GTM Sauce

Natal · B2C · pregnancy and postpartum fitness app

Reply to every DM, comment and email with a real expert within 24 hours

Trial-to-paid ~68% vs 38% typical; not isolated

Workedcustomer-supportfounder-brandcommunity

What they did

Every DM and comment on all social platforms, every email and every in-app post/comment/DM gets a non-canned human reply within 24 hours (8 years running). Replies come from coaches (DPTs, pelvic floor therapists, trainers), not low-level reps; SOPs/workflows keep it scalable. Team trained never to hard-sell; share the link only when asked.

What happened

Nancy attributes above-benchmark funnel numbers to pre-paywall trust: trial->paid ~68% (vs 38% industry), download->trial ~17% (vs 6%), web checkout->download 93%. Not isolated.
Stage
ongoing

This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.

In their words

How Removing the Free Trial Grew Monthly Subs 2000% – Nancy Anderson, Natal

Play the episode

Nancy Anderson… more,' like, 'DM me to chat.'" That's what I want. I just want the connection first because I want people, before they get to the paywall, before they're asked to start a trial or even asked to sign up, I want them to know who we are, to feel comfortable with us, to feel safe with us, to feel that we're credible. And in order to have her feel those things, we need to connect with her. We need to build rapport. We need to have responsiveness.

Nancy AndersonI think that this is crazy, but I don't think that a lot of brands do it, but this is just... I mean, maybe it's my niche, I don't know, maybe it's my personality type. But every DM and comment across all social platforms, every email, every in-app post, comment, and DM gets answered within 24 hours and has been for eight years.

David BarnardAnd by a human, not by an AI system.

Nancy AndersonBy a human. By a human, and it's not canned responses. These are real people. And yes, we have like SOPs and workflows to make it efficient and make it scalable and make it digestible for a spend, how much it's costing us, but our clients deserve to have a human talk to them. These are women that have been ignored by their doctors or they have been not given resources to help them through a very personal phase of life. The least I can do is give them a real expert to talk to. And that's the other thing is we don't have just customer service reps. Our coaches, real-life DPTs, real-life public floor therapists, real-life trainers that have tons of practical experience or are still practicing in person are in talking to them.

David BarnardThat's awesome.

David BarnardAnd it's expensive, 25 bucks a month.

Nancy AndersonYeah. I really think it's actually just a signal. Those stats are just a signal that trust has been built before the paywall. So when they get to the paywall, it's not feeling risky to them, it's not feeling scary, they're not feeling hesitant or sketchy like, "Is this legit?" They already trust us because they've already been connecting with us. Whether it's connected with our content or connecting with us on socials or in DMs or emails or wherever, they have kind of connected with us. And there's a lot of other stats that we have that kind of just go back to that same thing as like, "Yeah, it looks that good because we have a real connection with our client, and I think our brand comes through as authentic, and I think..." That's my founder led-growth approach.

David BarnardNo, that's so awesome. Honestly, I think so much of the industry right now is trending toward short-term maximization over building long-term sustainable value, and I don't know that... And this is why I'm so excited to have you on, I don't think people think deeply about the trade off they're making. You're making a very different trade off. You could go scale with tons of UGC, and not that that's a wrong approach. You can scale quickly, you can …

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Tags: instagram, tiktok, facebook, email, in-app, 24h-response, human-support, expert-support, trust