025: How Sarah Revived a Dwindling Subscription

Maybe you've had your subscription box business for a while now and things just seem to be failing. I want you to listen to this episode. My guest today was ready to give up on it, and I encouraged her to give it one more all-out launch before she made that decision. And I'm so glad she did. Come listen to Sarah's story.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Hey everybody, I'm super excited to introduce you to Sarah Cummings from the Red Headed Camel. Sarah, I'm so excited that you're here. Why don't you just introduce yourself and what you do at the Red Headed Camel?

Hey friends, I'm Sarah from the Red Headed Camel. I'm so excited to be here with y'all today to share a little bit about my business. Um, just to give you a little bit of background, I started the Red Headed Camel in 2014, so 7 years ago, and the majority of my products are handmade. All of them feature my hand lettering and original artwork. We print it on all kinds of different things, including t-shirts and door hangers, which are what my subscriptions feature.

And really, your style is very colorful, very bright, very happy, as you say a lot. And so it's very, it's very specific style. But you just said it's, it's handmade. A lot of it is handmade and hand-lettered, and I love that about your products. They're really fun. And so what we're going to do today with Sarah— she just had a launch. And it's kind of a big deal. And what I'm excited to share with you is that going into this launch, Sarah wasn't exactly excited about her subscription or where it was headed. And this launch was kind of like a last ditch effort to revive this subscription. And it did way more than just that. So Sarah, let's take them back when we chatted a few months ago. Let's talk about your— you have 3 different subscriptions. We're going to talk first about your t-shirt subscription, but let's talk about where you were a few months ago with that and what's happened.

Okay, so we have 3 subscriptions. We have 2 t-shirt subscriptions, one's just kind of everyday tees. We have one specific for teachers, and then we have one, a club for door hangers. I started our t-shirt club first in 2019 before I met Sarah, and it was the one that was growing quickly and lots of people were excited. When I originally launched that club, we had over 60 people join the very first time. And that was with me totally flying by the seat of my pants. And then over the course of the next year, we grew a lot. Our highest was about 200 members and it had grown pretty significantly. And then 2020 came and hit us like a wrecking ball. And of all of my subscriptions, this is the lowest price point. And so it was something that customers maybe felt like they could get rid of easily without hurting anybody's feelings and save a little bit of cash while they were working from home or had been laid off or they had too many shirts in their closet, they're wearing the same 3 things while they're in quarantine. And so it started to dwindle and I was kind of at a point where it was like, do I keep going with this? Our teacher club was growing really quickly and there was a ton of interest in that. There's also a lot of overlap within our clubs that people are in multiple. And so I was wondering like, do we just take this off the table, let it die, so to speak, until there's only a handful left and then call it quits, offer just retail Everyday Teas and let the rest just focus on our other two subscriptions. Then I decided after I talked with Sarah that we were going to launch one more time, give it one more big push effort, see what happened, and after that make a decision.

And you were able to make a really good decision because your launch was super successful. And so what I want to do is I want to break down your launch with our listeners today because We can, we can do the things all the time, but when we go all in with something and we really put our energy into something for a short specific amount of time, like when we're launching, we can really generate some big results. And that's exactly what you did. And you revived your t-shirt club. And so let's go through kind of the processes of beginning your launch. So we talk a lot inside Launch Your Box about having a waitlist and driving traffic to that waitlist. How long had you had a waitlist? List going?

We started the waitlist for the t-shirt club back in 2019, so it's been growing for 2 years at this point. Of course, people would join and then we take them off the waitlist, but then if people cancel their membership, they might still be on our email list, so they might still see something. Um, but we had been growing the email list for about 2 years, and then about 4 weeks before we opened the club to the public, we decided to really start to push that waitlist again, just in social posts videos to say, you know, we're reopening soon, here's your chance to get early access. So be sure to click here, join our waitlist, and you'll be glad you did.

So do you know how much that grew in that 4 weeks?

I don't know off the top of my head, but I can tell you that our conversion rate for the waitlist was significantly higher than usual. I think part of that was because of the excitement that we were generating, because I send emails to our waitlist in advance of the launch, encouraging them like, you know, 5 days to launch and that kind of thing to get them excited. And I always, always, always include a call to action in those emails. So whether it's like, go comment on this recent post and let me know if you're excited or reply to this email and let me know if you have any questions so that they feel like there's a two-way conversation instead of them just getting inundated in inbox with, hey, join this thing before we even open. And I think that that kind of conversation is what helped to convert to sales.

I love that because not only were you creating excitement and buildup in regards to your launch, but you were also generating some engagement on your page. So not only were they engaging and now they were more invested, but other people that follow them or, you know, their friends were seeing their engagement on your page. You're just snowballing this momentum that you are building into your launch. That's really, really good. Now we talk about the early bird bonus and tell, tell everybody that maybe they're not in Launch Your Box. Maybe they don't know my theory on the early bird bonus, but tell them about the early early bird bonus and what you did for that.

So we always offer our waitlist early access to join whenever I'm launching anything, um, specifically subscriptions. So we open always on a Thursday to the public. We run Thursday to Sunday for launch. Um, but I opened to the waitlist on Wednesday night and they get early access to that early bird bonus, which means that they can get a special thing that nobody else gets, um, before it's even available to the public. So for us, for this particular launch, I decided to go big. And in addition to their normal Happy Meal, they'll receive every month as a member. We gave every person who joined in the first 24 hours an additional exclusive t-shirt that they could only get if they joined the first day. So our waitlist gets a little bit earlier access. They join Wednesday night if they want. And so they know that they're going to get a spot. And then we give all day Thursday for everybody on our page, on our website. They see an ad anytime before midnight on that Thursday of launch. They can also receive that early bird bonus.

That early bird bonus really generates a lot of buzz, like straight out of the gate. It creates a lot of excitement. It gives a reason for people to buy. They could say, oh, well, I'll buy it before Sunday. But when you have that bonus right at the beginning of your launch, it gives people a reason, that fast action to take action, because 9 times out of 10, if they wait, knowing they have several days, they're going to forget and your cart's going to be closed and they're not going to be able to join. So I love that you gave them an extra t-shirt. So that's a really great idea. So Okay, so next we're into open cart day. Tell me how the next few days go with open cart.

So I will be honest, we had some pretty significant website glitches throughout this process. We had never had that issue before and it was like happening late at night. And so fortunately my assistant, um, is on the West Coast. And so I'm on the East Coast, it's like 11 o'clock at night and I'm texting her. So she's still like has her computer up. And that was really helpful to be able to get some things taken care of as there were little backend issues. Um, But we opened the cart on Thursday to the public and it was like the floodgates had opened. I really, I mean, I was anticipating my high-end goal for this launch was 20 new people. That was like my, if I get this, I'll get myself an ice cream kind of thing. And it was significantly more than that within the first 6 or 8 hours. And I was like, okay, first of all, I need to contact our printers and let them know We gotta start ordering more shirts like now, because with all the crazy backlog of printing after COVID, we knew that that was going to take longer than anticipated. So Thursday I went live, I shared with our audience, we were doing Instagram stories, we're doing Facebook posts, running a few ads, and it was kind of just like everything came together in a really positive way that before all of the moving pieces, I had been doing the same thing every single time. But this time it was like do or die. Literally, the club was going to die if I didn't. And so I just put all of my eggs in that basket. I did not focus on a single other thing and just decided that we were going to do it big. And it worked.

It worked. And so you closed your cart out on Sunday night and tell everybody how many new members that you added in those few days.

So we welcomed almost 75 new members over the course of 4 days, which was unbelievable. At first, my goal was 20, and then I was texting my mom and I said, okay, we hit 20. I think, I think we can get 30. And she's like, Sarah, come on. And then as we grew, I kept setting these new goals and it just kept happening. And it, it really was one of those things of like seeing the fruits of your labor come together in a way that makes you excited to do your job because it had really really started to fizzle and I wasn't excited about it anymore. And I think people could kind of sense my excitement about this. And it really made all the difference.

I think you're exactly right. When you lose your excitement or your energy over something that you're doing, people on the other side feel that too. So maybe as it has fizzled, your excitement for it had fizzled too. And so when you showed up in a way that was full of energy, full of excitement, and, you know, clearing your schedule for that, those days is super important because we don't do this often. We don't launch often. So when we do it, we have to go all in. We have to put all of our energy into that, um, those, that timeframe so that we can know that we gave it our all. And that's exactly what you did. And you saw huge rewards for that. I know that you mentioned to me, you used reviews, you use subscriber testimonials, and you also added something into this launch that was different from before that you also felt like was a big needle mover for you. During this launch. Tell us about that.

So there are actually two things. The first was Sarah had encouraged me previously and encourages a lot of people in Launch Your Box to do this. And I hadn't had the technology to do it, but we brought on one of our very first members of the t-shirt club. She's been in the club for two years and we set a time that worked for her and went live on our Facebook page with her to answer questions. The amount of excitement that hearing from somebody besides me, someone wearing a shirt who actually like has a job other than producing shirts, talk about why she loves them, how she enjoys them, what she wears them for was really significant. So that's something that even if you're just starting out, it's really easy. If you only have 5 subscribers, you can get one of them to come live when you launch and very, very easily use that to leverage opportunities for new members to join. The second thing—

I want to stop you there because that's important because It's like when someone, like if you're walking out on stage and you had to introduce yourself and you said, hi, I'm Sarah Williams, I'm the founder of Launch Your Box. And I help entrepreneurs start, launch, and grow their subscription box. Like that would be my introduction. But if somebody else introduces me, they're gonna be like, welcome to the stage, it's Sarah Williams, you know, and they're, and they're giving me all this clout, you know, that I wouldn't say about myself. Right. And so that's the difference when one of your members, one of your subscribers can tell people about your thing versus you saying something about your thing. They say it in a different way. They say it in a positive way. They say it in a way that's going to relate to other people.

You're—

we're too close to it. Sometimes we're too close to it. We don't want to brag about it too much. We don't want to overly boast about it, but when someone else does it, it just lands differently. And people are going to be like, oh, well, if she likes it, I'm going to like it. It's like, how many times do you read those Amazon reviews? Like the description from the from the seller can be full of all this great things like it's this and it's this and it's this. And you're like, yeah, but is it really? And then you go down to the reviews and there's like, okay, well, here's a picture of them in their living room with it and here's their 5-star review and here's their— okay, now I believe these people because they're not trying to sell me something, right? So it's one of those things that it's like it's a live review and they're always going to talk about it in a way that you can't. So I love that. Let's talk about the other thing that you did.

So the second thing that we did, which actually I tried it with our teacher t-shirt club in the spring and it totally fell flat, but I did it wrong. Um, I did not share enough information with the people that we were potentially bringing on as affiliates and we were using affiliates within the club. This time I contacted a couple of people who I knew their followers and their people on their social media loved graphic tees. They were already in that market. And so I contacted them and said, can I send you a free shirt and maybe you share it? I'll give you a code where you get a certain percentage of every single sale for the life of that subscription. And I was, you know, I figured I'll ask and the worst they could do is say no. And they said yes. And so I was able to get more people that weren't just in my audience because sometimes the overlap of audiences, it gets a little bit too salesy when friends and family are sharing this link and they're like, hey, use my link. But if it's a new person from a different audience and a different perspective, their audience already loves this kind of stuff and they're sharing it with them from a new person that they've never seen before. That was a huge sales driver for us.

Do you know what those affiliates brought in for you as far as new subscribers? Do you know that number?

Between the two of them, and I only asked two because I wasn't sure how it was going to go, between the two of them, almost 15 total.

Awesome. So that's a big deal, an extra $15. So you had $60 on your launch, then you get another $15 from your affiliates. And, um, what I love about that is that you tried something new. Every time we launch, we want to add in kind of a new layer. There's a lot of things you can do in a launch, but you don't have to start with your very first launch trying to do all the things. With your very first launch, you do the one thing, and maybe that's the email sequence. Maybe that's going live. Maybe that's the early bird bonus. And then as you launch again and again, you can add something to that each time. So you don't feel like you're running, you know, running through hoops every time you launch, but you're just layering in and you're building on it launch to launch and you get more comfortable during a launch. It gets easier because once you build these assets, Sarah, you know, you can use them over and over again. So once you build your emails for your launch, you just use them again. You don't have to create new emails for your launch. Once you once you create your ads for your launch, you just use those again. You figure out what ads from the last launch were working the best and you just use those again. So once you build these assets, it's not like you're having to redo this every single launch. So that gives you the opportunity and the brain space to build on that launch each time.

It's really funny that you say that because I was talking with my assistant, we were like 3 or 4 days out and I literally duplicate our email sequences and change out the date. Change out the graphics. I mean, this is between door hangers and t-shirts. And it's just a rinse and repeat. And I told her, I said, I don't, I don't know what to do with my hands. I'm just like sitting here, I'm ready. And I feel like I'm missing something. But 2 years later, you know, like you've done the stuff to prepare. And so if it's hard the first time, and it's not really an if, it will be hard the first time. And it may be hard the second time. But by the time you've done this a few times, you're used to it, your customers are expecting you to do it. They want you to sell something. That's why they're there. And you just have to take the strategies that you've learned and implement them and rinse and repeat. And the results, it's, it can be so, so amazing.

Yes. I love that you had such great results with this launch. It's revived your love for this subscription. But you know, I always get this question. I always get this question about, yeah, but what if we make everything? I don't think I can do a subscription box because I make everything. And I always say, well, do you know Sarah from the Redheaded Camel? Because she has an amazing door hanger subscription and she hand paints every one of them. So let's, let's transition into your door hanger subscription because people listening right now are trying to figure out how they can do this and should they do this and will they be able to keep up with it? Tell us a little bit about your door hanger subscription.

Well, you asked the question, should they do this? Let me tell you, um, people have started thinking of me as the door hanger girl. Um, and just to be clear, I've been in business 7 years. And for the first 5 years of those, those years in business, door hangers were not my thing at all. Like I didn't do them. And I started getting questions about like, well, could we do something monthly like the t-shirts but for home decor? And I started thinking about it. And so we launched, it's been about a year and a half now that we've had the Door Hanger Club and I launched it. And I remember when we launched, you know, my goal again was like 20, that was going to be so great because that's a lot of door hangers. If you think about my two hands are the only ones painting them, and we got 40 that first launch, and I was like, okay, well, that's a ton of door hangers. And now that, that's literally like less than a third of the door hangers that I paint every month. But if you're wondering, should you do something handmade, the answer is absolutely yes. The reason being, you can charge more when you're the one making it. Anybody can get something from HomeGoods or Marshalls or TJ Maxx, and yeah, it's cute, But is it personalized? Was that handmade? And if not, it's not that exciting and special like it is when you open something that you know was made from someone especially for you, with you in mind, personalized and created exactly like you want it.

Well, and how many, how many door hangers do you paint every month now for the club?

So we have 130 members, and then we also do bonus door hangers several times a year. So for an example, for October, we'll have a fall design, but we'll also do a bonus design for Halloween. That they can get at their member price, which means that sometimes I'm painting an extra 50 door hangers. So it kind of fluctuates, but we have 130 guaranteed that I have to paint every month.

So you and I know this because we both, you know, have handmade things. I know how much easier it is to make 130 of the same thing versus 130 different things. And so if you're sitting there thinking, how do I have a subscription with something that I make handmade. And it's all about processes and systems. And the thing about it is, is that if you had to sit and make 130 different things every single month, it would be exhausting. Am I, am I right, Sarah?

Absolutely.

Yes, our creative minds would love that. I get to make different stuff every day, but you wouldn't be able to keep up with it. When you make 130 of the same thing you can streamline it, you can batch it, you can do all of one coat, you can do all— you know, you can really streamline your process, whether you're doing all of that yourself or you have someone come in, maybe paint the base coats and you do the detail work, whatever that is. But here's the other thing about it: 130 sales for a handmade business every single month that you can count on. Sarah, that's priceless. That, that this is income that could be life-changing to someone. And knowing that, okay, all I have to do is design one thing for next month. I'm going to spend my month painting all of those. I'm going to ship them out and the money's in the bank. I don't have to show up and sell anything. I don't have to push my, my goods at the flea market. I don't have to show up at every farmer's market around town trying to sell my things. All I have to do is sit and make my I already have my customers. I already know they're going to pay for them. And then, and then I've got, I've got an income every single month. What do you say to that?

I think it's huge and I'll tell you why. Um, so I started my business when I was a sophomore in college, which a lot of people already know if you're familiar with my business, but if not, I was only 19 years old. Um, and so I was a college student and then I was working full-time and then I took the business full-time about 4 and a half years in. Um, But back then, I was launching collections, big collections, almost every month because that's how I made money. I was launching a fall collection, Valentine's, patriotic, all the different things with different products within them that then people would purchase. And I didn't know if that collection was gonna be a hit or a miss. And if it was a miss, that was okay. But if it was a hit, that was huge and it felt really good. And so I'm very, very type A and the opportunity to create recurring revenue where I can, expect this and count on it was what was really, really attractive to me. So now I still do collections because our customers, 7 years in, have come to expect that from us. However, they're a lot smaller and it's kind of just for fun now. I get to design for fun because my 130 door hangers pays for all of our utilities, it pays for our groceries, it pays for all of our daily stuff, and the other is really it just sprinkles on the icing of the cupcake. Like I before was never really sure how something was going to go. And now regardless of how anything goes, the consistent recurring revenue is what drives the needle for my business every month.

And tell me what that's done for you in your life. I mean, you already told me it covers your, your basic needs, but tell me what that has done for you growing these subscriptions in the way that you have.

So I mentioned that I was, I'm, I'm pretty young. I was extremely young when I started my business and it was a total accident. And in that explanation, like I was always the youngest person in the room. Wherever I show up, I'm probably the youngest person in Launch Your Box. I was definitely the youngest person when I was in in-person conferences and that kind of thing. And it's really hard to walk into a room and be the toddler in every room that you walk into. However, now with 300+ subscribers behind me, I can walk into a room and feel like, okay, I might be the youngest person there, but I actually know what I'm doing. And I have the confidence that I that I didn't have before. And I've also gotten to create relationships with our customers that I never got to do for one-off sales. Like we've had people for 2.5 years in our t-shirt club and like I send them happy mail when they have a baby or when they get married. And I know their stories, I know what's going on in their world and getting to create those lasting relationships. It's so much more than just a business. And that to me is worth more than any dollar amount.

I love it. I love it. And I know that there might be somebody listening right now that they've had a subscription for a while. Maybe, maybe they had a high and they've plateaued and they're dipping down like you did with your t-shirt club. What advice would you give to that person listening right now that's saying, I just, I don't know if I should just give up on this and do something else, or what should I do, Sarah?

Sarah Williams. That's a hard question. I feel like I have so many things I could tell you, but I think the, the most important thing is simply just don't give up. It's really easy when things get hard to be like, okay, well, would it be easier if I didn't do this? And the answer to that question often is yes, but also no, because you started it for a reason. What you're putting out into the world is there for a purpose, and what you have to offer matters. And so if what you're doing right now isn't working, find something different, find a different strategy. Go live with one of your subscribers, bring on affiliates, do a Facebook Live if you've never done one before, run an ad, write a blog post, do something different than what you've done before and infuse some excitement back into what you're doing. Don't let it drag you down when things get hard because things are always, always, always going to change and be hard. That's the only consistency in life. Um, and so I think if you can, can capitalize on the fact that you have something worth offering, that you can share that with the world.

I love it. Thank you, Sarah. Sarah, where can they go find all the good things that The Redheaded Camel has to offer? Where can they find you?

So you can find us at theredheadedcamel.com or on all of our social media @theredheadedcamel.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being here with me today.

Thanks for having me.

Bye, guys. If the idea of creating a subscription box is swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launchyourboxwithsarah.com, get on our waitlist, and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.