Episode 69: Developing Subscription Products with Justin Boatman, Chief Product Officer at Riskalyze

May 2

In this week’s episode of Subscriptions Scaled, we speak with Justin Boatman, Chief Product Officer at Riskalyze.

In the episode, we discuss various aspects of Riskalyze, including its pricing model, user experience, marketing channels, and more.

Keep reading to learn more about the episode.

Riskalyze

Riskalyze has been around for 11 years, with its product going to market for the first time in 2013.

The brand invented the risk number, which is a scale of one to 99 that assesses the risk tolerance of an investor. The advisor can construct a portfolio with a risk number to match.

Riskalyze’s mission is to empower the world to invest fearlessly. When investors understand the risk in their portfolio and know how to react to it, they will be fearless about their finances.

While Justin hasn’t been Chief Product Officer at Riskalyze for very long, he’s been at the company for seven years. He started on the marketing side of the brand.

During his time at Riskalyze, Justin has built a marketing team from scratch and the company has grown significantly.

Riskalyze’s Pricing Model

Riskalyze can be used as a prospecting tool for advisors. Advisors meet new people and access more information and can help more people, offering a tangible ROI.

Recently, a customer reached out to Justin to say that they enrolled their first client ten days after onboarding, which would cover the cost of using Riskalyze indefinitely. If you bring on the right client, the ROI is significant.

Riskalyze offers two different pricing options, Riskalyze Select and Riskalyze Elite.

Riskalyze Select is a $250 a month subscription and Riskalyze Elite is $350 a month.

Riskalyze’s strategy has always been to roll out new value into new plans. It’s not to raise prices for current customers.

This can be a bit tricky to manage, especially in software, given the markets and inflation. It can be challenging to continue to add value and have a fair pricing strategy when you’ve got customers who are used to paying a certain amount.

These days with inflation, a company that produces cereal, for example, could expect the price of a box of cereal to change day-to-day. With software, it’s a recurring relationship.

When the team at Riskalyze thinks about pricing, it thinks about sizing the right price to value.

With all the enhancements it makes to the product and packaging it into new plans, Riskalyze says, ‘Hey, we’re not going to kick you off the old plan right now. But here’s a new plan and all the reasons you’re going to find value in this new plan.’ This helps to encourage users to upgrade to the new plan.

So far, this method has worked well, based on a couple of factors. One is that the ROI is pretty cut and dry. People love to invest in the value that they get back.

And when Riskalyze adds features into new plans that can help them grow their businesses better, it’s usually well-received.

Riskalyze has had a lot of adoption of new plans, notably the Elite plan. Its premium to base ratio is through the roof. Right now, over 70% of new customers come on board at the Elite tier rather than the Select tier.

The Elite and Select Tiers

The main difference between the Elite and Select tiers is that Elite is packed with many investment analytics and research tools. These features take a bit more in terms of things like investment and effort building.

Riskalyze wanted to ensure it wasn’t putting a gimmick into a higher tier and trying to do a price grab. It wanted to make sure that it was pricing its products reasonably based on what it takes to build and support them.

With Riskalyze Elite, you’re not just looking at a simple risk alignment equation comparing risk tolerance with portfolio risk. Instead, you’re going into detailed portfolio stats.

There’s a lot more back-office technology involved, where an advisor can help make better decisions about the portfolios they’re proposing to their clients.

A lot of the research and development that goes into creating the Elite tier justifies the higher price for it.

The User Experience

Developing an excellent user experience is essential for the team at Riskalyze. The team is particularly good at designing apps that are easy to use, and advisors enjoy using them.

Riskalyze has been able to build a unique user experience. It’s something the team wants to invest in and continue doing.

The team at Riskalyze wants to display something on the screen to the advisor, who would be happy to turn around and show it to their client. Afterall, the advisor wants to look professional in front of their clients.

So when it comes to user experience, Riskalyze is going to invest in improving it continuously—especially for situations where the advisor meets the client and wants to appear professional.

Marketing

Riskalyze is starting to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to account-based marketing. Currently, it leverages HubSpot for its marketing automation.

Justin compares marketing automation and content marketing strategies with fishing with a net. You put what you can get out there and see how many fish you can get on the scale. He explains that account-based marketing feels like fishing with a spear.

Instead of focusing on social media or displaying ads on a broader scale, you look at a small set of key accounts and see what they need. What do they need from a social media perspective? What do they need from a direct mail perspective?

When you start asking questions that way, you start engaging people and treating each key account as if it's a market of one. That’s how you really start getting people’s attention.