Whisker trades in homegrown tech, unlocking 14% recurring revenue growth in 4 months

With millions of Litter-Robots in homes around the world — all requiring secondary items like cat litter, waste liners, and odor filters for ongoing use — Whisker launched subscriptions in 2019 with the goal of streamlining repeat purchases and transforming single transactions into long lasting, profitable customer relationships.

After building their first subscriber experience on homegrown technology, Whisker found that the ongoing maintenance of their solution was too significant. Basic subscription analytics were out of reach, and the innovations they had in mind to drive growth — like flexible incentives to boost enrollment and average order value (AOV) — would have to be developed from scratch, further draining internal resources.

To tap into the full growth potential of subscriptions, Whisker knew they had to upgrade their homegrown solution to a world class recurring revenue platform — ideally one offering full control over their promotional framework, with the ability to rapidly test and scale new offers without excessive operations or internal development

“We had a short list of vendors we were evaluating over the course of a few months,” said Mike Woodall, Director of CRM & Subscriptions at Whisker. “The tech capabilities and strategic expertise we saw during that evaluation period made it clear that Ordergroove was hands down the only partner for the vision and needs that we had.”

Whisker’s growth-centered subscription strategy begins with subscriber acquisition

For most cat owners, the Litter-Robot is a one-time purchase. Whisker knew their recurring revenue growth potential would come down to driving subscription enrollment and retention for their secondary pet care consumable products such as kitty litter, tray liners, and deodorizers.

With strategic support from Ordergroove to guide them, Whisker put their growth strategy into action soon after migration in early 2024 and kicked off a series of product page optimizations and incentive tests to explode their subscriber enrollment rates.

Optimizing product pages for enrollment

When they moved over to Ordergroove, Whisker had already implemented one of the most powerful best practices among subscription-first brands: making subscriptions the default purchase option on each product page.

“The decision to make subscriptions the pre-selected option was a no-brainer for us,” Mike said. “Between the free shipping, enrollment incentives, and easy subscription management we were able to offer with Ordergroove, we knew our upgraded subscriber experience was going to be appealing to customers.”

To make the decision to enroll even easier for shoppers, Whisker revamped their product pages to outline all the benefits and highlight the flexible subscriber experience switching to Ordergroove unlocked.

Before making these optimizations, 80% of customers were buying Whisker’s consumables as a one-time purchase. Since relaunching their subscription-focused product pages, subscription purchases for secondary products have more than doubled, growing 105% — alongside a 68% increase in Whisker’s new subscription sign ups — which according to Mike, “Makes every month essentially like Black Friday for our subscriptions.”

Flexible incentives fuel acquisition — and higher purchase quantities

With their product pages driving more subscription purchases than ever, Whisker shifted their focus to creating a best-in-class incentive strategy to further fuel subscriber base growth and AOV by encouraging multi-product subscriptions and higher purchase quantities.

The ultimate winning offer that brought the most customer delight and best overall value for the business? An aggressive Subscribe and Save discount of 20% on the first order, plus free shipping.

Thanks to the positive unit economics and valuable repeat purchases that come with subscriptions, Ordergroove has made it even easier to build dynamic incentive structures by customers or product groups.

Whisker’s testing and iterating paid off in dividends when applying Ordergroove’s incentive structures, resulting in 41% growth in their subscriber base in only four months.

To drive that growth even further, Whisker set out to boost AOV with an even steeper Subscribe More, Save More promotion offering shoppers 25% off their first subscription order of two or more items that turned multi-product subscriptions into an offer cat owners couldn’t refuse.

“Having this other incentive gave us a way to promote more of our consumables together as complementary products, while offering customers a deeper discount for subscribing to more items,” Mike said. “We hoped that it would encourage customers to at least try an additional secondary product that they may not have otherwise considered.”

And it certainly did! As a result of their Subscribe More, Save More incentive, 70% of Whisker’s subscribers are now enrolled in subscriptions for two or more of their consumable products.

Using Ordergroove’s detailed subscriber cohort analytics, they’re excited to continue optimizing the subscriber experience with recurring discounts in the future.

Putting the spotlight on subscriptions across the shopping journey

With the incentive-focused experience they envisioned live and delivering impact, the next step of Whisker’s recurring revenue growth strategy was to consistently enable subscription enrollment and promotions across the shopping journey from their website to their Whisker mobile app.

Whisker makes subscriptions the primary offer when shopping for Litter-Robot accessories or essentials on their website, calling out the benefits with eye-catching banners and iconography focused on cost savings and quantity discounts.

With Ordergroove’s strategic guidance and flexible technology, Whisker even uses the shopping cart as an opportunity to cross-sell and upsell complementary items as single and multi-product subscriptions — emphasizing all the subscription benefits and cost savings from their Subscribe More, Save More offer — whether shoppers have a one-time purchase, single subscription, or non-subscription item like the Litter-Robot itself in their cart.

For Whisker, every touchpoint in the customer journey is an opportunity to promote subscriptions — and that philosophy has turned their mobile app into a primary acquisition channel for new subscription signups.

“We benefit from having a captive audience that periodically has to come to the Whisker app when they get notifications about waste or low litter levels,” said Mike. “We take advantage of these moments to drive even more subscription sales as customers interact with their Litter-Robot.”

Since enabling a web view within the app to give customers the same website experience and improved subscription purchase process they’d get with the online store, the Whisker mobile app is driving 30-40% of all new subscription signups.

“Ordergroove gave us the ability to innovate on our subscriber experience holistically and really embed it across our entire ecosystem from the website to the app,” said Mike. “Now our growth has improved so much that we’re seeing a direct correlation between our total number of Litter-Robot sales and our total number of new subscriptions.”

Evolving their best-in-class subscriber experience for long-term growth

In addition to driving explosive growth in Whisker’s subscriber base, Ordergroove has helped improve the subscriber experience with a new level of flexibility.

“The switch to Ordergroove alone allows our subscribers to tailor their experience to their exact needs,” said Mike. “The options to send an order immediately, pause everything, and adjust the frequency are more robust than even what Amazon offers subscribers — which helps us stay ahead of the curve, and even compete with those larger companies.”

These updates to Whisker’s subscription management and overall subscriber experience has also helped to drive a 36% reduction in churn. This significant improvement in customer retention, coupled with the boost in high-value customers has grown Whisker’s overall customer lifetime value and recurring revenue dramatically.

Achieving their ideal subscription vision

The results of Whisker’s subscriber experience optimizations, dynamic incentives, and cross-channel promotional strategies, coupled with their subscription management improvements, speak for themselves. The results and improvements also earned Whisker SubSummit’s 2024 Cube Award for Best Pet Subscription.

“We needed a subscription solution that would let us achieve our ideal subscription vision — not stand in the way of it — and we found that in Ordergroove’s technology and strategic partnership.” Mike said. “It’s been a night and day difference in our performance and growth since migration.”

With their award-winning subscription vision brought to life and aggressive growth targets in reach, Whisker is already thinking about new ways to go beyond subscribe and save to stay ahead of the innovation curve within the pet category with even more exceptional experiences like prepaid and rotating club subscriptions.

For brands like Whisker, finding a subscription strategy that fosters repeat purchases for consumables and secondary products is the key to getting onboard retail’s recurring revenue revolution and ensuring sustainable business growth — and the right technology makes all the difference.