Live Bearded Scaled Subscriptions from 5% to 20% of Revenue In 9 Months

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TL;DR

• Starting point: Live Bearded’s subscription program, contributing to 5% of total revenue, was an overlooked part of its business.
• Opportunity: Scale the subscriber base while minimizing churn.
• Top features: Subscription widget, Benefits page, and Rewards banner. ‍
• Results: Increased subscriptions’ revenue share from 5% to 20% in just nine months while maintaining an average churn rate of 3%.

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The Starting Point

Live Bearded’s story begins like many other brands. 

Initially, subscriptions contributed just 5% to Live Bearded's total revenue. Subscriptions were seen as a minor aspect of the business, receiving little attention or strategic focus. Like other brands, Live Bearded too hadn't fully recognized the potential impact a well-optimized subscription program could have on growth.

However, a chance meeting between Live Bearded's founder, Anthony Mink, and Loop's founder, Piyush Jain, at Blue Ribbon sparked a shift in perspective. The conversation revealed untapped potential in their subscription model, and Live Bearded decided to take a serious approach to optimizing it.

Live Bearded has been working with CRO agency Fuel Made for years to continually improve the store’s already stellar conversion rates. In recent months, the Fuel Made team made updates to the collection page layout and PDP design that resulted in conversion uplifts of 4% and 4.5%. Now they wanted to see if changes to the subscription program could garner a similar impact. 

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The Opportunity 

After implementing the platform and working closely with the Customer Success team, Live Bearded established two objectives:

1. Dramatically increase subscriber acquisition
2. Maintain low churn rates while scaling the subscriber base

Increasing subscriber acquisition 

Live Bearded did two things to attract new subscribers.

First, they made subscriptions the default option on product pages and offered attractive 'Subscribe and Save' discounts, they guided customers toward the recurring purchase model from the first interaction itself. 

Second, Fuel Made leveraged Intelligems to conduct sophisticated A/B testing of their subscription widget and carefully tracked conversion metrics. Fuel Made found that defaulting to the subscription option grew subscription conversions by 130%, but wanted to continue monitoring its effect on total site conversion. In the three months following this change, subscription revenue increased by 15%, with no negative impact on total site conversion or churn rate. 

Over time, acquisitions spiked, but cancellations slowed down. Here’s what their subscription trends looked like. 

Keeping churn down

From our experience, growing through acquisitions is exciting, but it often brings a parallel rise in churn. Aware of this challenge, we worked with Live Bearded to take deliberate steps to address it head-on.

Here is how Live Bearded tackled it.

• ‍Dedicated Benefits Page: When subscribers clicked “Cancel,” they were directed to a dedicated Benefits Page that interrupted the cancellation process by highlighting the perks of keeping their subscription. This single change resulted in a save rate of 9% and pushed churn further down the line.

• ‍Visual Rewards Journey: In their customer portal, they showcased a clear rewards journey that visualized subscription perks. As a result, it significantly reduced 1st order cancellations, bringing it down from 50% to 40%.

Impact 

The results were transformative. Live Bearded successfully turned its subscription program from an afterthought into a core driver of its business. In just nine months:

• Subscription revenue grew from 5% to 20% of total revenue.
• Subscriber acquisition increased steadily without compromising churn rates.
• The average churn rate over 6 months stood at 3%.
• The subscription program became a sustainable and scalable revenue channel.

Thinking about scaling your subscriptions? Let’s talk.