by I recently took a look at our sales report and saw we have now done over 10 Million Dollars in Subscription Box Sales..
I think it’s crazy that you can set up a business from the comfort of your home and generate that much in sales.
The internet has completely changed the game and has made this opportunity possible for anybody that wants it bad enough.
When we started BusterBox, we barely had any money at all. I was actually in debt from a previous business that failed and just got made redundant from my job.
My total investment to get BusterBox started was around $3,000, which was spread out over about 12 months.. (This was all the money that I had at the time)
I find it insane that you can go from that position to generating over 10 Million Dollars in a few years.
My story is not unique, though.
There are countless examples of Subscription Box Owners who have similar stories (Many of them in the Subscription Box Experts Academy.)
The opportunity to build a life-changing business is very real (If you want it bad enough)
It won’t be easy, and it will require hard work, commitment and some sacrifice, but I promise the journey is 100% worth it.
When you can live life on your own terms, that is completely priceless.
Over the last few years, I have learned an enormous amount of information about what works and what is a complete waste of time when it comes to growing a Subscription Box.
In this article, I am going to share with you five things I have learned from building a Subscription Box Business that has done over 10 million dollars in sales.
I hope this information helps you and saves you from making some of the mistakes that we did..
4 Things I have learned from generating over $10 million in sales.
- Posting on Social Media Isn’t A Marketing Strategy.
I hate to break it to you, but posting on social media isn’t a marketing strategy that is going to drive any consistent growth.
Yea, sure, it can get you sporadic sales here and there, but this isn’t a sustainable and predictable way of acquiring customers
How do I know this?
Well, we have over 80,000 followers across social media, and they account for a very small amount of our sales.
The organic reach on social media is pretty terrible these days, and only a very small amount of the people that follow you are actually going to see your posts.
There are certain things you can do here and there to boost organic reach, but overall you will be fighting a tough battle if you are depending on organic social media posts to drive any significant growth.
Notice I said “Significant Growth.”
You may get a few sales here and there, and it is more effective when you are smaller, but if you really want to scale up, you will need a profitable, repeatedly and scalable way of growing your business.
Also, posting on social media is not a waste of time.
It’s important to have a presence, and if you look at any of the BusterBox social accounts, you will see we are posting very regularly.
This helps build trust from potential customers before they sign up, and it’s good to have a presence to show you’re a legitimate brand.
I just wouldn’t be depending on it to get any kind of significant traction. It should be part of your strategy but 100%, not your only way of getting customers.
2. Your Subscription Metrics are extremely important.
If you want to get anywhere, you need to have a firm understanding of your subscription metrics because, at the end of the day, they play a massive part in how sustainable and profitable your business will be.
If you want a detailed breakdown of these metrics, please read one of my previous posts, as I have covered them in detail many times.
(I could honestly write a novel on them because this is the type of stuff we are looking at every day in BusterBox)
I will cut straight to the chase. At the bare minimum, you should have a firm understanding of your customer acquisition cost versus your lifetime value.
These are the key metrics which will measure how successful your business will be.
If you are spending too much to acquire a customer and the lifetime value isn’t high enough to sustain that marketing expense, then it does not matter how many subscribers you have. You will always be losing money!
On the other side, if your lifetime value is high enough, then you can afford to spend more to acquire a customer, and you are less likely to worry about ad prices going up.
At the end of the day, you should be testing different ad-ons, pricing and one-time sales to maximise your lifetime value.
Your business will be in such a better place if you can do this and aren’t fully depending on subscriptions for all of your sales.
3. A Subscription on Its own may not be enough anymore.
This brings me to the next point. Selling a subscription box on its own may not be enough anymore.
Back when we initially started BusterBox, this was all companies seemed to do.
There weren’t many companies who were focusing on add-to-box, one-time sales or any other add-ons.
The main focus was growing the subscription revenue, and that was it.
Now over the last few years, the industry has started to evolve, and more and more companies are figuring out other ways of generating revenue from their lists and their subscribers.
In 2023 and onwards, this is essential for the majority of Subscription Boxes.
Advertising costs keep getting more expensive, and eventually, there is a price barrier.
You will hit on how much you can actually charge for your subscription box.
The way around this is to maximise your revenue by selling additional products.
Also, you are collecting all of this information on your customers, and you have them in your database, so it would be foolish not to attempt to sell other products to them.
In BusterBox, we sell lots of additional products and offer multiple subscriptions like extra treats or toys, and these convert well and help us increase our LTV across our subscriber base.
I highly recommend that you start testing things like this if you haven’t already.
4.An effective follow-up process is essential.
If you want the numbers in your business to work in your favour, you need to have an effective follow-up process in place.
If you depend on cold traffic alone to grow your business, you may as well set your money on fire!
Yea, sure, the CAC can make sense sometimes at a lower spend but try to increase your ad budget and really scale and watch what happens.
It’s likely your CAC is going to go through the roof and become unsustainable.
The way to solve this problem is by implementing an effective follow-up strategy and giving yourself multiple opportunities to sell to a lead.
A large percentage of customers will not be ready to sign up for your box on the spot (especially now with the economy the way it is)
That is why it is very important to collect as many leads as possible from the traffic you send to your website.
A percentage of customers will only sign up after receiving a few sales emails.
We found that the best way to collect leads by far is through our sign-up flow.
Our sign-up flow collects the emails from 30-40% of all traffic that lands on our website.
This translates into collecting thousands of email leads every month, and our list has over 150,000 subscribers on it. (Imagine how many other products you can sell to a list that is growing every single day)
We then send out sales emails six days a week, and email is a huge channel for us.
This makes a gigantic difference to the number of subscribers we get and keeps our CAC at a sustainable level while we scale.
I can honestly say that without this signup flow, our business probably wouldn’t work.
I highly recommend adding something like this to your business, as it will make a massive difference.
If you are depending on pop-ups for email collection, you need to take a step back and look into the results.
Are these popups actually driving any kind of growth?
My guess would be minor at best.
The average pop-up converts at 6.57% on mobile and 3.77% on desktop – This is simply not enough to drive any kind of meaningful impact.
Get yourself a signup flow and watch how many extra leads you collect each day.
Then if you follow up with these leads correctly, watch your subscriber numbers go up through the roof and your customer acquisition cost drop!
I hope you found this article helpful. I focused more on the marketing side of things instead of the operation side of things (I may cover this in a future article) as there are many things we learned with that as well.
The opportunity is massive with this business model, and I highly recommend committing to the journey because when you get it right. It will change your life.If you have any questions about Subscription Boxes at all, please let me know.
