AMA with Trevor Cookler of Hims & Hers
In a recent chat with Matt, Sr. Product Manager for Retention at Hims & Hers, Trevor Cookler shared how he’s shaping the patient journey in a category where healthcare, privacy, and consumer trust intersect.
Transcript:
Matt
Trevor. Good to see you, Happy to chat with you about Hims & Hers, and specifically your role leading retention there. But to get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about Hims & Hers, the business, and then we'll get further into the customer experience as we dig deeper.
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, absolutely. So Hims & Hers is a company that's been around for a number of years now. We have two distinct brands, the Hims side and the Hers side. And the company is on a path to making people feel better through the power of healthcare. We are an online platform where users can go to find the treatment that they're looking for, go through a consultation flow similar to what you would do when you sit down at a doctor's office. You'd be matched with a physician in your state recommending treatment solutions. And then if prescribed, you'd be sent that medication all just to the comfort of your home, discreetly, and you can start enjoying your treatment. That is the oversimplified version of what we do.
Matt
All right, so there's a lot in there. It's not just an online business. It serves sort of as an alternative to going to your primary care physician for a prescription of some kind, but you do that through the internet, yet you're still engaging with a prescriber, is that right?
Trevor Cookler
That's right. Yeah. So we have loads of prescribers in every state and depending on the treatment that you're looking for, we will pair you with your care team, we call it, and they will be able to respond to you, you know, just like you would be messaging your doctor on whatever platform that you have. If you have questions along the way, you want to adjust your medication, try a different dosage, you have side effects, all of the things that come with taking medication. We have access to those resources for you online.
Matt
That's really interesting, in the context of this product in the marketplace, why does it exist? If you could go to your primary care physician for the same thing, why does Hims & Hers exist as an alternative?
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, that's a great question. Our co-founders started the company a couple of years ago when, you know, I think there are certain industries that, you know, there's a stigma attached to them, and I think there are certain treatments that both men and women don't feel super comfortable going to their providers to chat about. And so there was definitely this, this need, this gap in the marketplace for something like that. And the business was founded for, you know, ED treatment for men. And as you can imagine, a lot of men don't feel comfortable going into their doctor's office and saying, you know, they would like some Viagra or they want some treatment with ED issues that they're having.
And so that's where the company started and then it slowly grew into actually quickly grew into other treatment areas for both men and women. Hair loss for men and for women. You can imagine, maybe a woman dealing with postpartum after having a baby and losing their hair and they don't feel comfortable speaking to somebody about that. Now they can go onto our platform and get support that way.
And we've expanded into other areas like mental health for anxiety and depression, weight loss category, amongst others.
Matt
So the business is growing as far as I can tell. It's a publicly traded company. So we can see some of what's happened in this space. Hims & Hers seems to be growing really fast. At the same time, it seems like the category is growing really fast. There's competitors all over the place. And frankly, from my perspective, it's a little confusing as to who offers what and who I would go to for what.
The fragmentation around how I build my healthcare team seems to be becoming more complex. Do you see that in the work that you're doing?
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, in terms of the competition.
Matt
The competition and even like, I guess the expectations that exist amongst your potential and existing customers.
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, think now more than ever as there are more players doing similar things, it's super important that trust is just at the focal point of everything that we do. Everything that we have is building a relationship with a patient over medical treatments, so...there needs to be trust. The patient needs to have full trust that not only are they getting medication that's gonna treat the issue that they're looking for, but the side effects that we say may come along with it are accurate, that the support that we offer is timely and supportive, and that confidentiality is top-notch, just like it would be at any other doctor's office. And so we find that, you know,
Trevor Cookler
There are lots of people in the industry doing it. Some companies that have been born out of specific treatment types like ED or weight loss and others that are trying to do it in multiple categories as well like we are. And above all, people often switch because they're not getting the experience that they're looking for.
Matt
Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, thinking about this from the perspective of the subscriber business model, recurring revenue business model and the subscriber experience. We often talk about the fact that a subscriber's expectations are totally different than the expectations of a one-off purchaser, right? And you're beginning a relationship. And obviously the term relationship conveys some level of trust. That's a topic that comes up in my conversations all the time across businesses. And I think it's actually one of the things that really makes a subscription products so much better for both the consumer and for the business if that trust can be conveyed in a credible way and in a way that actually continues to deliver the value, right? So it sounds like that's absolutely core to everything you do. And I want to get into that more because I think so many people could benefit from understanding how that affects your decisions as you run the business. Yeah. So let's start. I think taking a quick step back to what you mentioned around splitting the business between him's and hers, that probably goes a long way towards establishing a bit more credibility and a bit more trust relative to the level of engagement. Are you responsible for both sides of the business?
Trevor Cookler
Absolutely. Yeah, the work that I do definitely spans both sides of the business. I think there are a number of treatment categories on both the him side and also on the her side. And I think ultimately when you think about the two different brands, I think ultimately it might be less different than you'd think. I think, you know, while it's completely separate URLs and brands, the way that we optimize across the brands can be very connected in a way.
Both brands share the same tools and platforms. We share our retention learnings from category to category and from brand to brand. Of course the audience is different, but that's also the same as any other company that might have two different products, you know, that serve different demographics. The thing that we focus on is just how do we build our core customer journeys that are going to be consistent across both brands, their backend infrastructure and systems and architecture. And then, you know, the cherry on top is where we layer in our unique messaging and unique flows that will then cater to different audiences.
Matt
Gotcha. So it's really a segmentation strategy. From the outside, it might look like something much more significant, like two different brands, but in reality, it's just a segmentation. Are you segmenting further? Thinking about, you know, you've got the core infrastructure of how you're delivering these experiences and maybe it's the top layer that's differentiated for the segments, Hims & Hers. Is there any other element of that that's segmented?
Trevor Cookler
Exactly. Yeah. So in terms of like my world on the retention side, you know, I would say the metrics that I'm looking for is like, is basically the umbrella that I'd like to say is like cohort based retention. And it's like, okay, well, what are those cohorts? And so obviously we're looking at specific goals and metrics like, you know, M13 retention and predictive retention, but you know, we're obviously splitting and cutting that data by the treatment type that you're on. So how does a hims hair user versus a hers weight loss user look different? We are cutting that data by customer tenure, active days on our platform in our ecosystem. We are looking at plan length and how that impacts retention. So an ED user who's on a month to month plan versus an ED user who is on a six month plan and how that is impacted.
And then of course, you know, the actions that the user is taking and how that impacts retention as well. So how does it, how does impact change if a user has snoozed their shipment? How does their retention rate change if they've requested a medication adjustment, like a dosage change or a medication treatment change and things like that. So that's just a few of the ways we split.
Matt
Gotcha. Yeah, so you're looking at it at a pretty granular level. Let's get into the metrics. I'm curious, how is your success determined? What's the measure that's most important?
Trevor Cookler
Ooh, so obviously we are looking at those types of rates. We're looking ultimately at how we can impact LTV through small incremental changes in retention, really. And we do that through lots of iterative testing.
Matt
Yeah, yeah. So LTVs is at the point of retention, it's still the metric you're trying to affect, but there's all different kinds of things that you can do that may be measured in different ways than LTV, but contribute to LTV. Is that a fair summation? Are there other parts of the business that are also focused on LTV or is that just for retention?
Trevor Cookler
Exactly, yeah, I think so. Certainly our acquisitions team is focused on LTV. A lot of the things that we change in the consultation flow at the very beginning of our journey with our customer can massively impact LTV. We have PMs that are working on incentives, bundling one treatment with another treatment, offering incentives for users who are sticking around on the platform. That can, of course, impact LTV.
CRM teams can massively impact LTV and how we communicate with our users and encourage them to come back and join our platform because things have changed. So in a way, any company, large or small, so many cross-functional teams can impact LTV, absolutely.
Matt
I love that you guys are looking at LTV specifically rather than, you know, with a common perspective is just active users, right? And it's one of the things that we talk about a lot is that there's a lot more you can do when you're using monetary or value based metrics to optimize towards, right? Because as you highlighted, it's not just a matter of the retention rate and keeping more people around. It's also what it is that they're paying.
You know, what products are they buying? How much of it are they buying? That affects your LTV potentially even more so than just the number of people. That's great. So let's, let's kind of work our way down the data infrastructure from there. You're looking at LTV primarily as your goal, the thing you really want to influence. What else are you looking at when you're running your experiments? What other measures are you using?
Trevor Cookler
In my world, it is, of course, engagement with a lot of the features that we're building. So especially on the retention side, my goal is to drive retention. And so we're looking at a lot of our predictive models and how the feature that we're building or the thing that we're introducing is impacting those models and those retention rates. More specifically, like the metrics that we're looking at in our tests is engagement with that feature and then what we can predict from engagement with that feature. So, for example, let's say I'm running a test in our cancel flow. Are we encouraging users, what's happening here? Are users getting through the flow more or less from the controls of the treatment, are they engaging with some of the other alternatives that we are offering them that they can do in lieu of canceling with us? And then. After the fact, what does that experience look like for them? Are we preventing them or encouraging them to do something else now, but then they're still going to be canceling within seven days at the same rate as somebody in the control experience. So really we're just kind of like moving them in a different direction to ultimately cancel in the first place, or are we making actual change here? So it definitely changes on a future and future to test to test basis. But like anyone running experiments on a digital product, like of course we're looking at engagement and behavior before and after.
Matt
You make a really interesting point. I think a lot of folks are talking about ease of cancellation these days and we've talked about this in the past. We know that this is a really important thing, it should be very easy to cancel. We shouldn't hide it from people. We shouldn't make it so difficult that it’s not actually going to meaningfully improve numbers and it sounds to me like you're saying that if somebody's going to cancel we don't want to trap them in. We don't want to run experiments if it is going to result in their cancellation later on. Is that right?
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, absolutely. And also I think in the past maybe, you know, it's easy to get in this cycle of like forced friction and trapping users, but we don't want to do that at all. You know, if anything, if a user is going to cancel and leave our platform and then we want them to do so frictionlessly, because that will just improve, it's difficult to measure, but that just improves our brand value and that last taste in their mouth that they have about Hims & Hers. And when it is time for them to resume their previous treatment or start something new, whether it is in that treatment category or completely different, they will remember that experience of pausing or leaving. And that will come back in win back reactivation or new acquisition metrics. And so, yeah, I think that's a big learning for us. You know, it's not goodbye. It's see you later.
Matt
Yeah, I love that. It's really good to know that as you're trying hard to maintain a value-based relationship with your customers and keep them engaged so that they want to, right? But let them go if they don't want to. You're thinking about the win back already. So your responsibility is retention, but the strategies that you deploy are actually really laying the foundation for win back. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Matt
I'd be curious to know, because you brought up engagement and we brought up win back. Obviously those are like two aspects of the subscriber journey that sit on either side of what you might typically define as retention. So maybe you could walk us through like, what is a typical user journey as they become a hims or hers customer? And what's the point, you if you can take us through it, what's the point at which they start to see the work that you're doing?
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, really great question. It slightly varies by category, but we can just pick one as an example. we'll choose a simpler one and then I can go through a little bit more complicated one. So let's think about like ED medication for men, right? So a man goes to the HIMS.com website. They click our entry point to enter the consultation flow. It will collect information about them just like you would in a doctor's office. Within that flow, we are educating or what we call educating you on medicine and giving you a better understanding of various treatments that we can offer. And for ED specifically, offer what we call PRN or as needed treatments. You think like your generic, you know, Tadalafel, Virdenafel, Sadafel, just like what you take before you'd like to, or there's daily treatments, which are at lower doses and for more spontaneous, always ready kind of action, right? And so we guide the user in this consultation flow through the different options and they can select what they think would be the best recommendation for that.
We collect payment information and let them know that they're not going to be billed in that very moment, but only if they're prescribed because then that information will then go off to our EMR and our provider side. And that's where they'll be matched with their care team who will review their chart, just like any other doctor would review their medical information that they've provided and say, okay, this this is a good treatment for this user, or we'd like to make this dosage adjustment if they want this treatment, or we might recommend a slightly different treatment for them. Once a treatment's been identified that has been approved, the patient would then be notified and they'd get CRM in various forms, whether that is email, push notifications within the app, seeing the progress of their medication on its way and then it will show up at their doorstep and they can take as needed or daily regardless of what they were taking.
Matt
So that's pretty complicated, and I know this isn’t your area of responsibility, but that's a super complicated acquisition flow, right? Like you're taking through what probably most of the people who are interested in this interview know as a standard sort of online acquisition flow of value proposition and transaction and then access to whatever the product might be. And you're having to break it down into a screening.
Trevor Cookler
Yeah.
Matt
Like a medical screening and a medical education form, there is a financial transaction that you're having to conduct as well, but then there's the medical review component that happens before they ever get to the place where they want to be in terms of what they've purchased. What's the timeline from the time they put their credit card in to when they get the medication? How long does that take typically?
Trevor Cookler
It varies from treatment to treatment, it's not days. It's closer to hours than it is to days. And so it happens pretty quickly. Most patients come in with medical history and recommended treatment that we think can help them. And so it's easier to just be like, yep, this checks out, you're good to go. In smaller, I guess, cohorts, is when providers need to get a little bit more involved. The patient has a history of high blood pressure and this and that, and more recommendations need to be met. But in the quickest form, a perfectly healthy male who wants to improve their ED symptoms comes in and they submit the order. And then in not too long time, they get a notification that their treatment's been approved and it's on their way.
Matt
You're making it sound really easy. It's easier than I anticipated, but it's still way harder than almost any other online conversion experience, right?
Trevor Cookler
Totally. And onboarding is key. And when you think about another treatment type like weight loss, especially if somebody's taking like a compounded medication like semaglutide or some other treatment that requires like an injection, know, now patients, know, there are patients who haven't never injected themselves before. And so you talk about an important onboarding experience, right? And it's like, hey, not only are we going to figure out if this is the right medication for you, but also, you know, we're going to be sending you syringes and we're going to be teaching you how to take care of them. And we're going to teach you what to do with your medication so that it's safe. And you need to know that this needs to be refrigerated and like, you can't be on vacation when this arrives because it can't sit on your doorstep or in your mailbox for two weeks. Like this needs to get in the fridge. So, you know, the onboarding experience is crucial for these users.
Matt
Wow, yeah. So product experiences are being built throughout that entire journey with the intention of specifically making sure that the product arrives in such a form that it can be used and that people actually know what to do with it when they open the package. That's, like it seems like the bar for which you need to kind of like convey via the product experience the way in which a consumer can succeed.
Matt
Understanding their job to be done, the level of effort that you need to put into getting to them to that point is very high.
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, absolutely. Everything needs to be thought through because not only do we need to provide patients with trust in the medication, but they also need to have confidence that they know what to do with it. Certain medications are easy. Hair treatments like minoxidil and finasteride, you take once a day chewable pill, easy. You wake up, you take it with your vitamin every morning with your coffee, right? Other treatment plans like in weight loss and other categories, you have to titrate up to a stable dose. And so we need to educate you on pill splitting and granulation and how you can ramp up your treatment. And it's a completely different ball game when you think about onboarding and your patient experience.
Matt
That is fascinating.So we've gone through acquisition and we talked about onboarding. So when do people start to experience the things you're building for them?
Trevor Cookler
Exactly. So the moment the user gets through that consultation flow and enters their payment is where the team that I work on, the customer experience team picks up that patient. And so at the very beginning, you know, it kind of, it kind of merges with onboarding, we are educating them. We're encouraging them to download the app so that they can follow along, you know, with their medication that's going to be shipped to them, you know, when a provider has reviewed it, when it's been approved, when it's been shipped, where it is, following that along.
And then, you know, encouraging them to download the apps that they can follow that process and manage their treatment plan as you know, in any way possible. so the, are various teams within this like post consultation flow experience that are working on the app on these experiences. The team that I'm working on specifically is building out several of these features, based on user insights and what we know our users want. So that they can better manage their treatment journey and get the things that they need.
Matt
Got it. That's amazing. you're starting the retention experience and the retention optimization at the point of onboarding.
Trevor Cookler
Exactly, exactly. And then, you know, I work super closely with our insights to gather both like qualitative and quantitative data. And we're using that to kind of fuel our strategy for what our users are looking for, why they might be leaving us, why that might be pausing their treatment so that we can build things that are going to support them in their journey.
Matt
Hmm. Let's talk about that. I think research is one of those things that, it's faster and cheaper now than ever before. And as a result, I think it's growing in terms of, you know, it's presence in the toolbox of people like you, data is easy, right? Data is super, super easy to come by. But one of the things we're often reminding people of is that the data really only reflects what the consumer can do. It doesn't reflect what they want to do, right? Like they're following the paths that have been created for them. The data will show that all day long. But at the end of the day, if we need to create a new path for them, we need to understand that using a different kind of input research is it. How are you guys gathering that?
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, we have a ton of, I guess what you would call hard data sets, our models measuring churn rates, our funnels, our dashboards. Like you said, like everybody can build those out to monitor. Really where we're getting such deep insights as well is through our qualitative approach. And we have a pretty robust insights team. You know, they're analyzing everything from our cancel surveys, they're conducting diary studies following long patients.
We also get a lot of feedback from CX chats and our CX agents, which is really insightful as to why a user might be canceling or what they're looking to do.
Or how they're looking to manage their treatment. And we also get tons of feedback as well from our clinical teams and our providers, which is a completely different experience that our patients have and the feedback that they're getting. And we're kind of piecing all of those things together. And I think through that qualitative feedback is where we're really bringing lots of empathy into our decision-making and our optimization strategy so that we can really be focused on building the things that our patients are asking for.
Matt
I like that a lot. Sounds like you're doing sort of specific research methodologies, the primary source of this qualitative insight is just coming from the interactions with customers, right? Where they are on their journey.
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'll tell you a quick example. Like we, we learned from our CX agents that, you know, many times customers come in and they want to pause their treatments, not because they're not satisfied with the treatment itself, but just due to life disruptions, travel, a family member died, costs, you know, they're moving, things like that. And learning more about that experience through CX has led us to build a very flexible snooze option for our patients. so, I think for anybody listening to this, specifically around this little nugget is more like, we learned through CX to not treat pausing as churn, but more that like what people say, retention is long-term game. And it turns out that many overwhelming majority of our users who end up snoozing end up coming back for their next refill and beyond. So, but that was all powered through the qualitative data from CX.
Matt
That's amazing. So you're finding that when people pause, they're going to come back. You have confidence that they're going to come back. It's not a step towards cancellation.
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, exactly. Not everybody. And, you think about the psychology of a user. Like if you, this isn't the case, but like, let's say you offered an ED user the ability to snooze for a year. Right. And somebody comes into your platform and they're like, yeah, I want to delay my next shipment by 300 days, by 360 days. Chances are they're not moving. They're not going on vacation. More likely than not, they're snoozing because they can't figure out what they want to do. And they just don't, they just want to push back at that billing charge so that they can figure out what they want to do. Realistically, they're probably having a different issue. They might be having side effects. They might have a quantity issue. They thought they'd be having more sex than they thought they are, and they're stockpiling pills, and they don't know how to change the quantity that they're being given on a month-to-month cadence. There are other things going on. And so we try to learn empathetically as much as we can so we can build the different features, at least my team building the features that will better respond to those needs.
Matt
That's fantastic. And I think it goes hand in hand with what you were saying earlier, which is that if you actually have an easy cancellation flow, then you know that the people who are pausing have made that decision not to cancel, right? They're a higher quality group of people and they're not just simply saying like, don't charge me so that it can take the time to do whatever hoops I need to jump through to cancel. They're actually demonstrating that the value exists for them. They just have something that's impeding it at the moment. That's super cool. It's super insightful.
Trevor Cookler
Exactly.
Matt
Going back to the research that you're gathering and these moments of insight that are coming out of it, it sounds like you're not necessarily coming at this from the perspective of trying to get your customers to tell you what needs to be built, right? You're listening more for the challenges that they have. What you're describing to me sounds super empathetic. You're really coming at this from the perspective of there's lots of reasons why people are going to engage with us in different ways and we have a solid understanding of what those are.
So you're not saying to somebody, can we make this easier for you? You're saying, what are your challenges essentially, or listening for what their challenges are. And then you're ideating how to meet those, those challenges, wherever they may be.
Trevor Cookler
Absolutely. Yeah, we build lots of features that can kind of meet the user because what we found is that users on various brands on various treatment types have various concerns at different stages of their tenure that we need to solve for. And so when you think about it like that, it seems a little bit overwhelming because you're solving for so much. But it's really important the problems that we're solving because, know,
For X treatment, the user in the first three months may have more side effect related issues that we need to solve for. And how can we get them on a slightly adjusted treatment or dosage that will make that problem better? To customers who are with us for a year, probably don't have side effect issues, but their concern is, okay, I know that this is working well for me, but like the cost might be a little bit too much. So what can you offer me so that I stick around? And then we can offer them, you know, the ability to change their cadence. So instead of paying month to month, let's get them on a three month or a six month or a 12 month plan, but they can have some financial benefit and save some money from that. So the problems change based on tenure, based on treatment. And it's about, understanding those problems at a user's journey point so that you can provide the right solution.
Matt
Hmm, this all sounds potentially really complex and complicated, right? Like you have lots of different segments of customers, lots of different reasons why they would engage or disengage at any moment in time. And you're trying your best to understand those, to meet those needs. But at the end of the day, you can't do all of it all the time. I would imagine, right? How do you prioritize which of those segments or problems or products are the ones that need to be optimized?
Trevor Cookler
It's tough, Prioritization is tough because, know, even at a larger company like ours, we have a finite number of engineers and QA and designers and copywriters so that we really have to be quite ruthless about how we prioritize what we're going to build. And we have to be okay knowing that.
We won't be able to build certain things or, you know, build new things or, or improve existing products, um, for certain categories and treatment types, because there are problems for larger treatment types or more important problems that we need to solve first. And so, um, I think that all starts with how we ideate. And then that will go into how we prioritize. And I think when we ideate as a company, we start with this whole problems first approach, like what we've been mentioning really, like what are the customer pain points that we're solving? And then really how we get such a diverse opinion set from these brainstorms is by bringing in people from various departments into these brainstorms, whether that's engineers to call out limitations in our product or design and insights and copy, bringing in legal and regulatory teams so that we're not building things that if it wins, we're like, uh-oh, actually we can't do that. And then the prioritization comes in and we size up. What is the impact? How confident are we? And using typical prioritization frameworks, similar to ICE and other things like that to really break down what is the opportunity size.
Matt
So it's really interesting, sounds as you're, you're ideating solutions that you know, or that you hypothesize will improve certain metrics that should contribute to LTV at some point in time. But it sounds like that ideation is happening without any pre-prioritization relative to LTV, right? Is it, an I getting that right? Like you wouldn't necessarily say, we know this particular problem is worth more to our business. So we're, we're going to ideate on that one firs before we ideate on other things that have been considered. Okay.
Trevor Cookler
It depends. So we don't always work on just what the largest category is because otherwise we would just be working on ED forever. know, are smaller categories, mental health, skincare, things like that, that are equally as important. But if we did a traditional prioritization framework, they would never score high enough on those lists against other treatment categories. So we need to have models to estimate our LTV and those on the retention side are based on, you know, the small incremental percentage changes that we can, that we think we might be able to improve in our retention rates. But we also have to layer in clinical needs, clinical safety, regulatory compliance, things that are happening in the industry as well. And so if we have an idea that's gonna work, that's gonna be a big juicy idea for a large category, but the FTC comes out and they're like, this is a new ruling that has to take place, then okay, well then we need to update things elsewhere and put those fires out too. So there is a little bit of a dance that happens there so that we can have everybody on board.
Matt
That's super smart. It sounds like you're trying to make the relationship and the value proposition between your subscribers and the business sort of diverse and robust, right? I would imagine people who are only purchasing ED medication, though they may be really valuable, probably are less sticky, maybe even have a lower lifetime value than somebody who is also prescribing to something else, right? So the diversity of the products that they're engaged in makes them a more valuable customer. If you're only focusing on that one product experience, you're losing the opportunity to make them more of a diverse, engaged customer. Am I reading that right?
Trevor Cookler
Exactly. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think the problem that I have constantly dealing with in my specific role is this need for building new product features versus optimizing older ones. And because, as a company, you know, even though we're quite large and publicly traded and all of that, we still function as it feels like a startup in the sense that like, we are constantly coming out with new treatment types and things like that. You know, we didn't launch, we just launched our weight loss offering not too many years ago. And we're coming out with new treatment types all the time. We just launched on the ED side, I think two or three different treatment types within the ED category in the last couple of months. We launched a ED plus multivitamin daily treatment that a user can take. We launched ED plus testosterone support in a single pill and we're constantly coming out with new things. And so, you know, we think about how do you balance pushing forward into building new treatment types, new categories, new offerings versus like, Hey, wait, we built weight loss three years ago and we got to work on this, cancel flow that we just like, only, we only launched what we built. got to like make this better. Right. And so that's the, that's the trade off that is difficult to navigate sometimes.
Matt
Hmm. Do you have somewhat of like competing interests in terms of the resources that you're using, whether they be engineering resources or even just investment of other kinds being allocated between either retention or acquisition? Do you find that the business struggles with that? Do you have to make a certain case to invest in retention over other things at all? Or is it pretty straightforward?
Trevor Cookler
I think every business deals with not having enough engineering power. But luckily, we have dedicated resources for at least those two parts of the business. So we never have to really make a decision about are we going to work on acquisition or are we going to work on retention. For us, we're fortunate enough to be split into even more granular teams, like within retention.
app-specific teams or subscription management features and things like that. And so those are the trade-offs that were happening, like within retention, where are we going to be spending our time or within acquisition, where are we going to be spending our time? So luckily we don't have to make that type of decision, but we do have to prioritize in other aspects.
Matt
That's great though. I think many companies are going to find that super insightful, to be honest with you, that you have dedicated resources to retention. Retention optimization is always on. I think typically the default scenario is an acquisition. Investments in acquisition are always on. And then when there's an opportunity to invest in retention, go back and fix those things that you were talking about, those things that maybe have, you know, kind of just lagged in the priority. But it's great to hear that the level of investment, at least the commitment, is an always-on commitment to retention, which again is what makes subscription businesses so strong.
Trevor Cookler
Yeah. And, know, I, before I joined hims and hers, I came from a startup and there it was a little bit different. You know, there I had to figure out how we can, how I can show the value of retention over acquisition or competing with acquisition. And I think a lot of smaller companies do deal with that. You know, there's always that trade-off. think everybody knows, you know, that keeping an existing customer is always better than finding a new one. And people say that all the time, but you know, when it comes down to actually making those decisions, I think it's important for people in my role, PMs, others, you know, to show how small retention gains can actually lead to like a compounded impact for your LTV. Especially in industries that are like heavy CAC industries, you know, where like you can go to your higher ups and say, you if we, if we get a 5 % lift in day 90 retention, that's going to outperform a lot of our paid media pushes. And that's the, that's the storytelling that needs to happen at smaller companies.
Matt
I totally agree. It's such a fantastic point because the reality is an under investment in retention actually increases the dependency upon acquisition, right? The only way to become less dependent to the CAC orientation and the constant need to acquire, acquire, acquire is to make sure that you're not hemorrhaging.
Trevor Cookler
Totally.
Matt
You're keeping people around and in fact growing them. To your point, it's not just a matter of keeping them. It's a matter of looking at the existing customers and the opportunity for growth that they represent as being equal or better than new customers. Kind of goes back to that idea of, know, if you're only counting customers, you're going to be oriented more towards acquisition. If you're counting lifetime value and you're looking at how much value can be created, it gives you the, I think a better prioritization of the retention effort.
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt
That's great. So tell me when you're looking at these experiments with a dedicated team of people that can help you execute them, what sort of pace are you talking about? How often are you deploying new products and new experiments?
Trevor Cookler
It's a great question. think it changes from test to test and then from department to department. I think everybody knows that acquisition testing is faster than retention testing. I think you can get a clear read. people buying this or are they not versus like, well, let's see how this shakes out over the next X amount of months. Because they...
Matt
Right. You have a smaller group of people that you're able, a smaller number of people running through any experience. So therefore it takes longer for a test to validate.
Trevor Cookler
Exactly. Yeah. And often like what your day zero or day seven or day 14 retention looks like it would make everybody happy. But then actually like day 30, 90, 120 is like, Oh, actually this, this wasn't helpful where we're net neutral. So, um, you know, I think for us, we do try to balance that velocity with learnings. We do have a fantastic insights team, an analytics team that's able to confidently extrapolate data. And so we do like to get at least a confident day 30 read if we can, so that we can start modeling out that impact. I think in my world, on the retention side,
I think we're somewhere around between like four to six weeks from hypothesis to read out so that we can capture that data and then make actionable insights and move forward. And so I guess like, you know, if I was talking to anybody in the industry that's, that's looking for advice around this, you know, it might be around investing in tools that can make your experimentation more repeatable in a way, you know, whether that is you're using more or less the same events and goals that you're tracking or, you know, your platform setup is more of a copy and paste or rinse and repeat kind of setup. Anything that you can do to streamline that so that you can focus more of your work on your ideation and prioritization and building and you're analyzing unless you're set up.
Matt
Right, right. Do you use a third party optimization deployment tool?
Trevor Cookler
Yeah, we use growth book for our experimentation.
Matt
Is that the same tool for acquisition or throughout the customer journey or is it just specifically for retention?
Trevor Cookler
Yes, from my understanding it is.
Matt
Right, great. So you're not dependent upon making specific changes to the rest of the technology stack. Everything can be done within the testing platform super fast. Winners then get hard-coded.
Trevor Cookler
Absolutely. Yeah. And what's great is like we can build in, you know, a lot of these important retention metrics like, you know, our LTV, our cancel rates and whatever. And then when we launch an experiment, you know, we have a dropdown menu of the goals that we want to be tracking for the experiment. We don't have to reset up. You know, we use other analytic platforms like Amplitude for more of our engagement metrics on a test by test basis. So like for this specific new flow that we're building, I want to know, I want to build a funnel or I want to understand, you know, which of these CTAs users are clicking on. And so I'll use amplitude for more of the granular engagement metrics and then more of our higher level business metrics will use GrowthBook.
Matt
Right on. All right, Trevor, you are clearly a master of this domain. And I'm curious to understand where you go to find your inspiration and where you go to keep on top of all this stuff, because it's constantly changing, right? And how do you make sure that what you're doing and what you're deploying stays at the bleeding edge?
Trevor Cookler
It's a really great question. I, just like most product managers, am subscribed to a number of newsletters that I should probably read more often than not. I am often doing competitor analysis and looking at other players in the industry. We leverage a cool tool called Do What Works, which will help us understand what others are testing as well. And I've made quite a number of product connections in the industry. And so I have a number of quarterly and monthly catch-ups with people outside of my company where we share insights. Maybe that's something that, cause I think everybody's kind of like looking for ideas on the internet and things like that. But I think oftentimes we don't realize that we have so many different product partners that we've built up from over the years. And sometimes it just, involves setting up a quarterly catch up to just share what the biggest win was and how you might be able to apply that even to people in completely different industries.
Matt
I love that. Yeah. And I completely agree with the perspectives of folks from outside the industry. It's great to hear that you're doing competitive analysis and you're keeping an eye on competitors, but I often find that the best new ideas come from outside the category. When you think about how something that seems totally unrelated might actually have an impact in your business. Those are the moments you actually get a leg up on the competitors as opposed to just trying to keep up with the competitors. Right.
Trevor Cookler
Exactly. like in the world that we're in, where like I see retention at a telehealth company as like engagement, like continued engagement with your personalized treatment journey. And, and so I, I take, like you just mentioned, I take that inspiration from outside of a screen, which is like when I go and, and for my, like my annual checkup or when I go to a dentist and like I'm in a medical setting, like what's something that
I like that we could digitize. Like what's something that I don't like that other patients are probably struggling with that we could improve. And trying to find inspiration in your daily life, especially outside of screens is always helpful as well.
Matt
Yeah, I love that. Do have an example?
Trevor Cookler
Oof, put me on the spot here…
I think one thing that we've done as a company, which has been really impactful, has been check-ins. And so that's something that traditionally doesn't exist too much in a medical setting unless you as the patient are taking a proactive approach to go see a doctor. But in a digital sense, we can use CRM and lifecycle marketing to ping you an email or a push notification that's like, hey, let's check in, let us know. Like, are you doing okay? And if you are, it's one click and it's like, enjoy the rest of your day. And if you say no, we send you down a flow where we try to understand why and you know, are you having side effects? Is your dosage right? Is your medication right? Are you just not taking your medication? Are you anxious about taking your medication? Like have you not started yet? And so I think in the real world, we took that experience of medical providers not knowing how a patient is seeing between visits and trying to chop up those touch points so that we can give more often and insightful feedback that we can actually provide a better digital experience than most people get in person.
Matt
Right. That's great. Love it. All right, Trevor, I appreciate you taking the time to chat. It's so good to see you. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Trevor Cookler
You too. You too. Thank you for having me.
