best thing for my dog
So we see like vastly different retentions in those two things, like a normal food compared to just trying. Like for our version, it's a it's not even really cheaper. It's just you know getting less and you're paying less. and it's like the same value,
but it's just like it's a different entry point. And that entry point alone.
it was very different. So let alone you imagine most of the brands are like, all right, fifty percent off your first order and then you move to this price and whatever. And so that's kind of meant majority of also our hiring has meant that it's kind of like centered around that. Our hiring has mainly been customer
service. We've never had a retention person. You know, where you know, whatever,
you know, a thirty million a year
subscription business and we don't have a retention person. we don't really have like
we can talk about winback We don't really do any effort on on winback We know
never really have, really. we've
Got a lot of
thinking I can share about it. but there's like an activity and a focus of the business. It's not really one. So we just focused
on almost like confidently being ourselves and communicating our product
and finding people who the product is a genuinely amazing fit for and that they want to
succeed on it and the product is should be well matched to them succeeding. and then that's kind of informed so much about how how the business is run. It and is meant, look, it's meant that, you know, like
we've got less levers to pull on in getting a new customer in. But it's meant we've had to
be really, really good and focused and disciplined at at finding high trust people who want to succeed and want to be and are more likely to be around after three years, let alone, you know, one or two.
Eric Berkhinfand (12:29)
Yeah, super interesting. And I guess, yeah, talking about the price, if you le I guess if if the main thing you're leading with on your marketing is the price, you're gonna attract a customer, that's thinking about price. But if you're leading with, you know, the benefits of the product and the price is almost of course it needs to be priced in a way which people be be like, okay, that's worth the money, but the price is almost like it's like, yeah, that that sounds good 'cause I'm already sold on what you guys are offering
Mike (12:55)
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. I think you can apply that same thinking to, you know, a
lot of things that
Eric Berkhinfand (12:59)
Yeah.
Mike (12:59)
are driven by offers and
Eric Berkhinfand (13:01)
Yeah.
Mike (13:02)
yeah, offers and sampling and stuff like that. I mean, look, it comes from a little bit of insecurity and probably a little bit of like wanting to just get people through the door and just backing ourselves. Like it's just a mindset
Eric Berkhinfand (13:11)
Mm.
Mike (13:12)
shift of like wide funnel and we'll convert we'll lose lots and we'll convert lots
Eric Berkhinfand (13:16)
Yeah.
Mike (13:16)
of those and that's where we'll spend our energy. But yeah, I guess we were just retention focused. Cause I guess in the business of dog food.
Like it's all L T V. It's all about, you know, especially that was
Eric Berkhinfand (13:24)
Yeah, exactly.
Mike (13:25)
before we even scaled to pa scale to paid advertising where, you know, like
Eric Berkhinfand (13:28)
Mm, mm-hmm.
Mike (13:29)
we're losing money on the first order. you know, we're we're under and we need you to r you come back multiple times until we're, you know, me meaningfully profitable or worth worth actually, you know, advertising. So,
Eric Berkhinfand (13:41)
Yeah.
Mike (13:42)
yeah.
Eric Berkhinfand (13:42)
it is like that kind of thinking, which is you guys not discounting much, nor really offering samples or anything like that, is really contrary to I think a lot of the talk that's going on in I guess the subscription industry now. the goal it's always like, you know, discount early, get them in the door, and then hopefully, hopefully if the product does
still speak for itself, maybe they might kinda continue, but I mean this this just feels like a bit of a different a different kind of mentality. Maybe it's because in I I don't know what what you think, but maybe you're protected in a sense because it's dogs, so maybe people are less likely to switch off or may or maybe you've seen that people will switch regardless.
Mike (14:23)
Maybe, like all that competitors
who are subscription businesses still do the like the you know, fifty percent off the first box and you got thirty percent off the next one and then you'll go to like full price. We just kind
Eric Berkhinfand (14:33)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike (14:33)
of start like, hey, up front, this is the price, this is the product. We'll remove all the distractions. I mean, like every
Eric Berkhinfand (14:37)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (14:39)
to me, like every opportunity where you're talking about something else other than how good the product is or could be for what what solution, what like what problem they've got or how they want to see their life, like
The moment I'm talking about sample packs, I'm not really talking like I'm talking about like risk avoidance, not meaning meaning something and communicating like something
Eric Berkhinfand (14:59)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Mike (15:02)
you could appreciate. And dog food's really tricky because y all you've got is like what we say about it, and your dog's initial reaction. But you know, like if a food's not good for a dog, that'll come out in their health in six months, nine months' time. I need you to learn that now so you, you know, don't make that mistake of choosing the wrong food in six or nine months or not choosing scratch.
you know, in ending up in that s
Eric Berkhinfand (15:23)
Mm.
Mike (15:23)
situation are really needing is in six or nine months, if that makes sense.
Eric Berkhinfand (15:27)
And then in terms of the acquisition channels for you guys, what have you found maybe to be really effective early on? What about now? Has the has the strategy changed?
Mike (15:38)
Yeah, definitely. Look early on, a lot was built from a lot was built from organic word of mouth, really. and Instagram because we did try to make packaging for, you know, an era where people actually did share their lives still on Instagram. and they did take photos, you know, especially with photos of brands. Like
Eric Berkhinfand (15:51)
No Yeah, yeah.
Mike (15:55)
people shared photos of their dog with their box of scratch. And look, that still happens, but as a percentage of customers, it's very low now compared to like what it was when we started.
Eric Berkhinfand (16:02)
Yeah.
Mike (16:04)
People proudly said, Hey,
Eric Berkhinfand (16:05)
Yeah.
Mike (16:05)
I've invested in I've learned about this new thing, I've invested in it, and it looks bloody good. And here's my dog with it. And look how cute my dog is with Ed Yo food. And
Eric Berkhinfand (16:10)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (16:12)
by the way, they love it. and so that happened a lot early days. And then there were Facebook groups, you know, because it was like a you know, an industry that hadn't really changed much and had new entrant entrants in a while, and all of a sudden we're making a really good product
Eric Berkhinfand (16:23)
Mm.
Mike (16:24)
with much better design. There was subscription and so people were like, you know, it was a lot more amazing than like, you know, online was still pretty novel for online only.
Eric Berkhinfand (16:32)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (16:33)
businesses like us. then
Eric Berkhinfand (16:34)
Mm-hmm. Definitely.
Mike (16:36)
probably around years two to five, more events came into that and kind of like trying to build a brand offline. A lot of it was like, you know, whether it's online community or offline community, a lot was centered around just showing up, building trust. So a lot of our focus early on was like build trust, which you know, you could probably
Eric Berkhinfand (16:54)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (16:55)
put the way that we viewed subscription versus discounting and one offs and samples and everything through this like build trust, cut through, build a great relationship with great people.
And then from that knowing that one day with a bedrock of real trust from a audience and community and a subscriber base that we'd have the we'd have the ability to branch out and to do other things because there was like this like people had our back and were vouching for us and it wasn't just like we're
we as we got bigger, it didn't, you know, people didn't think, you guys are sold out you now doing Facebook ads or whatever. It was like, no, these guys are awesome, we've been with them for ages, kind of thing. And we kind of wanted that. We also thought we had a bit of a head start.
we thought we were early in the pet food space. so we were like,
all right, let's do the hard thing and do events and build community. We don't have to run out and do Facebook ads and stuff like that. So we really didn't do any Facebook advertising for probably the first four or five years. And then slowly that's kind of built up to a bigger part of our business now, pretty significant part of our business where how do you get the scale of customers these days, thousands of customers a month
without doing Facebook advertising is really, really tricky. And you know, being an o online only D to C company.
so yeah, we do that. like we don't do affiliates networks and you know, all that other stuff. We don't have a PR person that goes out and does that. Like Facebook and word of mouth are kind of our two biggest things these days. And we do a bit of like
Eric Berkhinfand (18:15)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (18:15)
T V advertising every now and then just to play around with whether that's the right move.
Eric Berkhinfand (18:18)
Yeah, sometimes I s
sometimes I'll see a scratch ad, yeah. Yeah.
Mike (18:21)
Yeah, a bit of YouTube as well. So but like a lot of our effort is on organic content and Facebook. and look I'd say early days we did a lot of it a lot of SEO as well. But that's basically useless now.
Eric Berkhinfand (18:32)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Do you think if you were starting Scratch today, you know, the landscape is quite different, so maybe the way you you maybe would just jump straight into Facebook and meta ads probably earlier on.
Mike (18:48)
that's a really good question. I would definitely do them early on, but as for message testing as much as anything else, what resonates with people?
Eric Berkhinfand (18:55)
Mm.
Mike (18:55)
What is the market after? Like i if you come from
Eric Berkhinfand (18:57)
Mm.
Mike (18:58)
the pet food space already or selling pet food, let's say, not making it, you might already have
Eric Berkhinfand (19:01)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mike (19:03)
a really good insight into the customer and what they're thinking and what they're after, and what are the little niches that you can target? But I would, you know, if I was starting now, I'd build out from a small niche, serve a bunch of people really, really well. is it a community that have health issues and, you know,
have health issues and just like foods, no brand paying that health issue attention. is it rural customers who all the you know feel ignored or they're not getting a good deal or like they just want to be in the phone
Eric Berkhinfand (19:28)
Mm, mm, mm.
Mike (19:29)
and all these new companies are just online only or you know, whatever it is. Like find like a little pocket and then you build out from that. Like, you know, build out
Eric Berkhinfand (19:32)
Yeah, yeah. With chatbots. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Mike (19:36)
from that. get it. So that's that's how I would do it. But I'd I just mainly focus on early on on and recommend anyone, regardless of what category or what you're doing, just stay
close to the customer in the first year or two in particular. I mean always if you can. But when you're trying to get off the ground and make it for the first year or two, just do whatever you can to learn off the customer. so Facebook ads are really useful for that. If you're well funded, you know I mean it depends depends on your economic model and how ambitious you are and everything like that too, right? if you're ambitious, like Facebook ads, you could spin up your pixel and some ads now and make you know be making plenty of sales by by next week.
you know, for a brand new business, which are pretty incredible, like absolutely incredible, whether you know, you're whether you whether your products and your ops is dialed in or whether your messaging's good and your ad cost is sustainable and you know, there's a million other questions that go in part of the journey of running a business. But yeah, it's I'd anything that that keeps you close to learning from the customer early on, that's what I'd focus on.
Eric Berkhinfand (20:32)
Very nice, nice. Good good advice there. I also wanted to ask about your pre-sales quiz that you guys have on the website. I know that's been on there from maybe day one, like right from the beginning.
Mike (20:44)
Yeah, day one, yeah. Yeah.
Eric Berkhinfand (20:46)
Yeah, so for for just some context, it basically steps you someone who's landed on the website when they kind of go to get started, it steps them through a bunch of questions about their dog, the breed, how old it is, any health conditions, and based on that it will kind of
dynamically create like the recommended product, whether it's a mix of raw or just the kibble and and and and a dynamic billing cycle, like a subscription cycle as well for for the size of that dog. So very, very cool. my question is do you think if if the subscription item that a brand is selling lends itself to that kind of kind of pre-sales quiz, is that something that all brands should have?
Mike (21:25)
Like some things, you know, like if I'm a if I'm like, I don't know, I'm just thinking about hot industry. If I'm selling gummies and you know, gummies and health supplements right now, do you need you know, it's probably optional. Yeah, for example, like people probably
Eric Berkhinfand (21:35)
Got me, yeah, yeah. Cre yeah. Yeah, or like cr cre creatine. Creatine, yeah. Yeah.
Mike (21:41)
shopping at know what creatine is, you probably don't need to give them like, okay, well, I'm trying to.
lose weight or make you know put on gains or if I work out seven times a week or two times a week. Like that's probably just like get out of maybe get
Eric Berkhinfand (21:52)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (21:54)
out of my way and help me help me buy. And then you can add it get extra information post purchase. You know, like because we do both. We like get them in the way in what is rel
Eric Berkhinfand (21:59)
Yeah. I okay.
Mike (22:01)
what is relevant to the subscription and then extra information afterwards. So we collect lots of stuff afterwards that helps us understand
Eric Berkhinfand (22:09)
Mm.
Mike (22:10)
a little bit about our marketing, but like understand the customer, understand what things I've tried before.
Eric Berkhinfand (22:14)
Mm.
Mike (22:15)
at different points we'll try to understand like like one of our questions, like my favorite question now is like what almost made you not buy today? And what made you today the day you did buy? And so like we try to learn every
Eric Berkhinfand (22:28)
Right.
Mike (22:28)
now and then we'll mix up the questions, post position. So you can do like you don't have to do everything up front. you can kind of keep, you know, keep the relationship moving.
Eric Berkhinfand (22:34)
All right, so let's move maybe to onboarding and activation. So you've got the customer, they've placed their first they've placed the order like yay. of course you're sending through the standard transactional emails, so like, you know, order confirmation, pro or processing and then the shipping emails too. What other emails does Scratch send?
at this stage to kind of get the customer excited or or ready for when they receive the box.
Mike (23:02)
So we've got, I guess, two funnels. One's pre-sales. You've entered, you've built a plan, but you haven't purchased, and then there's a certain amount of emails that go for there. And then for people, I guess if we focus on people who've signed up, yeah, with number one, instant kind of welcome email. And kind of lots like if you just kept one email, you flagged it in your inbox, you put it, you put it in a folder instead of just like leaving it kind of like in the in the desert with the rest of your emails, this would be the one.
Eric Berkhinfand (23:24)
Ha ha.
Mike (23:24)
So it's like save this, everything you need to know, kind of thing. then we send, you know,
shipped it's shipped basically and then that's got extra information about like those first moments. And so most things we do
Eric Berkhinfand (23:38)
Mm.
Mike (23:38)
are kind of conditional. Like the completed order with your shipping track tracking, et cetera, is very different from then your next one. and
Eric Berkhinfand (23:46)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (23:48)
one of the things like we actually send a lot of the same things, particularly, you know, if you've been around for years, you get the same email all the time.
We have like a library of eight images, for instance, as our hero images on those emails, and every eighth, it'll just swap you around. So the email seems a little bit different every single time. we
Eric Berkhinfand (24:01)
Mm-hmm. Nice. Mm-hmm.
Mike (24:06)
have I guess I guess if we think about brand new people, they are getting that welcome.
They're getting that first, it's on the way. Okay, this is what you should expect. Just as a reminder, these are the first key things. In the in the order,
Eric Berkhinfand (24:15)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mike (24:19)
there is the welcome guide. So that is kind of like does most of the job of like setting
Eric Berkhinfand (24:23)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (24:24)
them up for success and those for transition guides and things like that. we actually then move to on around 21 days, SMS check-in with them.
Eric Berkhinfand (24:34)
Right, so
so basically after so after the welcome email there's no other emails really that come in until Okay. Cool. Interesting. Yeah.
Mike (24:40)
No. yeah, the so that's
that's the first thing they'll get is a welcome sorry, is a twenty-one day kind of like SMS outreach. And that goes back to
our so that's that outreach is automated and but there's like a team who like know every day we send the SMSs at this time, they're ready to respond. They're ready to like, you know, so
so they respond back and they're all right you're talking for a human from that point. and that
that allows us to flag anything that might be an issue or concern for long-term churn because we don't get really many people churn in the first few weeks. It's only really if like they're anti-subscription and they just like they put up with it, they signed up and they canceled straight away because they're like, hey, all right, my food's in the way and I don't want subscription. Don't you dare charge me. but for majority of people,
it's like that check-in allows us to spot any preventable churn moments and then be able to, you know, care
for them. probably the next email they're getting is maybe a review request.
So like at this point we're
not really really doing too much. We we sort of rely on the product. You know, it's kibble. Most people are used to kibble. You feed it in the bowl, the dog likes it, hopefully, and and we check in if they don't. and I guess a lot of our comms, admittedly too, a lot of our comms just like, Hey, if you got any question anytime, just respond to this email. So everything's like written by a human. So it's like you
Eric Berkhinfand (25:56)
Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mike (25:59)
know that you can always just go back to any email or any comms you got from us and just reply and that'll get back to like we'll get back to you straight away.
Eric Berkhinfand (26:03)
Yeah, and someone will get it. Yeah.
Mike (26:05)
So it we sort of like
Eric Berkhinfand (26:06)
Nice.
Mike (26:06)
don't have as much like, hey, we're checking in moments or like reminder about this or that because it's like, hey, we'll leave you to it and we'll try
Eric Berkhinfand (26:13)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (26:13)
not to be that annoying intrusive brand. But we're here, just shout out if you need this kind of thing. So that's generally like our our tone and the invitation that we put out.
Eric Berkhinfand (26:19)
It's like a less is it's like a
like a much less is more approach, which again I think is completely different and refreshing compared to probably if somebody was looking for advice on subscriptions. That's the opposite. You know, like a lot of people are saying you have to be, like especially after, you know, they make the first order, you need to be in their inbox, you need to be kind of reinforcing the value that they're gonna get from the product. Whereas like really if you have a good product I mean that makes sense if you've just
you know, you've just got the same product as everybody else with just different packaging, you know, then then it g I guess it makes sense. But I guess if you kind of believe in your product being being unique and and really good, which it's clear that you you guys have that conviction, then less is more makes perfect sense.
Mike (27:06)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And especially I think if you consider how many emails the average person might be getting pre-sign up, to then sign up and still be getting lots of emails, actually I think can be like bloody annoying. kind of thing.
Eric Berkhinfand (27:11)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Mike (27:17)
And then look, there might be legitimate cases. So let's say with our raw food, it is a different product, it's a novel format, it's a little bit unfamiliar, no one would have ever fed that type of food before. So there might be like a little bit more like nervousness or trepidation or like questions that
Eric Berkhinfand (27:31)
Mm.
Mike (27:32)
are going through someone's head.
or like the transition period is like double the length, for instance. So we might re
Eric Berkhinfand (27:38)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (27:39)
reach out and just remind you and say, Hey, we know the transition guide is how are you going? We might check in sooner and go, Hey, how are you going with the new food? How are they taking to it? by this point, you should be at this point in transition. Just letting you know we push back your first order because you've got a longer transition period. So nothing's gonna like you're not gonna get, you know, you won't hear from us for a little bit, but
shout out of everything
Eric Berkhinfand (27:58)
Mm mm.
Mike (27:59)
if you need a hand with everything. well for some people it's like there might be a dis
Particular North Star to really get people to.
Eric Berkhinfand (28:06)
Mm.
Mike (28:08)
you know, if it's more of a digital product or or even just like okay, this is a lead, and then we want you to, you know, this is we got you on one building cycle, but now we really want to upgrade you to a quarterly subscription or whatever. Like I understand needs, particularly when people feel early days, people can often feel most amazed by a product. So there is like valid, I still agree with people who have like that really valid cases for like pushing emails and upsells and whatever.
just after these moments
Eric Berkhinfand (28:33)
Mm.
Mike (28:33)
of like, yeah, it works. It's amazing. You know, and that can be a really good
Eric Berkhinfand (28:36)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike (28:36)
thing. But for us, we've got nothing else to push. It's just like, that's the product.
Eric Berkhinfand (28:39)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike (28:40)
And we'll, you know, we'll see you next time this time next month. Or, you know, whatever it might be.
Eric Berkhinfand (28:44)
Yeah, I mean you guys are thinking about such long term kind of retention, you know, like hopefully like, you know, depending on the age of the dog, it could be ten ten plus years, ev even longer. And then do you ever think about changing elements of the flow? Or are you have you guys just kind of settled on this kind of works, no need to or have you experimented to kind of get to this point?
Mike (29:05)
Yeah, we don't change it often. We really don't. onboarding has barely
Eric Berkhinfand (29:08)
Yeah.
Mike (29:08)
ever changed. We added one question at the start of the year, which is kind of us trying to understand where the customer was coming from beyond their dog's details. So mentally where the customer was at or the potential customer was at at that point.
Eric Berkhinfand (29:20)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mike (29:23)
but yeah, we don't change too much. We do we maybe like every two or three years we'll rewrite our email funnels and just say, Hey, do we still think
Eric Berkhinfand (29:29)
Okay. Yeah.
Mike (29:30)
think this is great?
Otherwise, yeah, not so much.
Eric Berkhinfand (29:35)
Nice. And then in terms of packaging, so how important do you think that plays in terms of that wow moment? Do you play with like different inserts or instructions and things like that or a and have you kind of settled on the formula that that works for scratch?
Mike (29:54)
Yeah, so again don't change don't change it. We don't change it too much. Yeah, yeah. Well maybe we're lazy. no, we Yeah, it
Eric Berkhinfand (29:57)
Yeah. We're getting getting a theme. Yeah, we got the theme. Yeah. Yeah yeah. Yeah. Lazy could be good. Nothing wrong with lazy.
Mike (30:06)
could be yeah, look we we did a big change. So we originally had a s a different brand design. well I mean same brand design but different packaging design for the first for the first two and a half years and that was focused around the box and there was this you know it was like a seven and a half kilo at a time format.
And basically there was just a different dog food format. You'd feed out of the box. Like the box would have a bag liner inside it, but it was just a one bag in a box. instead of like a traditional
Eric Berkhinfand (30:28)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Mike (30:30)
dog food, just like single bag, you know, kind of thing. And then our that was too hard actually for our manufacturer to pack at scale as we grew. So unfortunately we had to grow out of that into a traditional kind of like dog food bag.
Eric Berkhinfand (30:42)
Mm.
Mike (30:43)
and then we basically kept that design since, you know, like that's probably like five years now of how that packaging design. same box, same
Eric Berkhinfand (30:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mike (30:51)
bags.
so yeah, if it don't if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Eric Berkhinfand (30:56)
Yeah. Is there anything they get specifically on their first one, like an extra insert or anything like that, or it's just standard from
Mike (31:02)
they get a scoop,
they get a welcome guide, they also get samples of other recipes that they didn't order that match what their dog
Eric Berkhinfand (31:07)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (31:08)
health-wise, we know about their dog. So, you if they're allergic to lamb, we're
Eric Berkhinfand (31:11)
Right.
Mike (31:11)
not going to give them a lamb sample. But if you order,
Eric Berkhinfand (31:13)
Right.
Mike (31:14)
if you order the turkey and your dog's got no issue with any other recipes, we'll give you a sample of the turkey, the kangaroo, and the and the fish recipe. so that and that's again part of churn prevention. It's like, well, if your dog didn't like the one you ordered, at least they can taste the other ones and you can come back to us and say, hey,
Eric Berkhinfand (31:28)
Mm.
Mike (31:29)
my dog didn't actually like this one, but
they really like these ones. We you know, can I swap
Eric Berkhinfand (31:33)
Mm.
Mike (31:33)
it over? And you're like, great. Which is a very different position from like, hey, my dog didn't like the food. what should I do? So,
Eric Berkhinfand (31:39)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike (31:40)
yeah, we found like samples, you know, while it's an investment, you're giving sam free product and samples and that costs money to make and to ship and everything like that, you know, it also helps with churn reduction as well and happier customers.
Eric Berkhinfand (31:51)
that's also some good advice to to brands that if you do have maybe some other SKUs or or potentially like preference, maybe like in the case of like gummies or something like that, you know, if you could have other gummy flavours 'cause the person kinda ordered a gummy, like, this is actually disgusting. But if they had some other flavours they could they could sample, maybe that's a good way to to keep them on board.
Mike (32:14)
Yep, I like that.
Eric Berkhinfand (32:14)
let's maybe move to renewal so like kind of customers have made their first order, they're kind of in in the flow. I guess it's interesting in the case of Scratch, but what does like delaying and pausing subscriptions look like for you and how do you manage that system? I guess dogs have to eat,
so
Maybe the chances of them delaying and pausing, it's more of a timing thing rather than someone being like, I actually just 'cause I could imagine with another brand it's like, I don't want to cancel, but I don't really want this, I'm not really ready to think about it. But like the dog actually needs to eat, so maybe it's a bit of a less of a yeah situation
Mike (32:50)
Yeah, sure.
Eric Berkhinfand (32:51)
for you.
Mike (32:52)
Yeah, look, it's evolved as our as we've got better at or yeah, like we've done we've added more technology layers on top and then we've probably done more in the last year with AI has just made it so much easier to kind of like do fees features that we thought, this would be actually super handy, but we never actually to take wanted to put the time and energy and cost into. so I guess we've always had an account portal. We've never had an app. We've always had just the, you know, your the WooCommerce account page, which we we customized everything within.
woo for an inch of you know, b but within an inch of his life.
Eric Berkhinfand (33:21)
Yeah. I mean I I I think unless
some yeah, if somebody had a magnifying glass, like only then could they tell that your site was probably like a WooCommerce like WordPress site because it is so customized, it looks so
Mike (33:32)
Ha ha ha.
Eric Berkhinfand (33:34)
clean, it's like, yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (33:37)
thank you. Yeah,
a lot of a lot of effort's gone into into every bit of the customer experience. And yeah, especially the account page. So yes, you go you go there,
you can like originally it was just pause, choose the next order date, or cancel. simple things and and and or send ASAP, which is basically just like create another one,
create a renewal right away, and then whatever your building cycle is added that onto the neck and you know, re rescheduled the next one. These days, and we always send email reminders, like seven day email reminders.
At a certain point,
we added in 24 hour email reminders and partly partly because we felt like there were still too many people who kind of like ignored it and then there was like, trying to, you know, if they didn't want it, they weren't ready for it. Can you give me a refund that's already left the
warehouse? You know, like prev just preventing that stuff for us and them. a few years ago we added, you know, so we're obviously we're sending the SMS outreach, but we kind of expanded our website to
Do allow people to also get SMS reminders as well. So now people have like have a
notification pre like a notification preference as part of their account page where they can say, all right, do I want to get email and SMS or you know both 24 hour and seven-day reminders or whatever? So there's like the like, hey, not caught out communication. In those email
reminders, you'll have a button to send an ASAP or to delay it. And if you go to delay it, it opens up that like a modal on your account page with like
Either a calendar, you choose a specific date, or just like a delay seven days, delay 14 days kind of option.
so those those those delay set things. We actually saw lots of people who are go were pausing all the time because we didn't have a like a just just push it back a certain day. Like you either
made the mental gymnastics of choosing, hey, choose a new date, or you just went,
okay, just stop for the moment. And so we
massively reduced the amount of people who just went on hold and many of which forgot to
renew and like shit I'm running out of food I gotta go to the store and then we they might have broken the cycle and we might have lost them. So we ended
up making a delay button, which gets used a lot.
like like we it was like a third of our customers used a delay last month. So it's quite it happens quite a lot. particularly over school holidays, stuff like that where people are changing routines and dog might be going to
a boarding place or they'll go elsewhere and forget to bring the
food or not have enough room in the car and buy something at the shops or whatever. So
yeah,
these days that flexibility, but like with a really natural user interface, plays a big role. And look, our order reminders are also a big upsell tool for us because they we never really focus on we don't release too many treats and accessories and things like that. But every reminder is like, click here to add this, click here to add this, and like one click adds it to your subscription if you logged in to your next order and then automatically removes it from the from it after order goes through. So it's kind of like a one time upsell.
that will not isn't isn't
Eric Berkhinfand (36:32)
Mm, mm.
Mike (36:33)
a permanent thing. It's just like a low friction. Hey, you need some dog treats? Choose from these ones, kind of thing. And so we get a lot
Eric Berkhinfand (36:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mike (36:39)
of, you know, a lot of our treats sold are from that kind of order reminders as well. So they both serve, I guess they serve a dual role.
Eric Berkhinfand (36:46)
Mm mm, super interesting. cool. All right, so that has been kind of instrumental for you guys then to kind of have that that delay function.
Mike (36:56)
Yeah, look, I don't know about instrument look, it it's it's yeah, it's definitely it's definitely helped. Yeah, it's definitely helped.
Eric Berkhinfand (36:59)
Not instrumental, but I guess it was a third, yeah. Yeah.
Mike (37:04)
And it's like one of those one of those features that it's just so cust like pro customer, but also pro kind of pro business. They're only doing this because they can't find what they're really after, which is to like, hey, I'm not ready for more, but I'll be ready in a week or two. and like making
Eric Berkhinfand (37:18)
Nice.
Mike (37:18)
a feature for specifically that mindset. it was like, why why didn't we do this earlier? you know, ultimately
Eric Berkhinfand (37:24)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (37:25)
it's just like
another friction point removed where enough of those people would have dropped off and then it makes a difference and becomes really annoying over time. where they didn't you know, they're probably liking the food. They just, you know, had no r yeah, they just there was no other clear option.
Eric Berkhinfand (37:39)
have you guys kind of ever experimented with offering kind of sales at all, like to existing customers or like pushing some sort of marketing c like someone's or like let's say someone's already a customer, you know, they've they've been using Scratch four years now. Like do you experiment with like one off email blasts to a mailing list? to kind of yeah, put push something, maybe in the case of your your raw dog food potentially when you launch that, for example.
Mike (38:04)
Yeah, yeah, good question. If we have a brand new product that we that they might be interested in trying, we will sometimes give them well, I mean, we'll definitely announce it to them. We definitely like want them
Eric Berkhinfand (38:16)
Yeah.
Mike (38:16)
aware of everything we're doing and what options they've got. Sometimes I d we're never really given I think maybe once we tried, like, hey, try this with a discount. But generally it's like if it's a more expensive product, it's like, hey, try this at the same cost of your current thing, you know, and then
Eric Berkhinfand (38:32)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (38:32)
you know, choose whether you that's what you want to do in the future. and like we'll ended up building we end up putting like whenever we have launches, we put a lot of tech hours into just making sure that's like a really clean UX of like, hey, I just want to try this once, you know,
Eric Berkhinfand (38:45)
Mm.
Mike (38:47)
and to not go through at the higher price. and, you know, and then all the complexities around what if they switch and everything like that. so yeah, it's only w we haven't really done too much of it. We never get really go like we don't go on Black Friday, we don't go on sale.
And never seeing ads where
Eric Berkhinfand (39:02)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Mike (39:03)
s where we're promoting discounts for other brand new people. so yeah, it's the sales are not r probably
Eric Berkhinfand (39:07)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (39:11)
like bundling bundling treats around like pre Christmas and like getting your dog treats for for Christmas is probably the only time like that's probably the most sales like we might get where you can get like really good value by getting like a Christmas box full of treats all at once. but individual items
Eric Berkhinfand (39:27)
Mm, mm.
Mike (39:28)
on sale haven't done.
Eric Berkhinfand (39:30)
Nice, nice. I've always yeah, I've always found it interesting offering like Black Friday or like big discounts to like new customers. And then like I always thought like, well, what about your existing customers? Like they're the ones that kind of have been with you the whole time. I know the sales tactic is to get new people through the door, but it can kind of maybe have like a alienating effect, you know, to your existing customers because they're gonna be on Facebook or, you know, on socials as well and see the discounts too. And then they're like, well, maybe then you need to offer
all your customers the discount and then maybe at the end of the day after the Black Friday sale's done you're looking at your numbers and you're like, well shit, like because everybody took the discount it it actually maybe wasn't as profitable like at the end of the day. So I guess yeah if you could yeah I think if you can stick away from the discounts if possible, probably probably a good a good tactic. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (40:18)
Yep, don't piss off your customers. Good rule.
Eric Berkhinfand (40:20)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Alright, so moving maybe into
The saddest part, which is cancellation, and of of course, you know, w no no subscription business wants that. I think as you we kind of alluded to at the beginning, you guys specifically are in a unique situation because of course there's preventable churn and then there's sadly unpreventable churn. So maybe let's focus on
the preventable churn. so and then we can maybe talk about how you guys handle the the unpre unpreventable churn. So I guess for preventable churn, are there any signs or red lights or systems that you have in place or maybe it's a kind of intuitive thing that you're like, okay, this customer might be heading in that direction?
Mike (41:05)
I mean look if someone goes on hold straight away or cancels like straight away, you know, like the the anti subscription.
Eric Berkhinfand (41:10)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (41:13)
or for some raw customers, like they're like, I'm I'm nervous about freezer space. So I'm just like not ri I
Eric Berkhinfand (41:17)
Mm.
Mike (41:18)
just don't don't want anything to go through unless I'm happy with the product and the freezer space that it takes up. So that
Eric Berkhinfand (41:23)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mike (41:25)
that is probably one of the only ones. A lot of it happens like quietly and that is where
that is where really that is where the customer service at 21 day check-in does like majority of the job. Like that's his role essentially. Its role is through human language for you to express, you know, like some for them to be able to pick up and be able to recognize, hey, this is a issue of this product not working for them as well. And look, every customer service mode, if someone reaches out as well, like with a question prior to that twenty one day checkout, that might be the trigger.
I think w one of the things where I was actually talking to my business partner today about I don't know if there's any I ha we haven't done an analysis yet, because we actually hadn't tagged the data within our store to pass on to Metorik to know if this is true. But you know, like there's the billing interval of a subscription and then there's the observed behavior.
Eric Berkhinfand (42:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (42:19)
So you might have like, all right, Eric's got, you know, a subscription every 50 days for his dog.
Eric Berkhinfand (42:25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mike (42:26)
but we could actually look at your subscription behavior and see it's actually like, well, you keep delaying it, and so
It's really averages out to every seventy days you've got an order. At the moment,
Eric Berkhinfand (42:34)
Mm.
Mike (42:34)
do we do we you know we could use that to predict like, hey, actually, like there's extra friction here for Eric every time. He's actually like twenty-one
Eric Berkhinfand (42:41)
Mm.
Mike (42:42)
da 20 days out and every month is probably or every month and a half is probably having to go in and like say, Hey, delay, I'm not ready for more yet, you know, kind of thing. When we can see actually he doesn't
Eric Berkhinfand (42:50)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Mike (42:51)
need it, like his dog's only eating this much. Do we want to like update the
Eric Berkhinfand (42:53)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (42:54)
subscription to remove the friction based on observed behaviour rather than like
What the checkout said
Eric Berkhinfand (42:59)
Mm.
Mike (42:59)
when you're initially signed up nine months ago, kind of thing. So those are some things we're playing around with at the moment.
Eric Berkhinfand (43:05)
Mm.
Mike (43:06)
but yeah, like most of what most of the effort we we do and we've increasingly done over the last year is in the knowing, getting feedback from people once once they've left to then prevent that happening in the first place for future cohorts. we've
Eric Berkhinfand (43:22)
Right.
Mike (43:23)
really upped the data we get from people, you know, not being like asking too many things, so it's just like,
As a customer feels like we're just filling out asking to fill out a survey every three minutes, but but
Eric Berkhinfand (43:32)
Yeah, yeah. Especially
after they've just after they've just cancelled 'cause they might be frustrated
Mike (43:38)
Yeah.
Eric Berkhinfand (43:38)
or maybe their dog's passed away. So you'd really don't want like the last thing you want to do
Mike (43:41)
Yeah, yeah.
Eric Berkhinfand (43:42)
is like if somebody yeah, and that that's a really interesting thing is like h handling like the case of somebody who actually has just lost their dog and it's like the last thing they want is surveys reminding them about their their their dog.
Mike (43:55)
Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah, exactly right. Like we one of the things so we make sure that we get data and it doesn't go into gravity forms or anything like that. It's like it attaches to the subscription and we can filter it and we can run regular exports in Metorik of like every month give us the cancellation feedback on reasons or whatever. And then, you know, if we run an offer or like let's say this product is included with your first order or the raw two bags for ninety nine dollar offer, we can then
you know, export, okay, what are the cancellation reasons for the people who joined on this version of our f of our
product versus other ones? What's the cancellation reasons of someone who has a puppy compared to like someone who's got an adult dog? Someone with a healthy dog
Eric Berkhinfand (44:36)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (44:36)
versus someone whose dog had
Eric Berkhinfand (44:38)
Mm.
Mike (44:39)
health issues going in. Which of those cohorts actually stick around and like probably like you know, crazy amount of our energy, mental energy goes into working out those nuances of like the different types of customers we've got
How they're represented in data, what the data and the cancellation data tells us about things, how much of that is preventable and not. Yeah,
Eric Berkhinfand (45:00)
Mm.
Mike (45:01)
because they get might get built into the physical products, like what's in the first order, might get built into
Eric Berkhinfand (45:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm.
Mike (45:06)
the digital products. we you we know for let's say a $99 offer person, maybe they're less convinced about the food, or they were just like window shopping and the casual browsing and like, yeah, that's cheap enough. We'll give it a crack. So maybe they need a different level
Eric Berkhinfand (45:19)
Mm.
Mike (45:19)
of education, or maybe the
the jump from two bags to three bags once it, you know, goes from the two, you know, the initial offer to the three bags at a time, maybe that jump is too much represents like freezer, you know, friction or whatever. And so we should yeah,
Eric Berkhinfand (45:29)
Yeah. Mm. Yeah, yeah. Mm.
Mike (45:34)
so really for for us it's probably not so much on an individual customer basis. Those customer service moments where we they can talk to us are the thing. It's just all about the data so that we always making the digital product around our website and and funnels.
and the physical product of our our product and our food and our welcome guides or whatever.
Eric Berkhinfand (45:55)
Hm.
Mike (45:57)
really just so well done, informed by the data we'd got on those cancellation kind of things.
Eric Berkhinfand (46:03)
Mm, mm-mm. Okay. So it's basically like le like learning fr like ra like churn happens regardless, but it's like I guess learning from why that happened. Obviously some of it is not preventable, but for the preventable ones, it's then feeding that back into the cycle so that at least new customers, you know, y you've kind of addressed those issues. So I guess I can imagine you're in the data, you and your co co founder are in the data like a lot. Like that represents like a lot of what you do
in terms of your day to day.
Mike (46:31)
Yeah, yeah. No, there's a
like a there's heaps. and like now that p
Eric Berkhinfand (46:34)
Yeah.
Mike (46:35)
particularly now with like Claude, being able to basically
Eric Berkhinfand (46:37)
Yeah.
Mike (46:38)
make better interfaces to be able to feed that data more regularly and like visualise it, and be able to, you know, feed regular exports of a consistent, you know, output into a system that you
Eric Berkhinfand (46:47)
Hmm. Hmm.
Mike (46:48)
we built that automatically charts it like stuff that we do once a year before because it took so much bloody time to like really get
Eric Berkhinfand (46:56)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Mike (46:57)
detailed cohort analysis based on so many things. Like
We either get it from Metorik or we use our custom tags and stuff like that to build out something that's specific to us that just p feeds into a Claude built system. now. So, you
Eric Berkhinfand (47:10)
Mm.
Mike (47:10)
know, now we're looking at it, you know, fortnightly to monthly on anything
Eric Berkhinfand (47:14)
Mm.
Mike (47:15)
cohort related. and
Eric Berkhinfand (47:17)
Mm.
Mike (47:18)
and and even some of those like we've got analys we'll do monthly analysis on the cancellation data or even the posts like just joined data about reasons why they almost didn't join.
Eric Berkhinfand (47:30)
Mm, nice.
Mike (47:31)
And we just always want to be
on top of customer health and just an opportunity to do something better.
Eric Berkhinfand (47:36)
Mm. Wondering just on the Metorik side if you are using kind of the Claude integration or whether you're just kind of bringing the di like bringing the data in manually from Metorik.
Mike (47:48)
Yeah, so well on the on the main thing I was talking about like this huge visualization or whatever, that is just export the export feature of where we basically make a recurring export of a put you know exactly
Eric Berkhinfand (48:00)
Nice.
Mike (48:01)
this is the segment and this is the custom fields and and the fields that we're putting in our file. and so we're
Eric Berkhinfand (48:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (48:08)
doing that of orders and subscriptions to be able to like build out detailed kind of our detailed analysis.
But our team, like our our team's Claude account has the Metorik MCP built in. So anyone can ask a question and then it'll kind of like get the relevant
Eric Berkhinfand (48:19)
Amazing.
Mike (48:19)
data from Metorik from there. And look, anyone in our team they want it or is relevant to their job will can have access to Metorik anyway. But Claude has been like for a casual person who doesn't need to or isn't trained on like what they can do in Metorik, they can just ask something, go, like what is the sales of raw last month, sign up of raw last month or you know, how is that trending over time? They can just go and do that and you know, like have the tools to work out
Eric Berkhinfand (48:40)
That's awesome. Love that.
Mike (48:43)
where their
Eric Berkhinfand (48:43)
Yeah.
Mike (48:43)
time is best spent without asking a manager, like, hey, should I spend real time on Raw?
Eric Berkhinfand (48:47)
Yeah.
Mike (48:47)
What's growing? What's not?
Eric Berkhinfand (48:49)
Yeah. It's pretty amazing 'cause yeah, just to to pivot 'cause it's like I guess, you know, we sp like we can build of course the we I mean, we're very proud of Metorik and and the UI and everything. But for somebody in your team who's not in it, like there is of course like an onboarding and maybe showing them how to use it. But I guess now they've just kind of got kind of w a new way into it to still extract that data without necessarily needing to learn a new UI, which is which is really
Mike (49:15)
Yeah, for sure. And look, I've I I never deliberately use the MCP like within Claude myself because I'm just like Metorik power user within the, you know, the browser or the or the yeah, or the desktop app. I just, you know,
Eric Berkhinfand (49:24)
Yeah, I mean you've been in it for yeah, been in it for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Mike (49:28)
I I just whether it's the right whether it's the smartest thing to do or not, I'm just trained. That's that that's how I do it. But people who don't use Metorik use Metorik through Claude. and sometimes
Eric Berkhinfand (49:37)
That's awesome.
Mike (49:38)
like I'll ask a question and I just pull up the data from Metorik to inform the answer in Claude anyway.
So I like unintendedly kind of use it through there. But yeah, it's it's great. And then sometimes use like Tori Tori, you know,
Eric Berkhinfand (49:49)
More so amazing to hear. And then I guess Yeah.
Mike (49:54)
AI feature within Metorik to just like skip filtering. Cause I would, you know, some things are just a little bit like it would actually just take a while. If I want to like a state by state breakdown of a certain thing, maybe I have to like go in
Eric Berkhinfand (50:04)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike (50:04)
and bake a bunch of expert exports per each state where I could like ask Tori. So kind of like, you know, different tools for different
Eric Berkhinfand (50:11)
I mean the thing is is that across all
Mike (50:13)
queries.
Eric Berkhinfand (50:15)
I think like yeah this is a completely this could be a separate podcast question which is like
Mike (50:19)
Ha ha.
Eric Berkhinfand (50:19)
what are the future of like UIs and things like that and it's like I mean even for me like the way I'm kind of working when I want to create new tasks in our project management system is like I'm not going into them and creating them. I'm talking to Claude or ChatGPT and then getting it to create it for me. So we'll see we'll see what the future holds in terms of UIs. last question just on win back. for
customers that are preventable churn. so maybe, yeah, the the dog is still alive essentially. Is there a flow that they enter into that you try to essentially get them back on board? Or do you kind of just leave it and then maybe hope that they just come back later when they're
Mike (50:59)
Yeah, good question. Nothing on email. So there's no email flows, but at the point you're canceling, depending on the reason for the cancellation, we might present different things. so
Eric Berkhinfand (51:06)
Yeah. Mm.
Mike (51:08)
sometimes that is just delaying. Sometimes that is like requesting samples of other recipes, and pause like pausing the account and getting sent out free samples. so like hey, which segments
Eric Berkhinfand (51:18)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike (51:19)
I want this to work and I would like to try something different, but like I don't want the same thing. So there's that. sometimes it's like, well, I hate subscription.
Okay, we'll cancel you, but hey, we've got a secret website we can buy whenever you want without subscription. Save this link as well. So like we have a one-off site we can buy without subscription, but you know, it's like
Eric Berkhinfand (51:36)
okay. All right. Okay.
Mike (51:39)
it's there not to distract people when they're potentially gonna purchase. It's there for like people who need it. Like, okay, there's someone who reaches out to customer service and said, Hey, can I just buy without subscription? I hate subscription. Great, here's the link. you're gonna cancel because you don't
Eric Berkhinfand (51:51)
Amazing.
Mike (51:52)
like subscription? All right, no worries, that's fine. Here's the link if you just want to buy in your own terms.
so there's kind of like at that moment there's certain things, but no email flows post where you like you'll never hear from us once you cancel.
Eric Berkhinfand (52:05)
Nice. I mean, yeah, respect. Like i i i again it's not the the common thing is like normally like it's like you're entered into a flow and discounts and this and that. So I I think I kinda respect really respect that to just kind of respect their decision and if they're ready, like they'll they'll come back. So that's cool.
Mike (52:21)
Yeah. Yeah. And look and a lot of these kind of things is because I guess, yeah, we do take a really long term view, but we also take a view that we're not trying to like coming back to those original things I said, we're not trying to be the biggest. We just want really healthy customers like who are around for a long period of time and that we're a good fit for. And we want to use the data we get from our customers to make sure that, okay, well, the next customers, we're even better for the next customers. Like everything's just like the business is just like finger in the pulse.
continually make it as good as we can for customers and that that somehow we call good business.
Eric Berkhinfand (52:56)
Amazing. And then promise last question. fave favorite report metric feature KPI in Metorik.
In five words or less. No, I'm joking. This one is on the spot. This wasn't in the questions we spoke about. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Mike (53:15)
this is a this is a tricky one. Look, I mean the thing I look at the most, the things I look at the most is my product category.
So I'm by product category breakdown. I'll look at that every day. How much am I selling per per product category? but look, my favorite things are like the thing that originally drew me to Metorik was my ability to like have custom meta and then have a system that allowed me to work with custom meta super easily. So like now my favorite feature is probably like a monthly export of
All the reasons, the open questions that so people we like, they sign up, we give them a bunch of extra questions if they want to answer them. And it's like open
Eric Berkhinfand (53:54)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (53:56)
feedback that is the most valuable feedback you'll ever get in your life. And I get a monthly export of that based on the custom meta that we, I guess, collect on the on the thank you page.
Eric Berkhinfand (54:05)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (54:06)
and it originally started as like, what's your dog's Instagram account? and like, is there anything else you is there anything else you want to know that
Eric Berkhinfand (54:10)
Ha ha ha.
Mike (54:13)
you didn't get a chance to enter during checkout?
Like that would pass on their customer service. But these days it's like, like I said, it's like, how did you how long have you known about Scratch? Which I actually find from a marketing point of view is a really interesting thing. Is you know, we bring
Eric Berkhinfand (54:25)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Mike (54:26)
in customers, is our TV ads working? Is that is it all just like last minute Facebook ads, whatever? but yeah, just
Eric Berkhinfand (54:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike (54:33)
the open questions we get about why they what they were hoping for, why they almost didn't buy, why they did end up committing. and I get that in
Eric Berkhinfand (54:39)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Mike (54:40)
a monthly thing. And I'll look over it myself sometimes, but every month I'll give it a claude and to say, hey.
Pick out interesting sites, insights, pick out things that seem emotively charged for better or worse, that kind of stuff. And so yeah,
Eric Berkhinfand (54:50)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mike (54:51)
it's always to me like the real unique aspect of Metorik is being able to like get data through my website and then really frictionlessly use it in different ways. And the AI just yes, massively AI plus Metorik, yeah, it's just
Eric Berkhinfand (55:05)
Supercharge it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Mike (55:06)
supercharging what we can do with that and how we can compare cohorts over time now as well, based on stuff.
Eric Berkhinfand (55:12)
It amazing. thank you so much. I think there's a lot of amazing stuff in there. yeah, nothing more really to say. Thank you, and yeah.
Mike (55:22)
Thanks, Eric. Great to chat.
Eric Berkhinfand (55:25)
Cheers, bye.
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