Bonafide transforms into a best-in-class subscription-first brand while unlocking 79% more sales with Ordergroove

Bonafide is a health and wellness supplement brand offering women of all ages an impressive range of naturally powerful remedies for the symptoms that occur throughout their lives — from PMS to menopause, and anything else along the way. 

Because natural remedies require consistent use to reach peak efficacy, Bonafide knew early on that subscriptions made perfect sense for their product line. However, after launching their subscriptions with a previous provider, they realized they needed a more flexible and scalable solution to fully actualize their vision and seamlessly integrate subscriptions into every aspect of the customer journey. 

And so began Bonafide’s incredible growth story with Ordergroove–one that saw scalable profitable growth and a limitless innovation thanks to a flexible platform that turned Bonafide into a best-in-class subscription-first pioneer.

Migrating to Ordergroove to scale up subscription revenue

After reviewing multiple subscription solutions, Bonafide recognized that Ordergroove was the only provider that could take them to the next level. Ordergroove’s platform stood out with its enterprise-grade scalability and levers for profitable growth — complete with bundling and prepaid bulk ordering capabilities, powerful Shopify and Snowflake integrations, and an unmatched flexible developer platform to create personalized subscriber experiences.

“The impetus for migrating to a new subscription solution was that we wanted to build long-lasting customer relationships that grow customer lifetime value (LTV) and offset customer acquisition costs,” said Nargiza Dakmak, Director of eCommerce at Bonafide. “Ordergroove gave us the flexibility to get there by offering a better subscriber experience.”

Upgrading to Ordergroove was exactly what it took for Bonafide to shift their business model from relying on one-time transactions to a model that prioritizes and establishes indispensable customer relationships that drive profitable growth. 

Today, Bonafide is a subscription-first brand with subscriptions accounting for 80% of online sales. They got there by crafting an industry-leading subscriber experience that pulls every lever for profitable growth — from offering prepaid 3-month plans as the default purchasing option, to dynamic bundle incentives and one-click upsells, and personalized winback campaigns to prevent churn – all thanks to integrating Ordergroove’s flexible enterprise technology into the core of their business. 

Subscription bundles, incentives, and upsells take average order value to new heights

Subscription bundles are a great means to drive repeat business while introducing new products to improve retention and grow average order value (AOV). Bonafide knew that expanding their offering with thoughtful fixed kit bundles – and also incentivizing customers to build their own unique bundles with tiered discounts – would benefit both their subscribers and their bottom line.

However, their first subscription provider offered little to configure a range of product bundles and incentives on the backend – let alone deliver the kind of bespoke front-end shopping experience that pays off in higher retention and LTV. 

That changed when Bonafide migrated to Ordergroove and unlocked the flexibility they needed to not only launch thematic bundles designed to tackle common co-occurring symptoms — but also offer dynamic Subscribe More, Save More incentives as customers fill their carts.

“Once they’re a subscriber, they can earn more savings by adding more products to their subscription. So it’s beneficial for our customers to try new products, get relief for multiple symptoms — and do it easily,” Nargiza said. “They can add to their subscription order at any time with one-click, so a lot of people gravitate toward multiple products in their subscriptions.” 

Bonafide’s tiered incentives are dynamically applied to subscriber orders based on a combination of pricing thresholds and the exact products the customer has already subscribed to. 

“The beauty of it is that it’s dynamic and flexible,” Nargiza said. “Our customers don’t have to stick to a certain bundle. If she adds more products, the price will update. The idea is the more she adds, the more she saves.” 

Bonafide credits Ordergroove’s powerful bundling and dynamic incentive capabilities with a marked improvement in a leading success metric for their business.

“We’ve seen a really big uptake of our multiple purchase rate,” Nargiza said. “We saw 20% growth since launching with Ordergroove.”

Improving retention and lifetime value with prepaid 3-month subscription plans

After noticing high subscriber churn with their first subscription solution, Bonafide suspected that retention would improve if they could offer a more robust product supply that lasts longer than one month. 

“Our products have to be used over time to reach peak efficacy,” Nargiza said. “On a one-month subscription, you could get frustrated.” 

Switching to Ordergroove gave Bonafide the capabilities they needed to launch 3-month subscription plans — and confirm their hypothesis that offering prepaid subscriptions would improve their retention and lifetime value (LTV). 

The positive results were undeniable. Their 3-month subscription plan not only won over more customers by delivering more value for their money, but also gave subscribers more time to see results and fall for their products.

“When we launched our 3-month subscriptions, we noticed a change in customer behavior, and the churn rate dipped significantly — three-month subscribers are less likely to churn after their first purchase than month-to-month subscribers,” Nargiza said. “And when subscribers purchase three months of product upfront, LTV and AOV are immediately higher than with a month-to-month subscription.” 

Within one year of launching prepaid 3-month subscription plans with Ordergroove, Bonafide unlocked a 22.5% lift in LTV year-over-year.

Attracting the most valuable subscribers with a winning subscription offer at the heart of the shopping journey 

Introducing prepaid 3-month plans was the first of Bonafide’s major breakthroughs for building their most loyal, high-value customer segment — but it wasn’t until they put their winning subscription offer front-and-center of the shopping journey that longer-term subscribers became the majority of their customer base. 

In practice, that meant making 3-month subscription plans the default purchasing option on product pages. 

“People really seemed to gravitate towards our three-month subscription plans even before they were the default purchase option,” Nargiza said. “We thought our conversion rate might take a hit if we made that the default — but as soon as we did, we saw an immediate increase in bulk subscription adoption.” 

“It was a small update to our website experience, but it had a huge impact on our business,” Nargiza said.

Today, 60% of Bonafide’s subscriber base is on a prepaid 3-month subscription plan — significantly contributing to Bonafide’s subscription-first transformation, with subscriptions now accounting for 80% of their total online sales. 

Personalized upsell and cross-sell offers engage subscribers across marketing channels

The flexibility to deliver bespoke, personalized subscriber experiences was Bonafide’s primary motivation for upgrading their subscription technology. With Ordergroove, the revenue-boosting upsell and cross-sell offers they envisioned tailoring to subscribers’ needs and purchase history could finally be brought to life. 

Bonafide’s vision was made possible by Ordergroove’s flexible APIs, common data model, and developer platform, allowing them to create a bespoke frictionless subscriber experience called Magic Link. Now, every link in their email and SMS marketing is dynamically tied to their customers’ Shopify IDs, giving Bonafide meaningful control over the subscriber experience — and delighting subscribers with a shopping experience optimized just for them.

When existing subscribers click on a personalized link, they are automatically logged into their subscription account as soon as they land onsite. No matter what product page they land on, subscribers can add items to their subscription order in one click — no checkout necessary. Bonafide uses Magic Link in conjunction with Ordergroove data to recommend additional products that align with a subscriber’s recurring order.

“If our customer wants to try a new product, it’s added instantly,” Nargiza said. “She doesn’t have to add her credit card information. It makes it really easy for her to build her basket.” 

These convenient links dramatically reduced friction for customers, jump-starting Bonafide’s profitable growth with a 60% higher cross-sell rate — and 44% more upsell revenue within the first three months of launching Magic Link.  

Powerful analytics make it easy to reduce churn with effective winback campaigns

Right out of the gate, Bonafide integrated Ordergroove data with Shopify and the rest of their analytics tech stack to easily monitor subscription performance and put subscriptions at the heart of their business strategy.

“The way we’re integrated with Ordergroove lets us trigger anything we want with our customer data because it’s so customizable,” Nargiza said. “Ordergroove meets us at the enterprise level, and the analytics alone shed light on other facets of the business that can support our subscription model.”

And as a business that now generates the vast majority of its revenue through subscriptions, Bonafide saw an opportunity to take advantage of Ordergroove’s flexible technology and develop a bespoke solution to better retain their most valuable 3-month plan subscribers.

After testing a range of offers to re-engage their longtime, highest LTV subscribers who might be at risk of overstock-related churn, Bonafide used Ordergroove’s flexible APIs and developer platform to build an attention-grabbing 50% off discount into their custom winback flow — a generous offer that paid for itself by fueling better retention and LTV by extension.

Since launching their smart winback campaign fueled by Ordergroove data, Bonafide retains about 25% of subscribers that initiated a cancellation — a 56% improvement compared to their previous flow. 

The sky’s the limit as a subscription-first brand

Offering subscriptions is one thing, but transforming a business into an innovative subscription-first brand is quite another. When it comes to making subscription sales the lion’s share of your business revenue, technology built for smooth integrations with the rest of your tech stack is a non-negotiable for creating frictionless customer experiences at scale.

For Bonafide, the road to a successful subscription-first model was built on Ordergroove’s profitable growth levers and unmatched flexibility for enterprise brands — opening the floodgates of continuous innovation.

From testing free gifts with purchase and combining subscriptions with loyalty points, to new LTV-focused winback flows and updates to best-selling products on the roadmap, Bonafide can do it all with Ordergroove. 

In fact, Bonafide’s remarkable growth story is the ultimate example of what brands can achieve by fully integrating Ordergroove into the core of their business and making the most of the platform’s benefits and unmatched flexibility. 

“I would definitely recommend Ordergroove to any company looking to become a subscription-first business,” Nargiza said. “Migrating to a new subscription solution is a serious decision, but the level of innovation Ordergroove allows us to pull off — from tailored messaging to personalized site experiences — made our migration worthwhile.”