Everyone has been predicting live shopping for a decade. BattlBox actually made it work, turning Whatnot into a $5M channel and their second biggest in just over a year.
In this episode of Subscription Prescription, John Roman joins Matthew Holman to explain why Whatnot succeeds where TikTok Shop falls short, and how a live selling platform quietly became a top-of-funnel engine for their subscription membership.
What we cover:
- How Whatnot became BattlBox's second biggest channel, bigger than Amazon
- Why Whatnot converts 30x more efficiently to the website than TikTok Shop
- The difference between buying intent on Amazon versus brain-rot scrolling on TikTok
- How community features like raids and community boost create Whatnot's real moat
- Why BattlBox drops a content-first unboxing video that hypes every member
- Skipping billing reminders and building anticipation through story-driven communication
- Surveying your best customers instead of obsessing over the ones who left
- Why six-months-plus buyers deliver higher AOV and LTV through content
Transcript from video:
0:07 Welcome to Subscription Prescription, the podcast where you get the information you need to [music] scale your subscription program.
0:20 [music] Welcome to another dose of Subscription Prescription. I'm your host, Matthew Holman, and I am excited today to be joined by my good friend, John Roman. He is the CEO and founder of BattlBox.
0:32 John, thanks for coming on, man. Dude, thanks for having me. I uh I'm excited to be here. You got a lot going on. You got your conference is I don't know when this will air, but it's almost game time.
0:43 Yeah. Yeah. Conference is in two weeks. I I wanted to say too when we were starting like I feel like the backdrop of your office hasn't changed in like six years. So, I don't know if those cardes and so I I I've gone through past things and it's just it's a it's a validation
1:01 that I don't want to share with my wife. It was just it's just slowly been growing. Not in a good way. Now I have too much stuff in there and uh I had to move some stuff got moved in here that
1:14 is not fully mine because it can't be in the the living quarters. So, it goes to the dungeon. Yeah. which is where I live. Anyway, cool.
1:26 Yeah, if I could flip my camera around, you you'd see all these snacks and sodas and stuff I have because we do host our inerson events here. So, I'm lucky to just have this nice clean wall and you can't see all the crap that I have on my
1:37 floor. But anyway, so for for those of you What's What's that? I pointed to the YouTube thing. I have that. That's kind of cool. Anyway, all right. Sorry. Go on. I need to get that. you flex it. It's all right. Okay. So, for those of you that are uh familiar with the show, I referenced BattlBox quite a bit there.
1:56 I think there are a number of things that I think that you guys do really really well, John. And you were one of our first guests. I think you actually
2:02 might have been my first guest when we launched the podcast years ago. So, it's really fitting that you're you're coming back on and we're talking about a lot of these things. But for those of you that are not aware, would you please share a little bit about BattlBox and then I'll dive into some of the things that I love
2:13 about it. Sure. So, BattlBox is an outdoor and adventure brand. An extreme focus on content, content first, which which serves as our as our true top of funnel. Don't get me wrong, we still spend way more than I'd like on the usual suspects like meta advertising is critical, but at the same level, it's it's more middlefunnel. Started in 2015.
2:37 When we started in 2015, we we called ourselves a subscription box because that's that's what we were kind of as we matured and become this 12-year-old company. We we feel we've become a lot a lot more than just that. But don't get me wrong, um the membership, which includes the physical box that goes out every month, is still our flagship product. It's still 65 70% of all
3:02 revenue. So it's still very very important, very key as you know just as better just as well if not better than me. Subscription and forecastable revenue is is is so paramount and so
3:15 important and really is really is an unlock when when a brand can can figure that out. So yeah, uh, lots of content. Netflix TV show in 2020, a Netflix original, sold the company in 2021, bought it back in 2023, and here we are on I I think this is like BattlBox 3.0, so this is our third third birth from Fire.
3:42 I love that. Yeah. And I want to dive into content, but the place I want to start is one of the things I think because you know when I post online about billing reminders, I know that always gets you thinking just a teensy bit about it, but I actually like how
3:54 you guys do it. The fact that you don't do it, but what you do instead, I think is absolutely genius. Could you explain to to everybody how you guys communicate what's coming to people because I think it's brilliant. Sure. So, so yeah. So, unpopular opinion, which is
4:13 a hill I'll die on, but not because it's a hill I should die on. It's a hill because scared of of of the alternative, right? We don't we don't send out the three-day the three-day heads up. We're going to we're going to bill you. Now, what we we we do is we we do send a lot
4:31 of communication via email and SMS talking about the next mission, building up for it. So in theory, if they're reading their text and emails, they know it's coming. Same with the onboarding series of when the first time you sign up. Most of those emails, at least the beginner, are very very educational. It
4:51 used to be one big long email. We've tested and we we send multiple now hitting on important points of each. One of the dedicated emails is explaining how the subscription membership works, when we bill, when it ships, etc. So, you know, at the end of the day, you
5:09 would hope that they are reading everything. Now, fast forward on the 15th, that is the renewal day. We're not animals. We're not um like, you know, the the horror stories you hear of, "Ah, they renewed me. They got me." Um, we are going to refund. We are We are going to explain. We're going to take the
5:26 moment and and try to at least turn it around and not make it a bad experience. So, we have a we have a decent bid of of of refunds. those those couple of days post. But we we we feel that because we're so proactive with the communication along the way and our quick quick approach um reactive but still approach towards um people that are like ah I didn't want a bill. I I
5:54 can't read. I didn't follow instructions. Um we're still we're still giving the refund for the most part. So yeah, slightly different approach. I I'm I'm glad you can appreciate it. I I don't know if it is best practice. I would argue that the three-day notice probably is the best practice, but we've made the bed. We're sleeping in it. We're just trying to make it as comfortable as possible.
6:18 Yeah. You know, like we live in a world where like these hard fast rules for best practices are not universal. Like some brands the three-day billing reminder is like it is a turn no matter what they do and it doesn't matter. Five days would be better,
6:34 you know, or an SMS communication would be better. But the thing that you guys do that not only is like you're doing all this practice stuff, it's the when you're teasing what's on the way, right? Like that to me I think is the masterass in engagement because the difference is
6:48 people a lot of brands that don't send billing reminders are are ignoring. They go quiet. Nothing's happening. You Yeah. They're just hoping you don't say anything. They don't they don't want to send an email. Yeah, that's a great that's actually a
7:00 great point. They don't want to send an email because they're afraid oh that's going to remind them that we're going to charge them for $200 next week. So fair that is a fair point with you with with you guys engagement strategy though like you guys are teasing the content in the box. That's
7:13 kind of the thing that I want to get into that I think a lot of people could learn from is like like how how does that work? What does that mechanism work? Because I think with with a the dynamics of a subscription box and what's inside of it or or maybe
7:25 overgeneralizing a surprise and delight experience like this is a really great way to get people excited.
7:32 Yeah. So we're we're we're building hype. So just kind of digging in a little bit further on on our model. So it's it's a drop model, right? So everybody all members with the exception of first-time members because we have a different float for them. But once you're an established member, every month we renew you. We ship the box um between the 4th and the 9th of the following month. But it's a very strategic send where we we're going west
7:58 to east, you know, rural to city, rural to metro, so that everybody gets their box around the same time. And then we drop a video around day one of delivery. Typically it it does delivery unfortunately does span a couple of days sometimes but um we drop that video and we're explaining you know what's in
8:16 what's in the box educating on each of the items. So bringing it back to your original question it's an exciting it's an exciting thing. These drops are exciting. We're working hard. We have a procurement team. We have a testing team. Like it's not it's not we don't
8:32 put things in the in the box lightly. like it's a pain in the butt to our team for something to make it through this entire process of approval to be in a box. It's a lot of work and it's
8:44 exciting with the what the finished product is. So, we do talk about it. We proactively as we're building into the next mission, we're talking about potentially the theme, potentially an item. It's it's unfortunately or fortunately because it doesn't scale. It's there's no automation in there, right? This isn't a automatically show
9:03 item number three and four. Um we're we're we're telling a story and and that story doesn't automate. It doesn't scale, right? We're having to think, okay, let's talk about the box in this manner. What what is going to connect truly to our members to to paint the
9:22 picture of what's coming? And that that isn't that's that's not something AI can do.
9:29 Yeah. And and the thing that I've always loved about it is that we it's it's it does hype people up. I love that when you when we we first chatted about it, you were saying like everybody gets the same video whether you have the premium box or you have one of the boxes that has lesser items in it. So you get to
9:46 see what you miss, right? So if you're not on the highest premium, you see what the premium tier is getting. But then you also make sure you address like any questions somebody might have about why this is cool or unique or interesting
9:58 because then it enhances the actual unboxing experience. It's like if I've been getting different stuff and I don't know what something is, I might start questioning the value. But I'm I'm getting the value reinforced as part of
10:08 that. So I think just from a communic again it's a very specific to you. So, it's like I get that protein powder companies aren't going to do like unboxing videos, but the idea is like getting into this engagement and explanation and stuff as part of the delivery, I think is just a brilliant content engagement strategy.
10:27 No, thank you. And and to your point that, you know, engagement does start building towards our our goal of community, right? and it being more than just again not you know there's there's days I wake up and I wish we had a simpler product like a protein powder that just bills and auto ships and how I
10:46 don't have to decide a different flavor every month or eight to 10 different flavors every month is definitely unique to to us that we have all these moving pieces but yeah it's uh the the engagement also serves a purpose of community and and understanding that that it's much more than the physical
11:05 product that that you're a member to. So, how does the greater content strategy kind of like play into everything? Is it do you see like hey like the the battle games like the the
11:17 the different things you do the the Netflix series all that stuff is that top of funnel? Is that do you find that's also engaging for people that are that are fans and following the product? Like how does that internally in
11:28 BattlBox HQ? How are you guys thinking about these? Because again, I know you just are constantly doing content, looking for more ways to create content. Yeah. So, it's it's both. Uh, and it's anybody who's tried to do content that's listening to this, watching this, you know, that content's difficult, right?
11:46 It's not like a an ad where, you know, there's tracking and you can follow them a little bit better. It's really difficult to to to see the start of some of a relationship when it's living on
12:01 another platform and not engaging with our actual asset of our website. It's it's difficult. You can do some hey this person target people that like like people or follow this um but it is a
12:14 it's a little difficult to really track the beginning of the relationship. I think where we see it show show up in the first form of validation and this is for new customers. The first part of your question of top of funnel is top ofunnel and and we see it with the post-purchase survey where we're asking
12:34 them how long did you know about battle box before purchasing? And we see, you know, to the untrained eye it looks like a problem. 40% are saying greater than
12:46 six months. you're like, man, that's not good. Yeah. And that's not good if you're not doing the content strategy. If you're just serving ads and that's everyone's top of funnel and it's taking them six plus months to buy, that's a problem. But it's not a problem for us because
13:04 that's that that's our model. We're we're educating, we're engaging, we're having them be a part of this this content and community. and and that takes a while to to to truly gain
13:16 someone's trust and and and them know and validate that they're making the right decision. And ironically, the six months plus group is a higher AOV. It's a higher LTV. It is it is our best possible customer cohort because they came in through content because it was they didn't get hard sold right away.
13:40 Don't get me wrong, we And you have all that content after that. Yeah. And Yeah. And you know, again, we are still following a lot of the and I after what you said earlier, I hate saying best practices, but it you know,
13:54 we are putting them in email flows and and converting them and then flipping on an ad for midfunnel to even though metam
14:01 I think it's it's new top of funnel, it's it's what we're targeting, it truly is a midfunnel and we're getting them over the edge with with a strong intro offer. Sure. So all that matters, we're still doing all of that. We're just doing it a
14:13 little bit a little bit later. To the second part of your question on existing customers was a little bit of an unknown for a while. We were kind of going on the assumption that it was important and that's why we were doing it. But we finally just did a survey. So we we surveyed we obviously the it was a big
14:31 lift in the beginning. We surveyed all existing customers. It was a pretty intense survey. It was like 24 questions. So, we had to have some some contests and giveaways to really get the
14:42 use out of that because it was a big ask. It was it was a lot of questions, but we wanted to better understand our people. So, we got, you know, not as not as much big of a take rate as I would like, but I think we probably got about 24% of our activities to take a 24 minute 24
15:00 question survey, which I think is okay. you know, our post-purchase survey, we're typically getting 65 70% take. And then after that initial lift, we then set it up through automation. So when customers hit a certain threshold in their life cycle defined by renewals or
15:21 or spend they get kicked out of survey and they get kicked at in what we've tested and and believe at least for our brand is the right time to send it to them to to best chance of them explaining filling out the survey. So, it's, you know, the data is changing
15:38 ever so slightly as we get more data because we targeted everybody at first and now we're massaging it with only our top customers. And a couple of the questions are content focused. you know, we find that that, you know, 75% of of our ideal customers are actually on YouTube digesting our our content, watching
16:04 watching our content. But that's that's their go-to, which which is which is interesting. It's not it's not meta where Facebook where the Facebook group is, that's members only, which is surprising. They're already there.
16:16 they're going to another platform to to watch watch our content. And you know, TikTok is not not very high. We have lots of followers on TikTok, but you know, the the the ideal guys are not are not going back to TikTok to ingest it. I mean, it does make a little bit of sense. Like, you know, TikTok's like, you know, I might be watching that on on
16:37 the toilet kind of thing. I'm watching a minute or two here and there. I'm not going to watch 10, 20, 30 minutes of content as opposed to YouTube. I'm going to be digesting a lot of that. So that does make a lot of sense. And I I I like
16:48 hearing that you're surveying your more valuable customers because I feel like I just everybody's always so concerned with why people are leaving instead of like why people are staying, right? Like yeah, what what makes the program valuable to
17:00 them gives you insights in who you should be going after and how you should be build the program that attracts the valuable people as opposed to trying to build a program that keeps people that aren't that valuable from leaving. Yeah. And and and Yeah. And it's it's
17:13 it's twofold. But it's it's one it's one let's understand exactly like you said how do we how how do we find more of these people what are we doing right you they're probably going to give us some talking points to then take and and
17:25 explain via via the the BattlBox gospel to to to the masses but it's also get the feedback and how do we make it even faking better for them like where where are we where are we not doing doing
17:39 where we think we're doing the best but like tell us like how can we make it better which checks, you know, the obvious box of, okay, we can improve our offering by doing this. But, you know, the unsaid thing is just having that conversation, asking them even if it's a
17:57 survey. Sometimes we do phone calls, but like even if it's just a survey, like no one's doing that and it it it you care it and it it like put yourself in their shoes. like a
18:09 couple, you know, there's been a few times I've gotten like I can tell it's not the it's not the regular survey, not the five minutes after you you had the call with Delta, how do we do? It's not that. It's like you can tell it's a it's
18:21 a personalized written email. Like it's genuinely caring. And I think that unsaid piece, that's a variable of of of a lot of value. If you're able to
18:34 actually share and and and and give feedback and you're confident that it's genuinely asked for and is genuinely going to be used, like your affinity
18:44 towards that brand grows, your loyalty grows even more because it's so unusual in today's day and age. I mean, it really is. If you think about post-purchase, we're all used to seeing
18:55 that. I mean, I'm get annoyed that my local mo like movie theater company is like trying to get me to like pick these upsells for nonmovie related services because Afterell is on the movie app, right? Like you have your cancellation survey where people Yeah. Yeah. So, and then you have
19:13 cancellation experience where people are like they're they're cancelled and they're either even if they're just they like you and it's not the right time, they're going to go through but everybody else is annoyed at you.
19:24 Whereas I've tried to convince other brands of this. I'm like, do you mean to tell me that you don't think somebody's bought through you three, four times and you're a founder brand or you have great branding that you don't think somebody's going to actually care that you're trying to care about what they care
19:36 about? Like, right, it's kind of silly. So, I I like that because I think that's a great opportunity and and figuring out the right time I think is the hard part and figuring out the right ways to engage is the hard part because surveys and stuff can get lost in the shuffle. But I think that's a 100%. Cool.
19:54 Okay. Uh whatot you have been a huge proponent of this. Uh I've seen you do this live at like Subsummit and I think you guys did you guys do this at CR CR as well, but can you break down for me
20:05 what what made you guys start into whatnot? Well, I guess what is whatn not for everybody doesn't know.
20:10 Sure. Why' you guys go in as a subscription brand? You know, it could one could argue that that's not really a subscription supported thing. So, I'd love to under the rationale and where you see the opportunity for your business in that
20:23 because I know live selling is a big piece of where you guys think the future is. Yeah. So, so what not and I think um nice timing on this because I I believe Friday they announced their series G
20:35 they raised another hundred and something million at a 20 billion valuation. Gez. Going back a little bit, in October of last year, they raised at a I believe 11 billion dollar valuation. And then in February of last year, they raised at I believe a $5.5 billion valuation. So they've raised three times in 18 months.
21:03 Basically, napkin math doubling their valuation and not like a small one, right? They're uh big big double. Yeah. Like crazy like unicorn. These are these are unicorn numbers. And so that's that's who whatnot. It's a live shopping platform. Think think QVC for for the current generation, right?
21:26 QVC for the most part. And probably their part of their fall was that Matt, our generation didn't really buy into it like like the previous generation that was like, "Yeah." Oh my god. Pick up the phone, Dancy. You got a call. Yeah. Yep. Super silly to me. I never
21:45 understood it. Yeah. And so it skipped the live shopping because that is the OG of live shopping. It skip it skipped a generation or two. And what what not has done is they've they've married that with the brain rot scrolling, finding
22:04 things you want, short attention span of of Tik Tok. if you will, right? And now YouTube Shorts and and now Instagram Reels, they married the two, which TikTok is doing the same thing. Yeah. But they're not. And that's and and to
22:22 answer your question, the why it's because of that. So we've heard everybody who's been in ecom has heard live shopping is coming for like 10 years now. So much so to the point of like, cool. Yeah. Uh yeah, it is. you stop believing it, right? China's doing this, so we're not China. It's a completely different society. Um, you have different even buying psychology
22:47 among the two countries. We are not the same. But this is this is the the first time, you know, two years ago that it it felt a little bit different. So back in the beginning of last year, February, March, we were like, "Okay, this might feel
23:07 different this time. What do we where do we go? What do we do?" We know that eBay or Amazon is has tried to launch it a couple times and failed. We know YouTube tried to launch it a couple times and failed. We have a million followers on TikTok. Like, we should just do it there. We're having some success with TikTok shop and we should we should do it there. And then out of nowhere, we received an email from whatnot BDR sales professional
23:37 just reaching out. Hey, I'm starting I'm not even starting like we've we've established this outdoor category, right? And we think you guys would be great for it. Chatted with them. They gave us an offer that was pretty aggressive to to go with them and and try their platform out. And so we so we did. Now back to the
24:03 Yeah. TikTok's doing is not the same. It's not. So with TikTok, you're you're ingesting content, right? And the algorithm arguably I will say probably the best algorithm any of us have seen from a social media perspective. And some of the others have caught up now
24:22 to a certain extent. And maybe ownership change slowed them down. But that algorithm was phenomenal, right? It knew exactly when to pivot and show you this and show you that and just really get the brain rot fully rotting the brain. And in the mix, the algorithm is like,
24:38 "Oh yeah, buy this. Hey, buy this really quick." And that's that's what it is. The problem is you came on there to to to rot your brain. You didn't come on there to give money as well. Yeah. You didn't come right like be like scrolling through Amazon, right? like I
24:55 I'm not going to go scroll through Amazon to try to entertain myself. Go look. Yeah, you're scrolling through Amazon to buy something. And Tik Tok, you're not. Now the algorithm is so good. They get people to buy still, right? But what they're buying is very inexpensive typically, not always exception. There's exceptions, but you're buying a a
25:17 lowcost, lowpriced item that's significantly discounted and and free shipping and screaming deal and you don't care about who's selling it, what the brand is, who they stand for, what you're looking at the physic physical item only. You know, you buy something
25:36 on TikTok shop, I can ask you five minutes later, what brand did you buy it from? Who did you buy it from? They might not be able to tell you, but they can tell you what the item is. Yeah. And we saw that in the numbers. We saw on TikTok shop. And don't get me wrong,
25:49 we still are on TikTok shop. I think TikTok shop serves serves a great purpose. There is a halo effect on Amazon, not so much on the website, even though people might tell you that there's a halo effect, right? You have
26:01 you have the um older generation that see it and then go to Amazon. And I'm I'm part of that. Like I'll see something on Tik Tok. I've never buy anything on Tik Tok shop. I'll see something And then I'll try to find it on Amazon because I know Amazon has my
26:14 back. It's going to get to me in two days. If I have a problem with it, I don't like the way the bagging it came in.
26:22 They're going to accept it. Accept a return. So that exists but we were seeing call it $20 AOV and you know 1920 depending on the month and we weren't seeing much halo effect of actual coming more so like yeah Amazon sure we'll get some additional sales of a video pops but we weren't seeing membership and we
26:49 weren't seeing people coming into our ecosystem and saying hey I want to be a part of this oneoff items on the on the TikTok shop, not which you have to do oneoff. Yeah. And and we have to we do oneoff items on all marketplaces. They um we used to have
27:03 the subscription box on Amazon. They end of lifed. They just killed the program. We had active members. They said, "Hey, you can reach out to them and and get them back on your site. We just don't want
27:14 anything to do with it." So, it's always been the one-time marketplace, but it just the the there was a missing piece.
27:22 And I think it's the the ingestion to your point. You don't go on Amazon and ingest content. You go to buy flip it. Whatnot's doing the same thing with video and and and flipping, but just like Amazon, you go there to buy. And that's the the fundamental difference. And then they've peppered on this whole community vibe which is I think part of their the first
27:48 part is obviously a great not a novel idea. Amazon will eventually figure it out. eBay will eventually figure it out. Google will eventually figure it out. There the three of them are are going to figure out live shopping. That's not it's just a matter of when. Now, the community piece, I think, is kind of their moat, and they built all these
28:09 cool just organic parts of it. So, when you end a show on whatnot, I have 100 people on the show. I could end the show, but you never end the show. You raid someone else's show. You pick a show, you click raid, you drop yourself, and you're a hundred people into someone else's show. And then everybody's like, "We're raiding." And you want to be supportive. of the raid. So then you buy something of theirs.
28:38 That would be so cool. And I'm not and you know Battle Box John show raids Matt's show, right? You're not like I'm not making like a a compensation or referral from it at all. That's not what it's about.
28:51 But you know what, Matt? When you end your next show next week and Battle Box is on, you're raiding us because that's what you do. You raid each other. And there's a bunch of little things like that. Community are going to go do it. Yeah. These guys came on last week,
29:04 we're going to go get them this week and 100%. Let's show them. Let's show them love, too. And there's like little things like that. There's community boost, which you basically you hit you try to fill a meter up and when the meter gets filled,
29:16 all it's doing is running an ad for that channel for the next 15 minutes. And it's it's not ever funded by the brand.
29:24 It's 100% the entire feature is funded by your audience. your audience is paying money to run an ad for you to get more people. Like it's they've just done a phenomenal job of the community piece, which I think is is the key. So, that was a long- winded answer on on the why.
29:43 No, I I I love that. And so, we so we've had this phenomenon in Utah because like Facebook Live has been around for a while and there's a company called Comment Sold that allows you to like comment in the Facebook live.
29:56 Yeah. Yeah. So, I met a few founders out here that were doing like blankets and like minky blankets and other things and which to me was kind of insane because I was like, "How many minky blankets can somebody buy?" Well, now that I'm married with kids and stuff, like I find
30:09 out, you know, we can have 30 in the house. The answer is a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I'm slightly exaggerating. It's like 10 or 12, maybe more. But people would just they would love the person selling. Like, they were so
30:21 dynamic and so interesting. People would just love watching it. And then if there was a new design or pattern or anything, there was this feeling of exclusivity like there's only 10 of these or we only made 20 of these or whatever this and
30:33 people would buy them and they'd have like seven, eight, nine, 10 of these blanks. So I certainly can understand, but that's the hardest part to crack is the right is the organic verality. What's going to make somebody addicted to the platform so that you know the way
30:45 you think about Tik Tok for content? How and that's how we it's interesting. I want to go check out whatnot now cuz I have a buddy who's been selling some baseball or basketball cards on there. Yeah. He funny. He was telling me about it and
30:56 I tagged him on one of your posts because I was like this is you can go check Oh, I saw the tag. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
31:01 Yeah. Cuz it looks interesting. It's the the the community piece. So then, okay, as a consumer, Matt is a consumer, John is a consumer. If I just want to go in and I just want to buy something and be done with it as fast as possible, I'm gonna go on Amazon. I'm
31:18 gonna find it. Boop. Boop. two days send purchase, I'm in and out hopefully in less than a minute or two and I'm done.
31:24 But if I'm looking for something a little bit more, right? I'm I'm searching for some entertainment when I'm buying or like-minded people or, you know, in the in the basketball card example, other other basketball card people. You go to whatnot, right? And you you you get that and that just aligns so much with us with our content and community that they've
31:48 fostered community. So what we're seeing is just this organic they they come to our show for the whatnot community. They like what we do. Guess what? We're big on community and they just naturally then go to our website and get the
32:02 membership. It was uh it was wild. But we were doing this whole battle games golden ticket thing and uh I had when we would select winners for it, I had to just run some automation and make sure they were an active member, find their
32:15 profile. These are all these little rules that we that we have for legal reasons. And on the thing it was like uh two profiles found and it was for for three of the people. They had two
32:29 profiles. they add because it's a marketplace because you're not getting the email address because technically marketplaces view customers as their own and not yours which is just it is what it is. It's marketplaces. So it doesn't when it creates a profile in Shopify it's not giving us the email
32:46 no email. It can't it can't marry the two profiles. So we found multiple and it was it was interesting just because we were like holy cow. We dug in further and there's there's so many people that that come in that way. It's just it's it's super exciting. So, oh, by the way, AOV is 80 $80 instead of 20. So, we're
33:06 4xing AOV. And then the conversion rate of getting them to the site, not necessarily to buy, but to get them to the site from from TikTok verse BattlBox. And we're tracking that in um QR codes, you know, uh entering giveaways, you know, the ways you might get someone to come from a marketplace.
33:30 They uh it's performing probably last time I looked it was like 30 30 times more efficient, 30 times verse Tik Tok shop again because of the reason you said, right? If you're buying, you don't you're not scrolling through Amazon to to to check content. you're scrolling
33:48 through Amazon to purchase something and and they've house they've somehow kept that mindset but then gave the entertainment piece that TikTok possesses. So it's it's just wild. It's this highly profitable channel. It's now our second biggest channel. We launched in April of last year. It's our second biggest channel. It's bigger than our
34:07 Amazon now. Obviously number one's DTOC website. We're that that's that is the lion share of the business. That's not changing. But it's become this meaningful meaningful channel. Second
34:20 largest I you know you if we take every month seems to be our best month ever. July was our best month ever. We we cracked over 400k in July. It was our first over 400k month. And so you just quick math. I mean, it's it's a $5 million channel for us with clear clear
34:39 clear path to double that, which is just wild that it can also serve as top of funnel for us for our important product, which is the membership.
34:51 Um, yeah, that see like what I was asking when I was asking you before we were starting like like and I feel like you just tied it all together. It's like whatnot. The live selling isn't about just the oneoff products, the knife or
35:04 or the camping piece of camping gear. It's you're on a platform where there's natural community reality like an organic component built into it. The intent of why people are there lines up with why you're there and why they might
35:17 want to keep connecting with you, discovering more content, visiting your website, getting into some of these giveaways. So, it makes a real natural tiein. And then talking about the content like again it's interesting I
35:28 didn't ask about the the billing reminder and talk about engagement thinking about this part of the conversation. Sure that is kind of like a really great way to bring it all together as you're you're talking about you guys are really great at engaging
35:40 with existing customers and members and potential customers and members and whatnot as a way for you to do that that actually generates revenue on the channel as well as in your main
35:52 business. Yeah, it's it's it's wild to be such a large profitable sales channel that is truly serving as top of funnel for for the membership. It's just crazy. Cool. Okay, so as we wrap up, one last
36:06 question just for you. I know you've been in the in the space for a really long time. You're incredibly helpful. I, you know, giving advice and mentorship and all kinds of things. Is there anything you've seen in the last 6 to 12
36:17 months in the subscription space that you think people should be paying attention to more or a piece of advice to not do? Like anything like just that a gem or something like that that that people that are building subscription
36:30 businesses should be should pay attention to? Yeah, I think I think I um if I had to pick one thing right now, I said it earlier. Not I was going to say I accidentally said it earlier, but I mean it was it's the truth, but you called it out right away and was talking about talking to the customers, you
36:47 know, your your your highv value customers versus trying to figure it out on the customers that left. I think just taking a step back and and looking at all the the the good things just like you know a couple years ago all of a sudden people stopped caring about acquisition like people cared about
37:08 acquisition only then a couple of years ago they're like oh retention is important too but they only did that because acquisition has become that much more harder now they're caring right like take it a
37:19 step further proactively don't wait for the force change like everybody was forced to care about retention because because acquisition was difficult. Like take it a step further and I guess you could argue it is all part of retention,
37:33 right? Everything everything can be a part of retention. All roads lead towards retaining your people after you get them. But take that proactive approach and and and talk to your best
37:46 customers. Understand them. How do you improve the product? They're going to give you the gold. find the little proactive morsels like that. What are you doing really well in the business that that you can leverage to to to rise
38:00 all ships which then in theory could could help with acquisition could help with other other avenues of the business. I would think that that's be more proactive less reactive which is a I get it so much easier to say than than
38:15 it's so it is still hard but yeah but make time for it. make make absolute time for Yeah, I I love that. So being proactive with
38:27 building programs that fit for your best subscribers, learning who those people are, not being scared about the people that are leaving. And yeah, as you're talking, I'm not sure we would see the subscription space be as popular as it
38:40 was if you didn't have every acquisition guy under the sun saying, "If I know what my CACTV ratio is, then I know that, you know, I I need that TV up because CAC has gone up." So, uh, yeah.
38:53 Awesome. One last very quick question. Did the guy the BDR from whatnot did that email sales email make it into the uh good sales email post on LinkedIn or Twitter? So he he didn't he didn't send it to me.
39:06 So he sent it to he sent it to Cameron who who who Cam Cameron's story. Cameron came in as a marketing coordinator the the whatnot guy who now leads all of outdoor and has become a very large category on Whatnot. So he's like he's he's gotten his well well-deserved promotions, but Cameron got pinged as the marketing coordinator and now now he
39:29 leads social commerce for us because that's its own department because we we really view that as this this new future. And then we're fortunate that we're able to tie it in to the membership because because that's not
39:41 going anywhere. Subscription is not going anywhere. Sweet. All right. Well, John, thank you so much for coming on the show. For everybody listening at home, I highly recommend you give John a follow on LinkedIn and on Twitter. I mentioned he's got a few
39:54 other things. He runs online queso, which is an online blog. I've contributed to that a few times over the years and he does a really fun series where he calls out really bad sales emails and um because we are all getting
40:06 them all the time. But but again, uh just as a great guy to connect with in the subscription community, John Roman,
40:13 thanks for coming on the show, buddy. Hey, thanks for having me. Absolutely. All right, that's it for this week's dose. Stay tuned next week for [music] another episode of Subscription Prescription.
40:26 That's it for today. Thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe so that you can get notified when new episodes [music] come out each week on Tuesdays.
