How Manpacks boosted their average order size 84% and reduced churn to under 2% | Hacker News Reader

How Manpacks boosted their average order size 84% and reduced churn to under 2%

blog.perfectaudience.com

63 pointsthesilentist23 comments

> Adding the “snooze” function has helped decrease the churn rate down to just 2%.

> By adding more products and flexibility, the average order size increased by 84%.

This is pretty much all there is in the article about "how" that is so prominently featured in link title.

Agree that the article is a bit thin. The adding more products isn't such an ingenious strategy, pretty logical if you ask me. I like the snooze function though, one of those extremely powerful ideas that make consumers happy.

It wasn't only adding products, but adding the flexibility to easily add/remove products via a customer dashboard (while we curated/marketed products we liked) that allowed us to up our AOV. When we launched it was just "pick your plan" and we'd automate the rest -- so we sacrificed a little of the simplicity of automation for the flexibility of service and customization.

Nothing ingenious, just a decision we made that worked.

That isn't really true, there were other useful details, although they may not have stood out to you since a lot of it could be considered good common sense.

Does anybody know how companies like that differentiate themselves from 800 lb gorilla that is Amazon (they do recurring orders)?

Disclaimer: I haven't done any subscription/recurring orders, but am genuinely interested

A good friend of mine worked for BirchBox, a subscription beauty service for women and men (Birchbox men), as an intern last summer. From what she told me, the work they did to create a community around the service helps the company beat out gorillas such as Amazon. For instance, people will record themselves opening their Birchbox order and post it on Youtube (do a Youtube search, the top unboxing I get has 57,996 views). I think Manpacks also plays to the community, as evident by them tweeting with the fellow who wanted safety razors.

Technically Amazon didn't have a Beauty site that was in competition to BirchBox until Quidsi launched Beautybar.com

Both companies leverage sampling in "boxes" to acquire new customers and hopefully they will order full sized products in their respective stores.

"Opening box" videos are a popular practice in retail (ecommerce) especially in the beauty industry.

I would think that the focus is the differentiation.

I'd like to check out their site but on the other hand I don't want someone seeing "manpacks.com" in the DNS resolution logs here at work.

Do you not work in an equal opportunity workplace? Are you concerned that someone might be grepping the DNS resolution logs to find closeted homosexuals? Are you legitimately concerned about retribution if someone believes that you're homosexual?

Whoa - whoa. None of those things!

It falls in the same bucket as russianbrides.com. I just don't think there's a reasonable explanation for browsing such a thing at work.

I can pass off HN as keeping tabs on current software and industry trends.

It sounds more like a porn site, of which any kind is frowned upon in many workplaces.

I've always wanted to get onboard with the Manpacks but it's hard to justify $10/shirt when I can get a 5-pack of the same kind on Amazon for $18.

You're paying to outsource the obligation to remember to order shirts.

Shirts are a little different, but I use it for stuff like razor blades that are consumable.

You can do that on Amazon too, though only on consumable items where they think it'll be likely. If there's a "Subscribe & Save" link at the right, you can choose to make the order recurring instead of one-time, with intervals ranging from 1-6 months. Random example of a product that has such a feature: http://www.amazon.com/Gillette-Fusion-Manual-Cartridges-Coun...

Sure, but they don't have a nice GUI or good messaging around why I should use that to solve this problem specifically.

Also, in a world of politically correct egalitarianism I respect a company that has the literal and figurative balls to stand up and say, nope, this is for men (and go so far as to bake that assumption into the product name)

Sure, but a 5x markup? Plus as someone other peopled mentioned, Amazon has S&S

Can you point to a 5x markup on our site? Not a challenge, just a question because we try to stay at least remotely competitive to other online pricing. I'd be shocked to find product for 1/5 the price somewhere.

I've been a customer for a little over a year now. It's simply a convenience, set and forget thing. I never had enough underwear or socks until I became a customer of Manpacks. I now never have to think about socks or underwear ever again.

For me personally, I'm cash rich, time poor, so it's a great trade off. I save the hour to go to the store, or find the best reviews on Amazon.

Manpacks curates only the highest quality products, so I pick from among the best.

You might be in a different place, but it's been a great value for me personally.

I've never heard of manpacks until an hour ago, but thanks to this article, I'm now a customer.

I'm curious what their churn rate was before it was reduced to 2%.

I'm curious what the 'snooze' or on hold % is.

Definitely agree that more data would be helpful, like:

- What was churn rate before? - Is (new churn + snooze) greater or less than original churn? - What percentage of customers come off of snooze and repurchase?

Without more information, it's impossible to pinpoint whether it really is an effective strategy or just makes a nice headline.

Snooze Fest. perfect audience isn't even a good remarketing company! Other good options:

Fetchback Dotomi Criteo Steelhouse Media

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