by I want to help as many people as possible get to 1000 active subscribers in their Subscription Box business as quickly as possible.
Read this post and I will break down the exact strategy to get there.
One of the biggest milestones in your Subscription Box Journey is when you reach 1000 active subscribers.
Obviously there are milestones before that and milestones past that, but there is something very special about hitting 1000 subscribers.
The reason why I think it is so special is because at that point things really start to change in your business.
Usually when you reach this level you are able to hire some help and also start paying yourself a healthy salary.
For a lot of subscription box owners this is the point where dreams really start becoming reality…
It is usually the level where a lot of people quit their jobs and go full time on their business!
Things are very exciting around this time in your business and everything starts to feel a lot more real.
You will have to decide if you will use a fulfilment centre or will you rent warehouse space, will you work from home or will you rent an office.
I remember it well and it really is a fantastic time period in your Subscription Box Journey…
I am a massive believer in doing what is necessary and pushing yourself to reach the 1000 subscriber mark as soon as you can.
I remember when we started BusterBox it felt like 1000 subscribers was so far away and we would never reach it.
I think we were hovering around a few hundred subscribers for months at one stage. It took a lot of trial and error, but once we started getting movement, we kept the foot down until we hit the goal.
I know it may seem difficult at times, but for the majority of people in this group this is the level you need to hit to make everything worthwhile…
I have come to realise it doesn’t matter if these businesses have 200 or 10,000 people signed up it is still a lot of work. The only difference is once you hit the 1000 mark you can afford to hire help, you get rewarded for your work and the whole process is a lot more enjoyable.
Trust me, there are lots of problems when you surpass the 1000 subscriber mark, but they are much better problems to have compared to the problems you face when you’re struggling to grow…
That’s the main reason I decided to write this article. I want as many people as possible to hit 1000 subscribers ASAP. (Trust me, you will thank me when you do. The business model works about a million times better)
So bear with me as I explain a strategy to hit 1000 active subscribers in your Subscription Box Business As Quickly as possible.
The Quickest Way To 1000 Subscribers.
This is an overview of the entire strategy and obviously it can change a bit depending on your niche, but this article will give you a very good idea of the exact steps you need to follow to hit 1000 subscribers in your business.
The first thing you need to know is the entire game is predicated on maths and reverse engineering the size and frequency of things you need to do to reach the goal. The same logic doesn’t just apply for reaching 1000 subscribers either.
This is what we did to reach 10,000 active subscribers in BusterBox and it is the exact same logic we will follow to reach 100,000 subscribers.
Trust me, once you accept this the entire process of growing your business will become a lot easier and it will just be a case of repeating what actually works…
One of the biggest mistakes people make is they have no process at all. They don’t have a clue what actually moves the needle and their entire marketing strategy is based on hope.
Unfortunately, using hope as a marketing strategy will not get you any growth in your business and will leave you extremely frustrated.
So let’s jump straight into it
Here are a few critical things you need to hit 1000 subscribers.
1. A product people want and a market big enough, which spends enough to sustain your business.
This is basically product market fit, I could write a whole article on this because it is critical, you can have every other piece in place, but if you don’t have product market fit it will be basically impossible to have any real success
2. A website that actually converts.
I have touched on this many times and wrote many articles about this, but your website needs to have a conversion rate that is at least 2%. If it is anything less than 2% it will be too expensive and difficult to have any real success. If you have the ability to make a website that converts at 2% that is great and go ahead and do it. If you don’t, I recommend hiring out the work you need help with, copywriting, image design, web development etc…. This is critical because it will be nearly impossible to get anywhere unless this is done correctly.
3. A marketing budget
You need to be realistic when it comes to growing your business. You will need some sort of advertising budget for the majority of marketing activities. This doesn’t need to be a massive amount but you do need something. As you will need to run ads, give out free boxes etc.. All those things cost money. Obviously there are stories about people growing organically and if you can pull that off that is great, but for the vast majority you need to spend money otherwise it takes too long or you may not get anywhere at all.
When we started BusterBox we barley had any money to spend on marketing, but we worked full time jobs and every month we put some of our wages into marketing the business and growing it. Then after a few months we no longer needed to do this as the revenue from the business covered it. Then as we got bigger we spent more and more of the revenue on marketing so we could keep growing. I suggest you take a similar approach with your business.
4. Determination
This is absolutely critical because there will 100% be set backs, but you have to have the ability to get up and keep going. If you are able to stay the course and stay persistent you will crack this business model and surpass 1000 active subscribers.
Now let’s take a look at the actions you need to take to hit 1000 subs.
Now there are a couple of different ways you can do this depending on where you are in your business. You may be able to skip step 1 completely. I am writing this from the perspective of somebody who is only starting their business or somebody who has been running awhile and is struggling to get people signed up.
1. Identify 10 – 50 influencers in your niche.
Now, I am not the biggest fan of influencer marketing at all. I do know it can work and it has its place, but it can be difficult to scale and I prefer to have more control (like you do with paid traffic) When you are starting out though, influencer marketing can be a great way to gather content, make some sales and reach your ideal customer when you may not have the marketing skills to do it any other way yet.
You should find influencers that share the exact same audience you are looking to reach. If possible micro influencers can be a great place to start because a lot of the time they don’t charge, and are just happy to post your box.
You should send out as many boxes as possible to the right people, as you want to get as much traffic and as much data as possible.
2. Make sure the Facebook Pixel is correctly installed
It is very important that you do this before you start sending traffic to your website, otherwise this entire exercise can turn out to be a waste of time. Once you have the Facebook Pixel installed, you will be able to turn the traffic, leads and sales you gather from the influencer marketing into custom and lookalike audiences you can use to market your box too.
3. Make sure you have email collection point built into sign up flow.
You want to ensure you are making the most of your traffic and collect as many leads as possible from the influencer marketing process explained in step 1. The more leads you collect, the more opportunities you have to sell to these people and the cheaper your customer acquisition cost over time.
4. Start collecting data
The traffic the influencers push over to your website will start turning into data you can use for lookalike audiences on Facebook. Unless you do a massive push its unlikely you will be able to make purchase lookalikes, but you will be able to generate lookalikes from site visitors and from leads collected as well.
The more data you collect, the more accurate your lookalike audience will be. Obviously purchase lookalikes are the best, but the other ones are a great place to get started. You will need a decent amount of traffic for this to work so ensure you are sending enough boxes and targeting the right influencers who can send you traffic.
The IOS changes have had an impact on lookalike audiences but, that doesn’t mean they no longer work. We still use them and they still work extremely well.
5. Start running ads.
You will get plenty of pictures and videos from the influencers that you can use for ads. You can also start advertising to the lookalike audiences that you generated from the traffic / sales you got.
The main aim of the game here is to find an offer that converts for you at 2% minimum with an acceptable CPA.
As you start getting sales and more data you can make better lookalikes and test other audiences.
I have written so many different articles about how to grow your Subscription Box using Facebook ads. If you need more help with this check out my blog.
6. Send consistent emails.
A by-product of running ads to generate straight sales should also be the fact that you are now collecting fresh leads every day through your website. You should have a 5 day abandoned cart sequence set up. Not everybody will purchase from you straight away so this is a great way to catch those customers and reduce your CPA. You should also send regular emails to your list. 3 times a week is a good place to start. You don’ want to spam people so your emails need to be engaging and positioned in a way that people want to read them.
7. Incentivise social proof.
You want to gather as much social proof as you possibly can from all customers that sign up. You should run a competition to get reviews and as many box opening pictures and videos as possible. You can then put them on your website which will increase your conversion rate. The fact your customers are posting these online will also generate more traffic for your website and get you more sales.
8. Check sustainability
After running your ads and sending out boxes for a month you want to make sure your business is sustainable. You will not be able to get to 1000 active subscribers and get the benefit of that recurring revenue if your churn is through the roof. You want to be aiming for at least 10% churn. Obviously, if that is a bit higher that is fine as you can work to bring it down. If it is really high though well then I would lower the ad spend and fix the churn first otherwise you are trying to build a subscription box on a foundation that isn’t solid. Trust me, it will never work.
9. Measure CPA to figure out time frame and cost to hit 1000 subs.
You now want to measure your average CPA to find out how long and what the cost will be to hit 1000 subs. The easiest way to measure your CPA to divide your total marketing cost by how many subscribers you signed up
Example: You spent $1000 on marketing and you got 100 people signed up.
That means your CPA is $10.
You can now use this information to figure out what it’s going to take to get to 1000 subscribers.
A simple calculation is 1000 subs x $10 = $1000
So it will cost you $10,000 to hit 1000 subs.
Now that isn’t factoring churn or how long it is going to take to actually hit the goal. It would be vastly different depending on how much you are planning to spend on marketing each month.
You should make a spreadsheet and calculate it all out though. Put in your average churn and your marketing spend and see how many months it will take to hit the 1000 subscriber mark.
The more you spend the quicker you will reach the goal. Some people don’t want to go that fast though, and they want to build gradually and use the company’s growing revenue instead of spending all of their own money.
There are pros and cons for both approaches and neither are right or wrong. Me personally I would prefer to hit the goal as quickly as possible and would be happy to invest some of my own money towards marketing once I knew I was building a sustainable business and at 1000 subscribers it would be a big success.
10. Hit 1000 subs!!!
You then simply stick to the plan you made on the spread sheet and ensure you are hitting your CPA and churn goals every single month and you will reach 1000 subscribers in the time frame you set. It’s really that simple.
Obviously there are many different ways of growing, but this approach is a basic overview of a plan that will actually work if you execute it correctly.
Trust me, if you have a solid business and good metrics getting to 1000 active subscribers has the potential to completely change your life and I urge you to put a plan in place and push as hard as you can to reach that goal.
I hope you found this article helpful and I hope you hit 1000 active subscribers soon. If you have any questions about marketing or subscription boxes at all please feel free to post below and I can help. Have a great day.
