Hairstory drives 18% lift in subscription revenue by recovering more failed payments, faster
Discover how Hairstory, an ecommerce beauty brand, improved overall payment health, avoided subscriber churn, and increased revenue with Butter's ML recovery solution.
18%
lift in revenue recovered
25%
increase in payment recovery speed
Overview
Hairstory, the maker of New Wash, is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce beauty brand that’s redefining hair care and setting the standard for sustainable business practices as the first brand to exclusively offer a full recyclable product package. Making their mark on the $87B beauty industry, Hairstory was searching for a way to recover more failed payments, retain subscribers, and maximize financial performance.
Quick Jump
“Butter very clearly addresses that issue by having an algorithm and a model that basically determines when is the best time to go and retry a failure. It was an easy decision.”
The Challenge
10% revenue lost to failed payments & static retry strategy
Using Recharge as their current solution to both retry payments and for dunning communications, Hairstory was losing nearly 10% of revenue and subscribers to failed payments. Head of Finance, Timothy Moore, was spending hours each week manually updating and processing payments. Losing time and money, Hairstory knew this was a huge revenue opportunity. It wanted to decrease the percentage of failed payments and maximize success on payment retry, ultimately looking for “something that just works.”
The Solution
Dynamic, custom retry strategy & payment expertise partner drives optimal recovery
Butter, a machine-learning (ML) payment optimization platform, analyzed Hairstory’s payment data and created a dynamic retry strategy—a comprehensive approach that would maximize payment recovery and revenue. No more manual adjustments in Recharge; Butter automatically updated recovery schedules, continually optimizing to drive optimal revenue capture. In Butter, Hairstory found a partner with proven payment expertise and a solution that could increase revenue capture and financial performance.
The Results
Hairstory sees 18% lift in revenue, recovers revenue 25% faster with Butter than Recharge
Within the first few months Hairstory saw a return on investment with Butter: an 18% lift in retained revenue over Recharge, and Butter recovered failed payments 25% faster.
- 18% lift in revenue
Optimizing failed payment recovery, Hairstory was able to retain 18% more revenue in the first three months–revenue that would have potentially otherwise been lost. Keeping revenue also meant keeping subscribers, which also positively impacted LTV, driving overall growth and maximizing profits. - 25% faster recovery time
Recovering payments faster results in less disruption to subscribers, in turn fewer lost subscribers due to habit interruption, a concern especially for replenishment subscriptions like Hairstory, and faster cash flow allowing Hairstory to capitalize on growth investments. - Increased recovery of first-time subscribers
Improving authorization rates resulting in the ability to successfully process more first-time payments Hairstory is effectively able to drive more efficient subscriber growth and lower its LTV:CAC ratio.
“The biggest takeaway is that we are keeping more subscribers active and we are increasing our revenue every single month relative to Recharge’s solution. That is a huge win for us. I would recommend Butter. It is just a much better way of capturing lost revenue than exists natively in recharge. It's just a better way of capturing lost revenue from failed payments.”