If anyone knows how to focus, it's Kent Yoshimura and Ryan Chen. Beginning their journey together by mixing supplements in a dorm room, to using Kent’s personal phone as the customer service line and his apartment as a distribution center, Neuro has since expanded significantly. With Smartrr, Neuro is seeing subscription revenue up 88% and AOV up 20% this year.
As busy college students trying to balance athletics and classes, Kent and Ryan found that the only available energy options in the marketplace were sugary drinks, caffeine pills, and Adderall–nothing they were interested in taking. The duo knew they needed a clean, balanced energy alternative with transparent ingredients to keep them going throughout the day. With their combination of degrees in neuroscience, chemistry, and economics, as well as training with Olympic and Paralympic teams, Kent was inspired to start mixing supplements in his dorm room and test them out with Ryan.
The less-than-convenient way of transporting their supplements via Ziploc bags made the two friends realize that they needed to find a better way to create an approachable, sharable energy and health product. The first idea that came to their minds? Gum and mints, igniting the spark on their journey to perfecting Neuro.
Kent and Ryan saw instant success after launching an Indiegogo campaign; hitting their goal in just 3 days was only the beginning. This triggered a domino effect securing a spot in Time magazine and the Dr. Oz show shortly after, ultimately, causing them to run out of inventory almost immediately. This exposure proved that people were interested in energy options different than the aggressively marketed energy drinks and supplements; they just didn’t know where to turn before Neuro. Kent and Ryan then realized that they had a true business on their hands. After spending a year on R&D, Neuro perfected their products to effectively energize, calm, and focus consumers only using sustainable, high-quality ingredients.
Because the daily usage of energy and health products is a huge part of American consumerism, Kent knew that subscriptions would be a vital part of their core offering early on. Instead of supplements that sit in bottles in your medicine cabinet, the team focused on designing a brand that fits your schedule, built on the idea that health should be accessible, sharable, and available at any time. Subscriptions perfectly align with Neuro’s mission of establishing a mindset in consumers to replace their afternoon coffee with Neuro gum and mints instead, ultimately strengthening customer lifetime value.
Neuro launched their subscription program on Recharge, but the bubble eventually burst after the legacy subscription tool became complacent. The Neuro team migrated to Smartrr to level up their subscription program and create deeper, mutually-beneficial relationships with subscribers.
“We were originally using Recharge, the dinosaur in the room now, for a long time. But it seemed like they became complacent in the way they were handling subscriptions and we wanted to create deeper relationships with our customer base. The customizability and ability to own our own checkout, all the things that tie into the mantra that we set to give our customers the best experience possible, weren’t existent unless we paid an exorbitant amount of money. Thankfully we found Smartrr early on.”
– Kent Yoshimura, Neuro Co-Founder
To promote their subscription program, Neuro dedicates an entire page on their website to outline the details of their subscription program. In addition, Neuro defaults to subscriptions on their PDP and includes subscriptions as part of an email flow for new customers.
To delight subscribers and reward them for their loyalty, Neuro offers a variety of perks, such as early access to new products, exclusive merch, special member-only deals and discounts, as well as additional loyalty points for subscribers. For special days, such as a subscriber’s birthday or a 1-year subscription anniversary, Neuro also rewards subscribers with free products or special discounts.
Since migrating to Smartrr, Neuro has seen impactful growth. This year, subscription revenue is up 88% and AOV has increased by 20%!
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30% of Neuro’s customers always come back and buy a second time. That statistic single-handedly has become one of the most important stats to analyze the success of their communication with customers in an effort to maintain that level of buyback and retention. Ultimately, retention is one of Neuro’s top priorities and subscriptions are a key component in achieving that KPI.
“A big push for us in the next year is to come back to our roots with eCommerce. Especially because it's so much easier to message people the way we want to and build a loyal customer base. This is where apps like Smartrr really come into play.”
– Kent Yoshimura, Neuro Co-Founder
Looking ahead, the Neuro team plans to hone in on how they can make their customers feel extra special, especially their most loyal customers, to create a true membership experience.
