Initially conceived in February 2018, it was an experience that taught me how to run a business by overseeing more than just the Marketing department. At the end of 2018, we launched an ‘MVP’ of the service, which took our monthly service and made it quarterly. We used that data to help influence the strategy of ‘Premium Seasonal’ in 2020.
Seasonal Subscription Launch
Launching a new quarterly subscription business is one of the biggest achievements that I have worked on in my career.
Launching this business took almost 3 years.
We launched Premium Seasonal to attract a new customer who wanted more elevated clothing, as well as offer an alternative service to our existing customers who were getting burnt out from receiving clothes every month. We tracked the following metrics to measure success:
- LTV: Our aim was to increase the LTV of customers by offering the $99 subscription, but an ‘add to box’ component as well that potentially could push box revenue into the $100s depending on items chosen
- Churn: Another objective was to reduce the overall churn of people cancelling the subscription
- We also tracked how many monthly members switched to seasonal vs. cancelling
- CAC: We were hoping that customer acquisition costs would either be the same as the monthly service (but more profitable since we had more margin to work with), or cheaper given we were targeting a new demographic with this launch
Acting as the business lead, I had to collaborate with Logistics, Merchandising, Customer Service, Product, Engineering, and my own Marketing team to identify the needs of each department that would be put into a requirements document and used for scoping the new service.
- Logistics: Our previous shipping method was too slow for a lot of customers, so we negotiated new lines with UPS that would also accommodate upgrading our packaging from the bag we had sent clothes in
- Merchandising: We wanted to introduce new apparel categories to the service, as well as source better materials for production
- Customer Service: We identified customer’s pain points with the monthly subscription (whether the service itself or the way they managed it online) and used those to build out a new website on BigCommerce
- Product/Engineering: We worked with a dev agency to design & build the new website to reflect the ‘premium’ aesthetic and introduce the features customers requested
- Marketing: We built a GTM plan that spanned across multiple digital and offline channels
52
decrease in churn
65
increase in AOV per customer
10,000
members within first quarter
What We Launched:
- Quarterly subscription service
- Includes ‘add-ons’ which acted as a hybrid e-com store to complement subscription box
- Also elevated our brand image as we did an unofficial rebranding to ensure aesthetic was more inline with the luxury we were promoting
- Exclusive new clothing line with upgraded materials & category offerings
- 3 new boxes that subscription would be shipped in (previously shipped in bags)
- New shipping methods via USPS & UPS (previously only USPS SmartPost)
- Relaunched website on BigCommerce (previous a custom-built site from 2013)
- Featuring many functions that were requested from customers like interactive style guides, ability to customize their quarterly shipments, switch between subscription offerings, and more
- Digital magazine/lookbook each quarter
- Previews entire collection & BTS from our team for inspiration into the capsule
- Personal stylists assigned to each customer (upgraded customer service)
Welcome to Premium Seasonal by Menlo Club
Check out the launch video we created with CEO Dee Murthy explaining how the new service works and previewing the inaugural capsule.
Love what you saw? Let’s do it for your business next.
