Oats Overnight delivers a masterclass in subscription personalization
About
Brian Tate loves two things: a good breakfast and making things easy. So when he founded the breakfast delivery service Oats Overnight in 2016, his goal was to make his go-to morning meal extra simple for subscribers to enjoy. Since then, the company has transformed from a tiny outfit based in Brian’s kitchen into a breakfast powerhouse with products on shelves at Walmart, Target, and Whole Foods.
Oats Overnight offers over 40 flavors ranging from staples like Green Apple Cinnamon to the more adventurous Cookies & Cream and Peach Upside Down Cake. And with a prep process that’s as easy as pouring a packet into a BlenderBottle(R) with some milk and giving it a shake, it’s no wonder the product has become a staple in thousands of customers’ morning routines.
Oats Overnight’s list of achievements is long and growing: they’ve raised Series A funding, they’ve eclipsed 250,000 active subscribers, and they’ve increased their net revenue by over 350% since 2021. Oats Overnight built its own success by pairing a robust ecommerce strategy with a first-rate product built through community feedback. Making their product subscription-first removes what little fuss might remain in the process, giving their subscribers one less thing to worry about and letting them focus on their mornings.
Personalizing the subscriber experience
Oats Overnight first partnered with Recharge to elevate their subscription experience in 2016. Since then they’ve taken the subscription-first model to heart: today, over 90% of the company’s revenue comes from subscription orders, and subscribers are ordering more and staying subscribed longer.In 2023, for example, they posted:
- 152% more recurring orders
- 41% longer average subscription duration
- 13% higher average order value
- 29% less churn
Their secret? A thoughtful, holistic retention strategy built on customization and personalization.
“In the ever changing landscape of ecommerce, Recharge has been a beacon of consistency and innovation. Our company has changed and evolved so much over the last 7 years and our partnership with Recharge has helped us stay ahead of the game, evolve with the needs of our customer base, and consistently deliver a world class subscription experience.”
Challenge
A revamped customer portal with Recharge SDKs
Oats Overnight leaned on Recharge’s SDKs to revamp their subscriber portal in 2023, enabling customers to skip, swap, cancel, and adjust upcoming shipments anytime.The portal also grants subscribers access to unique, exclusive perks, including the ability to add notes and ratings on their favorite flavors and year-round access to exotic and seasonal flavors—a huge win for pumpkin spice lovers everywhere.
Solution
Enhanced insights with Recharge Analytics
Customer insights are essential to a top-notch retention program. Oats Overnight uses Recharge Analytics to target their most loyal customers with offers like free samples, dibs on new flavors, and opportunities to provide product feedback.Analytics also guides other experiments for the company. In 2023, for example, Oats Overnight wanted to turn more one-time purchases into subscriptions. They explored bumping the first-order discount for new subscribers up to a hefty 25%, but needed to be sure that the impact would outweigh the investment. Armed with data and insights, they determined that the steep discount more than paid for itself and generated more lasting subscriptions than same-day cancellations.
Results
Easy back-end management with dynamic bundles
One of Oats Overnight’s killer features is their bundle builder, which subscribers can use to stock shipments with their favorite flavor combinations. Its original setup could be inflexible and difficult to manage, so the company needed a new option that would be easy for their team on the back end without disrupting the seamless experience their subscribers loved.The solution was to leverage Recharge’s dynamically-priced bundles feature, which enables shoppers to build custom product bundles and recalculates the price on the fly—it even accounts for factors like subscriber discounts. Oats Overnight worked with the Recharge team to implement it into their bundle builder, easing the load on their own team without affecting the customer interface.
