Reduced CAC with Google Ads and UI experiments
About
Battlbox is a subscription service that provides a variation of camping, survival, everyday carry, and outdoor gear. The selection varies monthly as each is themed and focuses around that theme, with four pricing tiers that range from $24.99-$149.99 per month.
Offering a unique and wide variety of full-sized gear and products on a subscription basis, Battlbox grew quickly with the help of key influencer partnerships and ongoing testing around website optimization.
“Battlbox decided to use Recharge as their subscription billing solution as it was affordable and offered top-notch support. “Our account manager at Recharge rocks. She’s always quick to troubleshoot and help resolve issues, and if she’s tied up another member of the team is quick to jump in and assist.”
Patrick Kelley
COO of Battlbox
Challenge
Battlbox had been working hard to lower customer acquisition costs and to boost customer loyalty—and needed to be sure they were using a subscription billing platform that could accommodate those efforts.
“Customer acquisition had been a challenge,” said John Roman, CMO of BattlBox. “The expenses associated with these efforts kept increasing, and our partnerships with influencers that were mainly responsible for initial exponential growth have slowed down a bit. Despite our work with AdWords and Facebook, some of our products (like knives) can make things challenging.”
As a result, they looked to Recharge integrations like Swell for a rewards and referral program that would work alongside Recharge with the end goal to build more long-term sustainability into their business.
“Swell’s loyalty program will contribute to lower churn and higher customer LTV by incentivizing longer subscriptions, higher spending, and engagement on social media,” Stewart Wesley, Partnership Manager of Swell explained, “By working with Swell and their current agency partner, WolfPoint, to deploy Swell’s program, Battlbox will be able to ensure a consistent brand experience across their site.”
With the right developer to implement their loyalty program, Battlbox aims to reduce customer churn and boost loyalty with existing customers, grow subscribers around their four tiers of subscription boxes, and introduce a rewards program that would incentivize referrals and spending for current subscribers.
Solution
After migrating BattlBox onto Shopify Plus and Recharge and building them a custom theme, developer Wolfpoint Agency was able to create a custom dashboard for BattlBox’s users to be able to fully control their subscriptions in an on-brand backend experience by leveraging Recharge’s highly flexible API, while also incorporating increased functionality like a rewards program via Swell. Once launched, Swell’s referral program will allow Battlbox to leverage their existing customer base to spread their message and acquire new customers for only $20 in merchandise value.
Results
From there, they focused on improved UI/UX on their site. After rounds of A/B and multivariate testing, Battlbox discovered key insights that would eventually lead to further growth.
Jon Murphy, CEO of Wolfpoint explained the end goal, "Taking advantage of Recharge’s API to modify the look of the customer portal, they made it so that the top three most-used activities were spotlighted. This was a major improvement for usability of the site that helped accommodate customer behaviors in a subtle yet visual way.”
Today, they have 40% of customers in the $149.99/mo subscription tier and have boosted average lifespan of a customer to 185 days.
“As we see ecommerce revenues continue to grow year over year, we will see the subscriptions sector of ecommerce grow as well-and we’re thankful to have Recharge as a partner in this.”
John Roman
CMO of Battlbox
