Switchback Foods Achieves 40% Subscription Growth and 16% AOV Lift Through FERMÀT Funnel Experimentation

Learn how Switchback Foods, a rapidly growing Shake and Make smoothie brand, is currently leveraging FERMÀT to scale their business through strategic post-click experimentation and persona-specific messaging.

ABOUT

Founded in June 2023 by Ole Hovde, Switchback Foods is revolutionizing the healthy food industry with their innovative green smoothie mixes. After countless iterations to perfect their first product, the Jungle Mango smoothie mix, the Minnesota-based company has established itself as a premium provider of pre-portioned, whole-food smoothie blends. Their products stand out in the market for using real fruits and vegetables at peak ripeness, with no artificial ingredients, preservatives, or added sugars—making them both nutritious and accessible for all ages.

CHALLENGE

As a non-technical founder leading a lean team, Switchback Foods’s founder, Ole Hovde needed a solution that would enable his team to conduct post-ad-click experimentation without requiring significant development resources

Coming from a background in sales and consulting, founder Ole Hovde faced a critical decision in scaling his e-commerce business. He recognized the need to experiment with post-click experiences and messaging but was missing the technical expertise in-house to build custom landing pages at scale. The traditional approach would have required hiring both designers and developers—a costly investment for a young company. 

After receiving a recommendation through an e-commerce founders group, Hovde discovered FERMÀT offered a pathway to high-velocity post-click experimentation without the need for technical expertise or significant resource investment.

STRATEGY

FERMÀT empowered Ole and the Switchback Foods team to rapidly and easily experiment on their landing pages and post-ad-click shopping experiences. The team has launched an impressive 8 new funnels in just under 3 months, experimenting with cohesive ad-to-purchase experiences, seasonal customer acquisition offers, targeted funnels for new buyer personas, and more. 

Here’s a peek into some of the strategies that Ole & the Switchback Foods team have implemented to achieve such great success in such a short time on-platform. 

1. Creating Cohesive Ad-to-Purchase Experiences: The team developed a systematic approach to matching post-click experiences with their ad creative. This strategic alignment extends beyond creative asset consistency, encompass product use case and benefit messaging throughout the entire shopper journey. Their most successful funnel features a listicle landing page titled "Five Reasons Why You Need More Plants”. It’s achieved a remarkable 6.93% conversion rate while maintaining the brand’s target average order value. This approach has proven particularly effective in reducing new customer purchase objections.
2. Experimenting with Seasonal Offers and Messaging: Switchback Foods capitalized on the New Year period by creating targeted shopping experiences that resonated with resolution-minded consumers. These specialized funnels combined compelling "new year, new you" messaging with exclusive limited-time offers for new customers. The strategic timing and messaging resulted in one funnel achieving a 3.9% conversion rate and driving a 322% increase in revenue per session. This success demonstrated the efficacy of launching shopping experiences aligned with seasonal consumer mindsets.
3. Expanding Market Reach Through New Persona-Specific Funnels: Building on their early success, Switchback Foods has begun developing targeted shopping experiences for specific demographic segments. Their current experiments focus on reaching women experiencing perimenopause and those dealing with elevated cortisol levels. This targeted approach allows them to address specific health concerns and benefits while maintaining their broader brand messaging on the benefits of drinking 4+ cups of vegetables and fruits. Creating these persona-specific funnel experiments with FERMÀT not only enables the Switchback Foods team to launch funnels and iterate quickly, but it also allows them to maintain their broad-appeal product messaging for their greens smoothies on the main Shopify site
4. Implementing “Big Swing” Split Testing: Using FERMÀT Forever Links, Ole and his team conduct ongoing experiments to determine the impact of driving top-performing ad creative to landing experiences with varied messaging approaches.  This includes testing various content formats, such as comparing the effectiveness of listicle-style content against doctor-recommended advertorials. FERMÀT's detailed analytics enable them to track customer behavior throughout the funnel, from initial page view through purchase completion, providing actionable insights for continuous optimization at each stage of the buyer journey.

"We are huge fans of what FERMAT has to offer. As we continue to grow, it's going to be integral to our growth in testing messaging. It is truly a game changer for us." - Ole Hovde, Founder of Switchback Foods

RESULTS

In just three months of leveraging FERMÀT, Switchback Foods has seen significant growth in their conversion rate, AOV, and first-order subscription opt-in rate without requiring the costly expense of a web development agency.

Since implementing FERMÀT, Switchback Foods has:

• Achieved a 40.6% increase in first-order subscription opt-in rate within the 30 days on-platform
• Seen a 16% lift in AOV in the past 30 days
• Successfully launched and continuously experimented on 8 unique funnels in under three months
• And accomplished an impressive peak conversion rate of 6.93% on their best-performing evergreen funnel

The Switchback Foods team continues to leverage FERMÀT as a core component of their growth strategy, proving that sophisticated marketing experimentation is possible without significant technical resources or expertise.