Magic Mind: Driving Conversion Lifts on Skio
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We sat down with William Hicks, Co-Founder and President of Magic Mind, to learn how Skio supports the subscription-first company. We cover topics including:
The scalability issues that accompany using Recharge
How Skio’s client service goes “far beyond any other vendor’s”
Some functional benefits of Skio, from conversion lifts to SMS capabilities
“Subscriptions are the core model for our business. Subscription software is therefore immensely important. Skio absolutely measures up to that task.”
The Early Days: Pre-Skio Pain Points
Since March 2020, Magic Mind has accumulated several thousand monthly subscribers.
As William explains, they fulfill one-time purchases — but subscriptions
have become the crux of the brand. This is only heightened by the reality of
soaring CACs in the eCommerce space. The only surefire defense merchants
have left is driving repeat purchases, subscriptions, and LTV.
Put simply: “Subscriptions are massively important. By extension, so is subscription software.”
And, like many CPG brands, Magic Mind launched its subscription model with
Recharge. William cites a few cracks in what should’ve been “default,
standard” parts of the platform.
Pain Point #1: Poor UI/UX
William describes this as the worst pain point by fair, especially when it
came to the core customer portal for subscribers, which he remembers as
“crappy, for lack of a better word.”
In fact, both its design and functionality seemed so questionable that the
Magic Mind team felt uncomfortable putting it up on their site. For
instance:
Users frequently encountered bugginess, i.e., rejecting new credit card
information or accepting a user’s updated mailing address but still
shipping to an old location.
Options to customize the portal were insubstantial, so this element of
the subscriber funnel couldn’t match the rest of Magic Mind’s branded
experience.
Overall, Recharge’s faulty subscriber portal was the greatest push for the Magic Mind team to begin searching for tooling alternatives.
Pain Point #2: Non-Scalability & User Support Demands
The poor UX on the subscriber portal coupled with Magic Mind’s rapid growth meant an overwhelming demand for user support.
Since Recharge didn't allow users to cancel their subscriptions via their
portal, customers frequently flooded the Magic Mind team's inbox with
requests to do so manually.
Over time, they simply reached a “breaking point” in support ticket
numbers, creating a bottleneck on customer service that didn’t seem to be
lessening up.
Pain Point #3: Incompatible with Shopify
Because Recharge isn’t Shopify-compatible, Magic Mind (which is, like many
DTC eCom businesses, Shopify-powered) essentially had to juggle two separate
platforms, resulting in:
Two separate payment processors
Performance data housed in two different locations
Creating (then having to track) discount codes in two different systems
“As we grew our subscriber base, Recharge’s poor UX led to an intense bottleneck on our customer service capabilities. It just couldn’t scale.”
Jumping Into Skio: Effortless Onboarding
Once they’d accepted it was time to part ways with the Recharge platform,
the Magic Mind team discovered Skio. In William’s words, the prospect of any
major migration was “kind of terrifying.”
After all, Magic Mind is literally built around subscriptions, so migrating
away from the existing tool, changing their customer database, etc., was a
"leap of faith." But one that paid off.
William recounts onboarding as a streamlined three-stage process.
Stage 1
Magic Mind set up their subscription products on Shopify.
The Skio team mapped out the brand’s previous Recharge setup.
The Magic Mind team began pushing users to a Skio checkout via Facebook.
It was essentially a test run for the Magic Mind folks to ensure
conversions wouldn’t fall off. In retrospect, William says, rates may have
actually gone up while trying out Skio.
Stage 2
Magic Mind updated their product pages to carry Skio purchase buttons
rather than Recharge ones. William recounts Skio's engineering team as
"super helpful" through the overall process.
He describes two critical points:
Magic Mind had run Recharge with a great deal of custom code. In one
instance, Skio seamlessly exchanged the existing code for newly customized
purchase buttons.
After deleting the Recharge app, the entire purchase box on product pages
disappeared. William sent an urgent email to the Skio team, who had it
fixed within 15 minutes.
Looking back on that second experience, William recalls it as a scary
moment that later deepened his faith in Skio, their "really solid"
engineers, and their immediate responsiveness.
Stage 3
The Magic Mind team finally transitioned their subscriber base and monthly
payments from Recharge to Skio. The three stages took roughly three
consecutive weeks.
All in all, William calls it a "pretty smooth" process — considering it was
a "mission-critical" piece of software — that required little-to-no
resources from the brand to manage or execute.
"The Skio team’s responsiveness goes far beyond anything I’ve experienced with other SaaS vendors, especially in terms of onboarding processes."
Hypergrowth: A Bedrock for Rapid Expansion
After onboarding through March, Magic Mind subscriptions have been fully
powered by Skio for roughly a month. William admits he’s already recommended
the platform to a few colleagues.
The few hiccups that have arisen have been met by Skio’s exceptionally
quick and thorough client support. Aside from this, William points to three
key functional benefits of the platform.
Benefit #1: Stronger UX, Less Support Tickets
In stark contrast to the Recharge subscriber portal, Skio’s portal allows
customers to view their order history and easily manage any upcoming orders
or subscription cycles.
In a few words, William describes the new UI/UX as “a tremendous
improvement: intuitive, fast, and functional.” This has naturally led to a
notable downturn in customer support requests.
Even more, he describes the switch to Skio's portal as incredibly timely since:
The brand simultaneously transitioned to a fully in-house support team
Onboarding the new team members became far simpler with Skio’s interface
And, had ticket volume remained high, the changeover would’ve been far tougher
While it's too soon to gauge retention, William predicts the Skio portal
will play a large role in maintaining users who would've otherwise been
frustrated by the clunky Recharge experience.
Benefit #2: Upgraded SMS Capabilities
Finally, Skio was also able to replace and improve upon Recharge’s SMS functionalities.
For Magic Mind, SMS is “critical” to the ideal end-to-end product
experience — from placing your first order to taking the productivity shot
to getting a Skio text days before your next charge.
In its most common use case: The average buyer who doesn't keep tabs on
subscriptions can receive that SMS reminder and text back to skip next
month's delivery without canceling.
Benefit #3: Streamlined Purchase Funnel
Since implementing Skio, Magic Mind’s landing page to checkout experience
funnel was noticeably streamlined. In addition, they’ve seen fewer bounced
sessions as a result.
Ultimately, Skio made the brand’s purchase funnel faster and smoother from end to end.
