036: 6 Ways to Keep a Subscriber

You spend time, money, and a whole lot of energy getting a subscriber, but do you spend the same time, money, and energy keeping that subscriber? Today on the podcast, we're talking about my top 6 tips for retaining a box subscriber. Come listen.

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.

Welcome back. It's good to be back this week. Today we're going to talk about retention strategies. Now I know you're probably thinking, well, Sarah, how do I just keep them being a subscriber? Because here's the thing, we spend all this time running Facebook ads, building leads, we've got our opt-ins running, we're doing social media. We spend all this time at the top of that funnel, getting people into our world, getting them to subscribe. And then we don't necessarily spend the same amount of time and energy on the backend when they're leaving. So we've got— what happens is we've got this leaky bucket. And so they're coming in, they're enjoying it for a few months, they're going out, they're coming in. And so you're constantly on this rat race of finding new customers, getting them to like your subscription, and then they leave. And, and while it's the nature of our business We can plug some of those holes in that leaky bucket so they stay longer. And I've put together 6 of my top retention strategies to help you with the retention issue in your own subscription box business. So let's start with tip number 1. This is keeping things trendy and seasonal. And you might be like, well, Sarah, what do you mean? I go to great lengths to research the trends, to figure out what's trendy, what's seasonal, because I want to give our subscribers something new and fun all the time. This keeps the items in the box from being the same over and over again, whether that's fresh color, seasonal color. So think about winter is really like— I do like grays and whites and blues. Spring pops of color everywhere. Summer, bright, bright, bright. Fall, we've got all of maroon, you know, rust, all those fall colors. So when I'm curating subscription boxes, I'm thinking about the colors of the season. Because as the seasons change, the colors change too. So the t-shirts you're wearing in the fall are going to be different than what you would wear in the summer or the spring. The bags you carry in the fall would be different than what you would carry in the summer and the spring. So if I just go neutral with everything, if I make it just like everyday or classic styles, You're not going to want new stuff because you can use them all the time. If I gave people black bags all the time, they would never want new bags because you can use a black bag all the time. But if I really work on being trendy and timely and seasonal, then they want new stuff. Okay, I've used this gray bag all fall, I'm ready for something bright and fun for the spring. And while that's not the case for everybody or every product, it really allows you to change things up and really create them to be Seasonal. When things are trendy, what's in style right now might not be in style a year from now. So creating trends, really researching those— I researched them at markets, magazines, lots of different ways you can research trends. But people, the, you know, the trends shift. People want something new. So as a trend fades, they're looking for the next best thing. So if you keep it seasonal— I love doing holiday-themed things because they wear them for a short period of time. They use them for for a short period of time. And so if everything in this box is for Christmas, well, Christmas is going to be over at the end of the month. So then they're going to look for something that's non-Christmas. So if everything in those boxes were everyday classic styles, they wouldn't continue to need more of those. So tip number 1: keep things trendy and seasonal. They're consumed in that season, and then they're going to need more for the next season. Tip number 2, ask your subscription box subscribers what they want. So I find a way to include them. And here's what I mean by that. Number 1, it's also a really great place to research. So I can ask my subscribers what they want. I'm getting research from them. I'm constantly asking them what they love, what they want more of. It really helps me deliver a customized experience. And here's what happens when you start asking people what they want and their preferences, they start to feel like they're part of something. They're a part of your business. They're a part of your subscription box. They're helping you make decisions. So you want to make them feel that they are included as much as possible. It creates more buy-in, it creates more loyalty, and ultimately they're going to stay longer. They want to feel like this box is just for them. So you might be wondering, okay, Sarah, How do I make them feel included? How do I ask them what they want? And it can be, it can be lengthy, it can be super simple. You can send out a survey, you could do a questionnaire, you could set up a quiz, you could just send an email saying this, this, or this, hit reply and let me know. You can do social media posts, you can do polls in your stories. There's so many ways that You can just ask your subscribers what they want and make them feel included. Tip number 3: Engage with your subscribers. Create an environment for your subscribers to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. This could be a private Facebook group. I don't have a private Facebook group, but I love using our texting app. It's a great way to you know, have some communication with them that feels personal and one-on-one. You can share posts and stories of your subscribers wearing or using your items. You can feature them on your page. I love to send out a text to my subscriber group and say, send me a picture of you wearing something from the August box. And then I'll get a whole bunch of texts and I'll save those pictures and then I'll use them on social media for posts. And I'll say, Oh, here's Angela wearing our August tee. I love how she's paired it with this, this, and this. Or I'll just share a big collage of everybody that sent me pictures of them wearing their t-shirts. You can do this in a variety of ways. If you have a pet subscription, ask them to send pictures of their pets using their new toy or having their new snacks. I mean, anything that you can do. If you have a craft or a DIY, send us a picture of your final project. If you have a home decor box, you can ask them to to share a picture of how they've displayed the new items from the box this month. If you can include them, if you can engage with them, feature them on, on your page, you're going to make them feel very included. I always talk directly to them in social media. So a post might say, hey subscribers, let me know when you've received your August box, and then they'll, they'll be Answering, yes, not all my followers are subscribers, but what I'm doing here is I'm making my existing subscribers feel included, feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves, feeling like they're friends with me. And I'm looking at, and then everyone else looking on the outside is like, oh, I want to be a part of that. So how can you engage with your subscribers and make them feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves? So that's tip number 3, engage. Let's, let's just recap a little bit. Number 1, keep things trendy and seasonal. Number 2, ask your subscribers what they want. Include them in your decisions. Number 3, engage with them and make them feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. Okay, number 4. I love number 4 because it's so easy. Create added value. We always want our subscribers to feel like they're the VIP of our business. So how do you give the VIP really a first-class experience within your own business? And I do this a couple different ways. I do this with a discount, a very special discount or coupon. You can add a coupon to a box at any time. It's literally just something that you print and add to the box. If they open their subscription box and all of a sudden randomly there's a $10 off coupon in your— for your shop. They love that. Not only are they— are you driving more sales to your shop, you're rewarding your most loyal customers for being, being there, being subscription box subscribers. So do that every now and then. I try to do it 2 or 3 times a year. I add a coupon to their box just for them. You could do refer, refer a friend bonus. So you could have them refer a friend and they get— them and their friend get something special in their box the next month. So it could be like an exclusive add-on to their box if they refer a friend this month. And you could even do an email like first dibs because you're a subscriber. I do this often as well. So when I get something new in and I know it's going to be big and I know that I might sell out of that item very quickly, I'll send an email to my subscribers first and I'll say just in, you get first dibs. And so if that's a sweatshirt or a jacket or some jewelry or whatever that is, they feel special. And I, I'm going to word this in a way that it's only for subscribers, so they know they're part of this exclusive club that gets these benefits of being able to shop first, getting a coupon in their box, getting these referral bonuses, however you want to work it. This is a great way to create added value without costing hardly anything. So that's number 4. Now, number 5, offer a lower price tier in your subscription model. So let's talk through this. Financial reasons, and I've put this in air quotes for you, financial reasons. That's the number 1 reason that people give on my cancellation survey. I'm saving money, I'm cutting expenses. Um, I can't afford it anymore. And so I want to give them an option to keep them if it's for financial reasons. And so what I've created is a lower tiered subscription offer. My box, my highest box, which is called the Ultimate Box, it's an $80 box. So if that, if it becomes a financial reason that you are canceling your $80 box, Would you like to grab the $20 box? Maybe you can afford that easier. Maybe that's less barrier to keeping you as a subscriber, that you only have to pay $20 versus $80. Yes, it's not going to be the $80 box, but you're still going to get something from me every month. It's still going to be the same great things that you love. It's just not going to be all the things that are in that box. So if you can create a lower price tier in your subscription model, you want to offer that at the point of cancellation because they may not know you have a $20 offer. They may not know that they could just get the t-shirt out of the box. If that's their favorite thing in the box, it's definitely worth staying for. So if you could save a customer from canceling completely by offering a lower-tiered offer, Would you do that? I would do that every day if I could. So make sure you have that offer at the point of where they're going to cancel. So if that's a cancellation page, if that's a cancellation form, if they have to email you a cancellation request, make sure you make the offer for that to keep them as a subscriber. Because here's what's going to happen 9 times out of 10 later on, they're going to rejoin the the all the things subscription. So if you have a $20 offer now, in 4 months when things are better for them or financially, you know, more stable for them, they're going to want to come back because they're still part of your world. Even if it's $20 a month and they're just getting one thing from you, they're still a part of your— they're still a subscriber, they're still part of your world. You're still loving on them, nurturing them, engaging with them. And so when they are financially able to, that's going to be the first thing they're going to upgrade. So So just keep that one in mind. Now, the last tip I have for you, it's number 6. These are just my top tips. I know there's a lot more things you could do, but these are the things that I consistently do every single month to keep my retention high. Billing and follow-up. And I know it sounds like not a fun word, billing. It's not a fun word. If you can really dial into this, You're going to plug a lot of those holes in that leaky bucket. Payments are going to bounce. Okay, it just, it happens every month. Cards expire. And sometimes subscribers aren't quick to fix these things because they're busy, right? We're all busy. We got things to do. Fixing my card that expired on some fun box that I get every month is not my highest priority in my life right now. So I'm going to forget. That I need to do that. So we got to remind them. We have to remind them to go in and update their card. Having a dedicated person following up on these payments could reduce your churn by 75%. Yes, you can automate this, but a human touch goes a lot further than an automation to bring those payments back to you. I'll kind of walk you through our process a little bit, but We spend time on this every month and it's one of the highest priorities that we have. That's money. That's money that's just sitting there waiting to be collected. These are people that have told you, I want this box. We just need to remind them they need to update their cards. You're going to have bounced payments. It happens every single month. Matter of fact, this month I had 80 bounced payments, 80 payments, and that's common. That's common. Insufficient funds is the first one. And then people needing to update their cards, they've expired, they've been compromised, different things happen. And so we have to help them get that payment corrected, whether it's insufficient funds or it's, we need to update cards. And so we do this in a series of ways. We have automations set up. Automations, usually capture about half of those. So when I say automations, I'm talking about our payment processor. So when your payment runs for the first time, if it kicks back, if it bounces, it's going to automatically try to run that again in 12 hours. If it bounces again, it will run that in 24 hours. If it bounces again, it will run it in 48 hours. So it's going to automatically try to run it. I usually don't mess with the bounced payments until the automation has ran at least twice so that it can capture a lot of them. Then what happens is we take this and we send a personal email, because here's what I know about automations. Automations automatically come from my computer, and a lot of times they're going to end up in spam. Sometimes they don't, but a lot of times they do. If I send a personal email from my, my business email, and I'm going to send a personal email, and it's just real quick and sweet. Hey, I noticed that we're getting an error with your payment this month. Grab this link to update your cards and your subscription will be on its way soon. Very short and sweet, to the point. You don't need to over-talk. You don't need to write a whole bunch of stuff in there. They need to know that their payment bounced. And they also need to know how to fix it. And I always put on the subject line payment failed dash monogram box because I want them to know when they're scrolling their email box in the morning, oh my goodness, my payment failed for my monogram box. I got to go fix that. If, if this subject line doesn't say any of that, it might not be of importance to them to go look. So we send a personal email, we let the automation run one more time, and then we send a text. So if we still don't have their payment after the personal email and the automation ran one more time, we send a text. This is where we capture almost all of the payments that are outstanding at this point. And so what you can do is just email them once, text them once. I have someone that owns this in my business, one, because I have a lot of subscribers, but for the longest time I did this and it didn't take me a lot of time. Um, it would take me an hour here and there. So an hour to send the emails and usually an hour to send the text. And, and what would happen is we would recover almost 100% of these bounced payments. Maybe we would have one a month that we didn't recover through this system. And if you look at these and you never, you never do anything outside of the automations that are set up in your business, you're losing money. You're leaving money on the table every single month by not following up with these people. And so I can tell you, out of these 80 bounced payments that we had this month, we've recovered all but 4, and I'm hoping we'll recover the rest of those tomorrow. So that's important. That's a big one that could make a big difference in your retention rate. I want you to understand that cancellations are the nature of this business. You're going to have them. You're never going to have 100% retention. You might your first month, you might your second month, but it's going to happen. And I just want you to be prepared for it. How can you prevent less people from canceling? How can you keep more of the people that you spent so much time and energy and effort getting into your subscription box world? How do you keep them from leaving? And there's really those 6 things that I do every month. Let's talk about them one more time. Keep things trendy and seasonal. Think about your box. Are you doing too much classic, neutral, everyday things? Ramp it up. Number 2, ask your subscriber what they want. You gotta include them. You gotta let them know they're helping you make decisions. You gotta create that buy-in for them. Number 3, you have to engage with them. You have to talk to them like you're friends. You have to include them in something that makes them feel like they're part of something that's bigger than themselves. Engage. We're not just brands, we're people. People want to buy from people. Engage with them. Number 4, create added value. It's very simple. It doesn't cost a lot of money. Add a coupon, give them a discount, send them an email that they get first dibs, create a refer a friend bonus. Something so simple. And you don't have to do that every single month. I like to surprise and delight them. They really never know when it's coming until they open their box or they get an email from me. It's not something that expect. And that's why it's added value. It's not included in the value of their box. It's a surprise. It's a delight. It's something extra. Number 5, create a lower price tier in your subscription box model. If you only have the one box, it's totally fine. But as you grow and as people are telling you what they love about your box and maybe what they don't love about your box, Use that as research to create something that's simple. It's easy. It's a lower value than the box, and that would help retain your customers. Number 6, you heard me say it, the billing and follow-up is the most important one out of all 6 of these. You can really capture and maintain and retain your subscribers by just doing some simple billing and follow-up. And I know A lot of people don't want to be the collector, the account collector. Don't think of it as that way. Think of it as gentle reminders to let them know you still want them to be a part of your subscription box. And a lot of times they want to be a part of it too. They need the reminders. Think about your own self. Like, I'm, I'm crazy busy all the time. I need somebody to remind me about stuff. And if you do it in a polite way, in, in a serving way that you're just trying to help them and make it convenient for them to fix their card, they're going to receive that in a well way too. So it's really important knowing that retention rate is important as all 6 of these. So if you're sitting here listening right now and you don't know what your retention rate is for the last month, I need you to know that And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you have 10 subscribers, 300 subscribers, 5,000 subscribers. You need to know this number. When you can look at numbers and remove the feelings, you can really analyze what's happening in your business. And when you have 5 people cancel and you can look at your numbers and know that it's a percentage of the whole, and it's not the end of the world, it really helps you get a handle on the things you need to do to help that retention. So right now my retention rate's at 96%. That's a really good number. And so if I can just drive that 1% up, I can get to 97%. That's 30 customers. That's 30 customers I could save every month if I could just tweak My retention rate, 1%. What is 1% for you? Where are you at with your retention rate? I've got a few numbers for you to help you analyze where you're at. 95 to 100% retention rate, amazing. You're doing really, really well. But again, as you grow, that 1% can make a big difference. So I want you to look at where you're at What you can do to grow that percentage and get to the next percentage. You don't have to jump from 95 to 99. How do we get from 95 to 96? And what is 1% to, to you? 90 to 95% retention, that's still very good. You're doing a lot of things right. You're sitting at 90% retention, How do we get to 95? What can we tweak? We talk about these 6 things. What can we put into place to tweak that? What would 5% mean to you and your business? If you had 5% more subscribers stay every single month, what would that mean? What would that change? If you're under 90% retention, so if you're at 89% or below, we've got a little work to do. It's not bad, but there's an opportunity because every one of us can be at 90% and above, every single one of us. If you have lower numbers, obviously that, that's skewed a little bit, but as you grow, your numbers start to adjust a little bit. So if you run your retention rate, and I've got a retention rate calculator over, um, in the show notes, I want you to go grab it and I want you to plug these numbers in every month and I want you to become a habit for you. Okay, at the end of the month, I'm going to go plug these numbers in, and they're easy. Just go plug those numbers into the spreadsheet, figure out what your churn rate is and what your retention rate is. So your churn rate is opposite of your retention rate. So I told you I have a 96% retention, which means I have a 4% churn. Churn is how many people are leaving, retention is how many people are staying. So go plug your numbers in. If you're under that 90%, we, we need to get some goals in place. We need to take, we need to take a couple of these tips, 1 through 6, and implement them, work on these processes, see how we can make this different. If you're under 80%, there's some sort of disconnect with your subscription box, and I really want you to look at your messaging. I want you to look at your offer. Is what people think they're signing up for actually what they're getting? If you're less than 80% retention rate from month to month, something is wrong. Something is off with messaging. Something is off with your images. What people think they're getting and what they're actually getting is not adding up if you're under 80%. So I want you to go figure out your retention rate and pick at least one of these top tips and start implementing it. You don't have to do all of them right now. If you're sitting here saying, I don't do any of these, Sarah, it's okay. How— what one thing can you do to get better? Take one of these tips that you're not doing and implement that today, and let's see what your retention rate looks like in the next 30 days. Make sure you subscribe to the Launch Your Box podcast. 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