Why Natal Converts 68% of Trials to Paid — and it Has Nothing to Do With the Paywall

0:01[music] It it really is such a different strategy than a lot of people are working on right now. And like I mean and and not not that those others are invalid and and they work and they work for different kind of businesses, but I was excited to have you on with this mindset because I think it is a great way to build a great business with this mindset of building trust, building an audience who really cares, engaging directly, like so many of the things you

0:28do uh let you outperform in that way. Like the other organic content that you're outperforming is like their manufactured like UGC team that's doing stuff and that can work, but like being a real person, real like like you're saying, all the experience and everything else you have comes across differently in a way that's more authentic, that's more relatable,

0:53more trust-building and stuff like that. So Yeah, I mean my kind of philosophy is like I never want my audience to feel like I'm selling to them. Right. I mean even my own app. I just want them to know what I do and that I'm an expert in this and if they ever need me I'm here and I would love to help you. Like that is what I want them to feel when they when they consume our content, when they talk to me. Like I'm never in DMs pushing stuff. Like if they're asking me a direct question, of course I'm going to share our product and I'm going to say, "Hey, here's the

1:22link if you want to check it out." But like and I train our customer service team to never hard sell. Like in fact, I hired recently you know, I've tried to hire so many people to help us with content production over the years and it just like doesn't really work. I have a very specific brand voice that like we have to nail. Like words really matter especially in emotionally sensitive topics or niches like pre- and post-partum fitness and health and health care in general I think it is a very sensitive area. So you have to be careful with what words you use and what you say. But yeah, I'm just like super

1:55picky with it. But recently we we are trying something something new, you know, we're bringing them on and I'm trying to get them to understand the brand voice, you know, they're sending over these scripts to like review and I'm like I'm like rewarding this with and he's like okay, so what I'm hearing here is you never want to sell. Yeah. Never you you never want any copy that's going to sell and I'm like pretty much yes and at the end you just want to end it with like a soft sell like click here to learn more like DM me to chat like that's what I want like I just want the

2:25connection 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, like I want them to 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 like every and I 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

2:54personality type, every DM and comment across all social platforms, every email, every in-app post, comment and DM gets answered within 24 hours Wow. and has been for 8 years. a by a human, not by an AI system. a human and it's not canned responses. Like 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 like a spends like how much it's costing us, you know, um but I I our clients deserve to have a human talk to them. Yeah. Like these are women that have been ignored by their doctors or they have been, you know, not

3:34given resources to help them through a very personal phase of life. Like the least I can do is give them a real expert to talk to. And that's the other thing is like we don't have just like customer service reps. Our coaches like real life DPTs, real life pelvic floor therapists, real life trainers that have tons of practical experience or are still practicing in person are in talking to them. Like that's who they're connecting with. You know what I

3:57mean? And yeah, they cost more per hour than a low-level customer service rep, but think of the value and the connection that we're building with our client before we ever even tell them that they should buy or ask them to sign up, you know? And I just think that like soft selling for us is just my growth approach is soft selling. Like it really [clears throat] is because in my opinion like the soft things are actually what determines whether or not someone stays, you know? And like retention is what matters. Like it

4:26matters more than acquisition, you know? So for me, it's like why aren't we pri- you know, why wouldn't we prioritize that? Like sure, I can't clearly measure it. I can't clearly measure how powerful it is to invest in all this trust building and relationship building before the paywall or before the trial or whatever. But I mean our our stats kind of Yeah. speak

4:49for themselves, I feel [laughter] like. You know, when someone gets to our web checkout, 93% of them actually download the app. Which is a really strong number that we recently found. Um I think our trial conversion rate is like 68% up against our industry average, I think is 38%. Yeah. So it's like stuff like that. And I don't think it's it's not because our offer is amazing or our checkout page is amazing or the copy of the button or the countdown timer. And it's expensive 25

5:17bucks a month. Yeah. Yeah. Um I really think it's it's actually just a signal. Like those stats are just it's 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. It's not feeling they're not feeling hesitant or sketchy. Like is this legit? Like they already trust us cuz they've already been connecting with us. Whether it's connecting with our content or connecting with us on socials or in DMs or emails or wherever they have kind of connected with us, but um I think and there's a lot of other, you

5:49know, stats that we have that kind of just go back to that same thing. It's like, yeah, it looks that good because they we have a real connection with our client and I think our brand comes through as authentic, you know, and I think that's that's my founder-led growth approach. Yeah, that's so awesome. And honestly, I think so much of the industry right now is trending toward, you know, short-term maximization and over building long-term

6:17sustainable value. And I don't know that and this is why I'm so excited to have you on is I don't think people think deeply about the trade-off they're making. And so you're making a very different trade-off. You could go, you know, scale with tons of UGC and it it and like not that that's a wrong approach. You can scale quickly, you can dilute your voice, you can do those

6:41things and like build a great business. So I'm not saying, but there's another approach which you know, I I I just really like that mindset of like really building trust. There's a a quote I'm actually in my talk tomorrow at MAU, I'm going to quote uh Sylvan from a from a a podcast we did a while back. And it's um uh your paywall is only as good as the

7:03story leading up to it. gosh, I have a similar I I don't have that quote, but in my speech tomorrow I'm saying something like that. Yeah, and and and the truth is and and what I'm going to say is is that the story begins with the, you know, TikTok video they saw. It begins with the meta

7:19ad. 1,000% with searching prenatal in the App Store. And then that story continues usually on the App Store or on the web with them seeing screenshots, you getting sold a little, downloading the app, and then getting to the onboarding. And the more you can pack the story ahead with trust, with relatability, with believability, and all those things, by the time they get to the paywall, they're already sold. And like your your your paywall conversion numbers are insane. [laughter] Thank you. Yeah, our download to trial, I think, is 17%. I guess against like a

7:546% health and fitness average. Yeah. It's like stuff like that, you know, and it we don't have any growth hacks. I mean, like hack the hack is build trust. Yeah, build trust.