Creating a membership model that forges community and boosts revenue

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From day one at Carnivore Snax, Co-Founder and CEO Mark Ritz wanted to implement a bespoke membership model. From his experience in the loyalty space and working for Costo’s membership program, he knew it would:

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• Boost customer engagement: Demonstrating company value and building a tight-knit community will influence spending habits over time and grow LTV.
• Increase revenue: Carnivore Snax doesn’t discount its products, but uses premium ingredients and consistently has expensive costs, like buying new dehydrators.
• Create community: If customers buy into a membership, it’s harder for them to choose a competitor over you.

To thank the brand’s most loyal fans for their support, Mark wanted a program with highly attractive rewards. So, as he began searching for a vendor to create it, he knew he wanted to avoid traditional loyalty programs. In his experience, they cost too much and rely on points, which customers barely use. He also didn’t like the idea of subscribe-and-save because it can be a challenge to optimize customer relationships with it. People “set it and forget it,” which leaves customer engagement, value, and revenue on the table.

So, he took to the internet to find something new and exciting — and discovered Inveterate. Mark says deciding to try an engagement-focused membership program was a no-brainer.

A paid membership with meaningful benefits that customers actually value

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The membership base for the new paid membership program began to grow, producing amazing benefits for Carnivore Snax like:

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• Customer buy-in: Since memberships get customer buy-in upfront, Carnivore Snax can fund new products and membership features like members-only cuts on rarer meats and 5% cashback on all purchases.
• Boosting LTV and AOV: Growing the company with the influx of cash from membership fees raised their value, helped them drive value for customers, and increased orders.
• Competing in their vertical: Creating Carnivore Snax requires serious assets and machinery. But with the boost from membership fees, they can be competitive with their pricing even as a premium product.

Inveterate even helped Carnivore Snax weather an unexpected regulatory shutdown. After four years of seamless production, the Ohio Department of Agriculture required Carnivore Snax to review its products. Faced with an added $25,000 to fund a scientific study, Mark needed a way to raise some capital. He believed tapping into the community of people that love their product and care for its success could help them fund the project.

To do this, Inveterate created membership tiers where people could pledge different sums of money to the company. When it launched, they raised $7,000 in just a few hours. Ultimately, Carnivore Snax not only raised the $25,000 they needed to fund the product testing; they also shored up funding while they were unable to sell their products.

Carnivore Snax increased their return purchase rate by 223%

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The membership program Carnivore Snax built with Inveterate currently has over 3,000 members. The membership fees they pay are an incredible value-add, and Mark is seeing numbers that validate his thesis that building community is the best loyalty strategy, including:

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• 49% increase in AOV
• 319% increase in spend per customer
• 181% increase in order frequency
• 223% return purchase rate for members

Mark looks forward to growing Carnivore Snax’s partnership with Inveterate as they continue to build out new integrations and support their loyalty program.