Parent's Club

If you read my post from last week, you already know that our Father's Day gifting campaign didn't go quite as planned. Well, today we're moving in a different direction, and I'm quite excited to share!

Here's part of an email that went out to our current members:

Hi [FIRST NAME],

I wanted to share a big announcement with you about Dad's Club. Over the last 5 months, I feel really fortunate to have met all of you through our mission of helping families grow and thrive. Our community has steadily grown with 400 members from around the world.
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Many of you have shared great feedback with us about where you want to see this community go and how we can best serve your families. As you know, parenting is a team sport, and it takes a village to raise healthy, happy children.
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We've had countless members asked if their spouses, partner, or other caregivers can get access to our Dad's Club resources.
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The answer is yes!
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​So, next week we'll be rebranding to become Parent's Club.

The content and community will stay mostly the same, however, we'll be upgrading our Annual Membership to include 2 user accounts instead of only 1 login. All current pricing will remain grandfathered for existing members.​
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This upgrade will be for existing and new members, and you'll be able to invite another caregiver to create an account in your family plan so that they can create their own user profile.

I'll send another note on Monday with instructions on how you can invite your partners to join the new Parent's Club! I'm excited to expand our community to include your family members as we continue on our mission to help each other learn, grow, and thrive.
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Best,

This was a tough month. Originally, when Dad's Club launched, I thought that Father's Day and Black Friday / Cyber Monday would be our highest growth days.

I mean, what could be a better gift than a Dad's Club membership for Father's Day?

We had been planning for Father's Day for months prior, and the plan was two-fold:

• Run a Facebook ad campaign with a Father's Day gifting message
• Partner with content creators & micro-influencers to run Instagram giveaways for Dad's Club memberships

Both campaigns flopped. The Father's Day gifting campaign on Facebook ended up costing 5x the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) as when we run ads directly to dads to signup. And we didn't run nearly as many giveaways as we had planned.

If there was a gift that we got from this month, it's been the feedback from those that didn't give Dad's Club as a gift:

• Many moms and grandparents were fearful that giving a Dad's Club membership to a dad may inadvertently offend them by sending a not-so-subtle message that they need to be a more active, engaged father. Some even compared it to giving a Peloton to a new mom after they have a baby (uh oh!).
• Many moms liked the idea of Dad's Club, but they said they wanted to be able to access the membership & resources themselves!

Initially, we had launched Dad's Club as a way to niche down. The parenting market is very crowded, and there is not a shortage of resources & communities for new moms. The Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim & Mauborgne) suggests that you should go into spaces untainted by competition.

Although the month didn't go as planned, we did learn a lot. And we're getting ready to make a big pivot based on these learnings...

Onward,

May was a good growth month. It's been challenging over the past two months with some weeks where our Facebook ad account was down.

Facebook has a policy that restricts advertisers from advertising "adult and sex products." Even though Dad's Club is not a sex product... it seems that the ad reviewers often mistakenly categorize it as such.

Usually, when we appeal the ad decision, it gets reversed, but it still takes some time to go through the reviews.

Either way, I'm excited to pass the threshold of passing 200 paid members. We're now 1/5th of the way to hitting the "1,000 True Fans" target!

Onward and upward,

The month of April was still predominately focused on producing more content so that new members have a library of content to jump into right away.

Long-term, we want to have a steady content calendar with new podcast episodes coming out each week, but many new members have told us that they want to jump straight into specific parenting topics, so we've been really focused on building the library.

The member surveys have all supported this priority as well:

What changes would Dad's Club have to make for you to give it a higher rating?

• More content.
• I like the idea a lot, but it’s hard to justify the price point with the existing product. Here’s my thoughts. Most parenting books are very topic specific. For example weaning to foods. I’m super interested in this when my kid is doing this but if my kid already eats solids then this is of zero interest. So say half the books a month are on topics not relevant, then I’m getting two ten minute podcasts for 10 bucks a month. Not a great value proposition to me. Overtime the library will be larger and can overcome that hurdle a bit.
• More content (I was able to see ~12 podcasts and that’s about it)
• I don’t think it’s ready to be a paid community yet. If you keep producing content and grow the community first then I’d happily pay. I was expecting a lively forum of people discussing stuff, and I realize you gotta start somewhere, but I think you should probably try to grow the community for free first. I truly think this is a great idea, but it’s just not ready to be a paid product yet.

Growth this month was slow and steady, but the focus has been in two areas:

• Onboarding experience. What is the website flow and email sequence that a new member sees over their first 14 days.
• Building a content library. Create enough content that new members feel like they're able to get valuable insights right away.

The third area of improvement is to have a "lively community," however, this will require growing the community as well as better community moderation to encourage posts & comments.

Today, we have 126 paying members, who have mostly come from Facebook ads. What's exciting is that most have shared that they love the idea, but we need to keep focusing on providing more content.

Onward and upward,

The month of March was entirely focused on content development. Although the early feedback on the membership has been overwhelmingly positive, there were a few members who churned.

I wanted to learn more about member experience, so I set up an email that is sent to members a day after they cancel their membership.

The email is pretty simple:
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Hi {{ subscriber.first_name | strip | default: "there" }}—Our small team at Dad's Club works hard to help families learn, grow, and thrive.

I wanted to ask for your help—can I get your candid feedback on your member experience?

I personally read every single comment on this survey, so I'd really appreciate you taking 3 minutes to share your opinion.

[ Take Quick Survey ]

Thank you,
Vincent
Dad's Club Founder
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The survey links to a free Typeform survey, which asks a combination of questions from Sean Ellis' Product Market Fit survey and the traditional Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions.

1. How likely is it that you would recommend Dad's Club to a friend or colleague? (0 Not Very Likely to 10 Very Likely)
2. What changes would Dad's Club have to make for you to give it a higher rating?
3. Please explain how you would describe Dad's Club to a friend or colleague.
4. How would you feel if you could no longer use Dad's Club?
5. Please help us understand why you selected "[last response]" as your answer.
6. What would you likely use as an alternative if Dad's Club were no longer available?
7. What is the primary benefit that you have received from Dad's Club?
8. What type of person do you think would benefit most from Dad's Club?

The early learnings from this survey seem to point to these three areas that should be improved:

• Create and publish more content in the library so that new members can consume at least a few hours worth of content right away
• Improve the UX/navigation of the member's area so that things are easier to find
• Foster more discussion in the community so that it is more lively

I'm looking forward to being able to make improvements in all three of these areas! Overall member retention has been really good, and as of today, we have 52 paying members.

We're 14 days out from when we initially launched, and today we have our first 3 book summaries live in our member's portal. I picked the first three books that I think any new father would benefit from:

• Dude, You’re Gonna Be A Dad! How to Get (Both of You) Through the Next 9 Months
• Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool
• The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

We currently have 21 paying members @ $9.95/month. Six of the members are friends who I sent text messages about the new project, and 15 of the paying members came from Facebook or Instagram ads that we ran.

I've spent about $2,000 on Facebook ads, so the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) was about $133 on the first 15 members that came from paid ads.

Overall the initial feedback has been really positive from the members, but since it's a monthly membership, it's too soon to tell what the member retention will look like.

It's Superbowl Sunday, and today seems to be as good of a day as any to launch Dad's Club!

When I became a new father, I knew that I wanted to be the best dad that I could possibly be, but I didn't know exactly what I should do. Talking to the other new parents, I found that I wasn't the only one with an unread pile of parenting books.

We should read them all, but there has to be an easier way to learn how to be a great parent. This was the inspiration for Dad's Club. An easy way for dads to learn the key insights from 100 books in a year, without flipping a single page.

Each week, Dad's Club members are sent a 10-minute audio summary of a New York Times or Amazon bestseller. It's bite-sized, actionable knowledge delivered straight to your favorite podcast app.