Evolving Your Value Proposition by Understanding Your Subscribers
AMA with KC Duggan, Director of Revenue Systems, Mindbody
As you and your team continue to accelerate the subscription-based digital transformation, we want to focus on discussing proven and adaptable acquisition and onboarding strategies that not only drive growth, but ultimately lead to a better full-journey subscriber experience and an increased customer lifetime value. Our goal was to deliver actionable insights and provide connections for your continued success.
KC Duggan, Director of Revenue Systems, Mindbody
“One of things we’ve found is that we were over-complicating a lot of our efforts and have settled down into broader, but more effective data points. Are you a local and what’s your favorite section? Much more nuance than that tends to be wasted in our world.”
Full Transcript
*Questions submitted by community members
Welcome everyone to this weeks AMA with KC Duggan from Mindbody! As the Director of Revenue Systems at MINDBODY, KC oversees a team that is responsible for increasing organizational velocity and the efficiency of our Revenue Teams through system optimization, integration and seamless digital adoption. After graduating Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University, she built her career on her willingness to take risks and her ability to lead teams to deliver value. Her focus continues to be centered on creative and collaborative leadership, directing operational activities, and executing strategies that deliver positive outcomes. Thanks for being here with us today! I will go ahead and kick us off! the first few questions are related to the recent ClassPass acquisition.
Question: Mindbody is acquiring ClassPass. What will be the best subscription opportunities and hardest challenges in the future of bringing ClassPass on board?
We are super excited to welcome ClassPass into the Mindbody family. We don’t know a lot about the integration plans, but we know both teams are excited to grow our companies together and connect more people to wellness experiences.
Question: I had met someone from ClassPass at a conference a few years ago -- she was telling me how aggressive they are at testing web experiences -- running hundreds of tests per year. I am curious if Mindbody has the same philosophy or you expect to be adopting some of these from ClassPass with the recent acquisition.
I can't speak to ClassPass processes or methodologies, other than I'm excited to learn from them. But, I can tell you Mindbody has an amazing User Experience Team that sits within our Product organization. Their focus is on ensuring our products are not only easy to use, but also accessible to all. Right now, we’re actively working and iterating on product improvements to address audio and visual impairments and other disabilities.
When it comes to our “philosophy” I would say iteration is key. The teams take a variety of approaches to ensure we’re delivering products that provide a value to the customers we serve. Like alpha and beta tests with customers, research groups, and in-product feedback on newly released features.
It seems like a win-win for gyms and clients - can’t wait to see how it unfolds.
Question: And rather similar to the first question…The acquisition of ClassPass is super exciting and makes a ton of sense -- congrats! What are you most excited about from this acquisition?
Thank you! We are very excited. Personally, I am looking forward to meeting and welcoming the ClassPass team. The opportunity to learn from others has been a driver my entire life.
Question: Have your customer personas changed due to the pandemic?
Great question. They have not. Our customer personas remained consistent throughout the pandemic.
I'd love to understand this more also! Are the persona targets the same, but perhaps their behaviors changed from covid, or are you seeing consistent behaviors as well in your audiences?
I would imagine that persona's stayed the same but their journey changed during COVID.
Perhaps you found some new customer segments in need of a virtual solution as well.
Exactly. The personas didn't change which was actually a great reinforcement that we have locked in on the right personas. Their journey and their consumers journeys did. That's what was most important to focus on during these crazy COVID times.
Question: With Mindbody focused on pairing people with local onsite fitness, wellness and beauty, how did you navigate (and continue to navigate) life in a pandemic for so many prospects, and active subscribers. How was your business affected and what are you doing now that I'd assume the country is on track to a new normal?
Immediately, we focused on providing relief to our businesses heavily impacted and in partnering with them to be sure they had the tools they needed to be successful through this unprecedented time.
Our Product team did an outstanding job of releasing our Virtual Wellness Platform quickly and iterating on it continuously. We also launched Mindbody Flex to give our consumers access to even more wellness services.
Mindbody Flex supported our business too by aggregating their virtual offerings within the Mindbody App and we managed to keep it local by encouraging those consumers to visit different providers.
I love that "iteration is key!” Too many companies look for one big optimization and then shift focus somewhere else until a problem arises...the best companies have a culture of optimization that values small and big wins consistently over time. Kudos
It sounds like you may have improved your partnerships with businesses while others simply tried to maintain. Is that accurate? Have you measured their satisfaction during this difficult time?
Question: How do gyms get people back from their at-home fitness routines established during the pandemic?
From my perspective, many consumers (including myself) are anxious to get back to their in-person gym community and routine. For those of us that had a regular gym practices, I don't think there will be any trouble getting us back. Providing virtual options is a great way to introduce and engage *new* customers. And, even as in-person workouts are more accessible post pandemic, many of us will continue to incorporate virtual workouts for optimal flexibility and benefit.
Business that embrace a hybrid approach to fitness offerings will provide their consumers with the best of both worlds and most importantly, give people more chances to focus on their wellness.
I think this is really interesting. I'm also feeling the itch to get back in, but we also bought a treadmill during covid and it's just really hard to justify the cost of a gym membership. I think the flexibility is so important - more member tiers in terms of prices and benefits, flexibility in term lengths and pauses. Definitely a digital component.
That said, organizations had the choice to let the impacts push them down, or to take this as an opportunity to band together as communities and jointly solve the problems we all were facing. Mindbody partnered with our customers to understand their needs and worked incredibly hard to produce products that met those needs as quickly as possible (even if they weren't perfect right out the gate).
Awesome! I am sure your customers will remember the support you gave during these unprecedented times.
Question: What are the fitness/wellness trends you see as we emerge from covid?
Our Mindbody Wellness Index provides some great insight on what we expect to see in 2021 and beyond. The largest and most impactful will be a re-prioritization of self-care. In terms of what our customers are doing, we’re seeing interesting new trends emerge like touchless spa services, as I stated earlier virtual offerings are here to stay, and more “snackable” workouts are on the rise as people integrate wellness into their now fluid workday. We are also seeing some exciting things on the beauty side as people spend more time focused on beauty and grooming than pre pandemic, primarily above the mask services.
Question: How do you decide who is the "right" customer?
Love this question! Our mission drives our definition of “right” customer. “Connecting the world to wellness.” It’s also about the value we provide and ensuring a good fit. A big part of that is understanding what the prospect needs and being honest about if we can provide a solution that fits their needs. One of the hardest, but most important things is training our teams to say “no.” And, supporting them by ensuring we’re leveraging insights from product adoption and retention data to help target the “right” business, filling their funnel with high quality leads.
One of the fun parts about being with Mindbody through it's growth has been watching how the definition of our "right" customer evolved. We think of them holistically. Everything is connected. The experience our consumers have impacts the experience our businesses have and vice versa. It all must be thought of as a unified journey and the teams are pushed to think that way. Practically, we have different teams orientated around different products or areas of focus but we create spaces to share what teams are working on vertically and horizontally to ensure cohesion.
Great mindset to have, especially as you were able to adapt quickly with your team.
This is amazing though it makes me realize how the delivery of these enhancements to the user can get hung up at the provider level — my yoga studio (a MINDBODY customer) never offered any of this, or at least they never told me about it.
Question: What's your secret for getting everyone on the same page with optimization priorities?
I wish I had the recipe for the secret sauce! I can say cross-functional Steering Committees have been a huge help. Ensuring alignment not just across the Executive leaders but cascading down through the teams is essential. Publishing our annual strategy on a page is a great way to unite the teams on the goals we are charging for the year and then tying those to functional Objectives and Key Results, again ensuring those are distributed across the teams.
Question: Biggest mistake & lesson learned?
Lesson learned = Good speed. I was newly appointed to my director role and I had inherited a team that was struggling from a culture perspective. Having a fire in my belly to "prove" myself and "make good" for my team, I rushed through an internal process and it ended incurring unintended costs. The lesson, pause, breath, and pace yourself. Most things do not require the urgency we tend to put on them and will likely bare better results if you take your time. Good speed.
That’s all for today, thanks again for joining us and all the incredible insights, KC!
Of course, this was so fun!
All of your insights were incredible, thank you!
So good, thanks KC!