Is Recharge the Most Essential App on Shopify?

Happy Friday :) 

Last year I made my first ever angel investment. I was hooked on this matcha company called Tenzo Tea like it was crack cocaine. Delicious, healthy, filled with energy, and not the 700-calorie bullshit morning drink I’d get from Starbucks every day. 

Before I invested what felt like a part-time teacher’s salary into Tenzo, I was in love with the product. 

Outside of beautiful packaging and an amazing product, they had their user experience down to a science. 

I don’t know about you guys, but I only subscribe to ONE company for monthly orders. I’m convinced that the reason why was Recharge. 

Each month I get a simple text like this that says, “Your Tenzo is scheduled to be shipped in just a few days.” I’m then given the opportunity to skip my order because I have enough (never the case), change my shipping address, or even add on to my order! Back in the old days, this functionally would all be done manually with a handful of customer service agents and allow for a ton of errors by hand. 

Steve and Robbie at Tenzo now have these automated messages firing once a month to thousands of their loyal customers and all of their answers are quickly answered within seconds and compiled into Shopify before that day’s orders are shipped out. Steve O’Dell, the founder of Tenzo, says, “On the consumer side, we opt for maximum flexibility and a frictionless experience. We use their SMS product so consumers can easily swap, skip, delay, or add a one-time product with a simple text exchange.” 

Like I’ve talked about all year long, profitability is the name of the game. When you start racking up these subscriptions, you can start to better understand your true LTV and how long a customer sticks around. Have a $50 product like Steve’s and an acquisition cost of $200? That seems terrible in reality… but now, what if I told you Tenzo customers stick around on average for 24 months? That’s now $1200 in sales for $200. Plus, don’t forget all the potential upsells via email & SMS along the way. Talk about a cash-flowing business! 

Recharge powers over 15k merchants & 50M subscribers! More than 80% of subscription merchants on Shopify use it. It’s kind of a no brainer, and some other benefits include:

• Increase customer LTV

• Increase customer retention

• Lower customer acquisition costs

• Lower inventory costs

• Better cash flow 

This summer, I’m working with Recharge to figure out how we can expand our customer LTV and even get customers hooked on seasonal drops that we are going to be doing for Good Sport. We’ll be releasing new backyard games with one of the biggest influencers in the world at the helm, and customers will have the option to pre-buy our drops, so they get them weeks before the general public. Talk about a customer experience!

As I’m learning more about the tool, they even have an incredible workflow that allows Tenzo and Good Sport to auto-swap SKUS. For example, when I first signed up for Tenzo, I got a “trial kit” that included a bowl, a whisk, and some matcha. On the backend, a month later, I updated to just a recurring purchase of matcha. Talk about unlimited flexibility.

If you’re looking to expand LTV & provide your customers with a white glove experience please, calendar out some time this weekend to add Recharge to your store. 

You can check them out here and get started for free today through my newsletter.

Hope you have the best weekend ever,

Chris