Original Article:
Building Loyalty into Your Business Model
by Shane Pittson, Head of Marketing at Quip
https://www.yotpo.com/direct-to-consumer-ecommerce-marketing/chapter-4/subscription-model/
“Shane Pittson is the Head of Marketing at quip, the trailblazing electric toothbrush brand that is on track to boast more than a million customers by the end of 2018… Subscription models can be really impactful for some brands and less so for others — it differs so much by product. You should start with user testing and gathering feedback… The goal here is understanding people’s behaviors with your product type: how often they replace or replenish it, how often they jump between brands, etc… You also want to look at statistics and broader consumer behavior. For us at quip, it was easy to see the health need for our product: on average, people replace their brush or brush head every nine months, but dentists say it should be every three months for effectiveness… One of the key pieces of a subscription model is that it creates a relationship between brand and customer. For the brand, it allows you to create community and have a consistent touchpoint with your customers. And on the customer side of things, it allows for the convenience of not having to think about an element of your routine… At times, with brands that operate a subscription service, you might assume that there’s a built-in community. Because of that assumption, it can be easy for brands not to invest in actually building and fostering something that adds value for subscribers beyond the product… If you don’t provide this sort of experience for subscribers, it opens the door for somebody else to create a similar product and to sell it in a different way that creates more of a connection with customers… Not every product is well-suited for subscription. Do individual research to find out how people interact with your product before settling on a subscription model.”
Shane Pittson gives relevant tips and insight into the world of a subscription-based business model. Highlighting the importance of community and content creation opened my eyes to how important and impactful the business-consumer relationship can be in such business models.
