HelloBello delivers freshly prepared, human-grade cooked and cooled meals for dogs, tailored to meet each pet's specific nutritional needs. The brand has earned acclaim for its commitment to quality, being named the 2023 Product of the Year by Futtertester.de, with a rating of 9.5 out of 10 from 100 evaluators.
mammaly is the brainchild of Alexander Thelen and Stanislav Nazarenus. Her vision from the start was to fundamentally change the way we feed our pets - with supplements for dogs and cats. Founded in 2020, mammaly is now one of the leading digital pet health start-ups in Europe.
NutriPaw is simplifying dog health offering 100% natural pet supplements made into tasty treats. Made with only the highest quality ingredients, NutriPaw helps pet parents take the complexity out of keeping their dogs healthy.
Doggy Do Good brings you pet supplies with purpose. With their home-compostable pet waste bags, they are working towards making pet's environmental paw-print a little smaller. By shopping with the mission-driven team at Doggy Do Good, you are giving back to organizations that love animals and the planet as much as they do.
We have observed pet brands face these challenges time and again.
Unlike the beauty industry, where premium branding and better quality can lead to high-value carts, pet brands face their own set of rules. DTC pet essentials tend to be more reasonably priced and up for frequent replenishment. Naturally, the average order value per cart tends to be lower.
Why does this matter? A lower average order value can:
Given these factors, it’s clear why increasing the basket size is a major concern for pet store merchants.
Generally, pet brands running on a subscription model tend to create profit after the third repeat order. But a high churn rate, where customers unsubscribe early or fail to make repeat purchases, poses a challenge for merchants to maintain a healthy profit margin.
Combine this with a low average order value, and the customer lifetime value (LTV) goes down. A low LTV will not justify the cost of acquiring new customers, further impacting the overall profitability of the subscription business.
This sets off a vicious cycle, something merchants work to fend off at all costs. Businesses find themselves in a situation where they must continuously invest in acquiring new customers, even as their existing customer base dwindles. In other words, the business becomes hard to scale when the CAC is close to the AOV.
Fortunately, our hands-on experience with hundreds of brands has enabled us to develop smart cancellation flows. In the next section, we will break down our churn reduction strategy.
When it comes to churn rate, pet brands face a unique challenge that stems from the natural progression of pets' lives. As pets grow, their dietary needs evolve, prompting pet parents to seek out products that better align with these changing requirements.
This leads to subscription cancellations, posing a challenge for merchants aiming to maintain customer loyalty.
To thrive in the DTC pets industry, subscription brands must cater to every life stage of the pet. This involves expanding product offerings and personalizing subscriptions to meet the dynamic needs of growing pets.
In the table below, we have broadly mapped out how specific features of Loop address various challenges.
Offering bundles have emerged as the ultimate solution for brands trying to increase their AOV. Be it range or fixed bundles, they result in higher value added for the subscriber and larger cart value.
Loop bundles are easy to set up, and work well with a variety of subscription models. Not to mention our customer portal’s upselling section is designed to introduce and upsell bundles to existing subscribers.
Next, box subscriptions (personalized bundles) are another great way to boost AOV, encouraging customers to ‘add more and save more’. Loop’s box subscriptions come with a progress bar to incentivise them to complete the action. We have intentionally kept the UI simple so the customer does not get distracted.
Our pet brands bet big on bundles too. See how they have incorporated bundles in their subscription setup.
Want to learn more? Check out bundles on Loop today.
Loop’s powerful cancellation analytics have been very successful in tackling churn. No fluff, just plain good strategy. Our approach to slashing churn is three-fold.
When it comes to taking action, there are some levers that have shown great results:
In the case of Doggy Do Good, four features within Loop’s cancellation flows came together to effectively tackle churn.
1. Customisable exit survey
Before Loop, Doggy Do Good struggled to understand why subscribers were canceling. When they switched over to Loop’s customer portal, they configured an exit survey which would pop up when a subscriber attempted to cancel. They customized the exit survey reasons:
2. Personalized messages to subscribers
Over time, using Loop’s churn analytics, Doggy Do Good started seeing the reasons behind cancellations. Most of the cancellations happened because subscribers had too much of the product on them.
And reducing cancellations is easy when you have deep insights into customer activity. Based on these reasons, you can display messages to subscribers, which is the right time to remind them of product USPs.
In case of Doggy Do Good, they wanted to
3. Creating personalized offers for different subscriber segments
In case messages do not work, brands can also offer one-time discounts to subscriber segments who may be price sensitive or who may have too much product at hand.
4. Offering swap functionality to mitigate cancellations
By letting subscribers easily swap products, brands can ensure their service remains relevant and valuable to pet owners throughout their pets’ various life stages.
Loop Subscriptions seamlessly integrates churn analytics with cancellation workflows, so merchants spend less time understanding cancellations and more time scaling their business. Merchants can supercharge their retention strategies with customer insights.
Loop flows are the most LTV-boosting addition to the subscriber experience. You can automate personalized offers for different subscriber segments, and reward them to keep them engaged. Focusing on improving the customer experience to encourage repeat purchases can actually offset the effects of low AOV.
We worked with our pet brands to solve for customer engagement. One of them set up a reward banner that would be shown after a subscriber completes 2 orders. Others added a motivation message to be displayed on the customer portal before the customer had shown signs of churn. You can also experiment with different messaging on the subscriptions widget on the customer portal.
Here’s the complete rundown:
All said and done, here’s what our brands had to say about Loop.
Emma Johnson is celebrated for her strategic brilliance and innovative flair. By seamlessly blending creativity with data-driven insights, she has propelled Loop’s brand to new heights, establishing it as a formidable force in the Shopify Subscriptions space.
