073: Ask Sarah: How to Retain Subscribers in a World Where Costs are Rising with Beth Eaton of th...

This is our last episode in the Ask Sarah series. Beth is joining me to ask, how do I retain customers in a world where costs are rising and people are cutting the extras? 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 to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'm I'm excited about this Ask Sarah question. This is the final Ask Sarah in the series, and it's a great question. It's juicy. It's juicy, Beth. I've got Beth here from The Ruffled Daisy. So Beth, let's just start off. Let's let our listeners understand who you are, what your business is. Let's, let's just give them all the background story and then we'll jump into your juicy question. So why don't you just introduce yourself?

So I am Beth and I created The Ruffled Daisy about 10 years ago. I was a stay-at-home mom. And wanted to find a way to just share my creativity in a way that my husband didn't have to listen to it every day. So that's how it got started, and I was started with making just completed home decor pieces for people, and then they wanted to start learning how to do it. And so that's how it transitioned to be more of a teaching platform, and in that I tried to start a subscription box. 3 or 4 years ago, probably didn't work there. There are probably lots of reasons it didn't work, but it just wasn't the timing for my community, which was fine. I wasn't going to give up on it. It was still just something I put on the back burner and still nurtured my community the way that they wanted to be. And then when COVID hit, obviously the world changed in lots of ways. So I was like, this might be another opportunity for me to try and get this started back up because people were at home and they wanted a way to create and still connect with people. And so that is when I relaunched it, and it has been great ever since. I started with about 25-ish people, and now it's about 330. We are slowly growing. That slow growth is— I'm kind of like you, Sarah. I love the slow growth versus the overnight huge success. With the slow growth, it really gives me the opportunity to connect one-on-one with my people and really know them before more people come in. Relationships are big to me, so I wouldn't say that that's slow growth anyway.

That's— you got big numbers. So why don't you break down your subscription for us? Do you have one subscription or two?

I have one. It is a craft box and it's a kit that they get every month and it includes all of the supplies that they need to create the project. Everything from the brushes and the paints to just absolutely everything that they need. And then we have an online community where I go live once a month. We just did last week's for this month. I go live and we— I teach them how to put it together. And yeah, yeah, love it.

Okay, so we started with 23 subscribers. We're in the middle of COVID We're doing these projects together. People have time on their hands, they're able to make the projects with you. We grew that. What's the top that it got to? Because you said you're at $330,000 now. Did it get higher than that?

So I did a really big launch. I had it open for the first year. It was an open model. And last March, April was my one year. I decided to close it then, create some FOMO for people, tried to see how the closed model worked. And then Black Friday weekend, I did a big launch following your plan. I almost doubled during that Black Friday weekend. So got a huge influx of people then. And now the world is crazy and you get, you get people trickle off because we are not a necessity.

And I try to—

Necessity in my world because we all need to nurture ourselves. And if you are a creative, I feel like that that is something that you need to continue even though you feel like it's an easy thing to let go in today's world. Um, to me, that's one thing that I think we need to continue nurturing, but dropped off a little bit. And I, I tend to pick up a few each month to maintain a little bit, but I'm still kind of in a lull.

Okay. So the first, you probably know the first thing that I'm going to ask you, and what is your retention rate?

Oh, my retention rate is really good until about the 10th month. I could not give you my exact number.

Okay.

And I, I need to do that.

Yes. So that's going to be number one.

Usually at about the 10th month, people— and I do have people that are in, they've been in for the entire 2 years. Um, but I do have people that after about 10 months, they, they just don't want to get a box anymore. They may have a couple sitting and they just don't do it anymore. Um, they're getting a backlog of boxes.

Okay. I love that, you know, the 10th month, because a lot of the times we don't know that because we haven't dug into it deep enough. So even though you don't know your retention rate, I'm going to challenge you to find that out today. Knowing that our lifetime value is about 10 months for our subscriber is a big deal. So knowing that we can put some things into place for that. And also you're saying they have kind of a few projects stacking up on them. So we're thinking about maybe the 8th month is when things start to slow down. They're excited in the beginning, they get their box, they do their Project, they're happy about it, and, and kind of the newness wears off about month 8, and then things start to stack up on them. So I think knowing those factors, that's going to help us as we combat the retention, which I don't necessarily think is bad. And that's why I'm challenging you to go find your retention rate, because a lot of times in our head it's bigger than what we, you know, it's worse than what we actually think it is. And there's so many factors that play into that. So actually knowing that number and tracking it from month to month to see if you have an upswing or downswing somewhere, it's going to help you. But do you remember the question that you asked me when I said we're going to do the Ask Sarah series?

It was somewhere along the lines of how do you retain people when our world is in a weird place right now with finances, with most people, when they view your box as not a need, it's more of a want in their life. So how, how do you help them transition their mind? How do you keep them when it's easy to cancel something that's not a need? Yeah.

So it was a really great question. And that's why I asked you to jump on the podcast today, because there's so many people that feel that right now, especially we're going through a world that's full of, you know, unknown, right now. We thought we figured it out 2 years ago, right? We thought we figured it out, and now we're in a war and we've got, you know, inflation, and we just— we're economically unstable. And they view your box as something as not a necessity, right? It's definitely a want. It's definitely an extra that they could probably cut out of their life, you know, to put gas in their car these days, right? So absolutely, I think that so many of us have a box like that. I, I'm included. I have a box like that. It's not a need for anyone. And so there's a couple couple of things that I think that we can do. And there was something that you said to me in your email that you submitted to me about people were home. I really grew. I started the subscription box because people needed it. Um, they were home, they had time on their hands, they were doing projects, and that's when you really grew your business. So I, I want to think about ways that we can recreate that togetherness. And I think we have an opportunity to do that right now because It costs a lot of money to go out and do something right now, right? So it costs money in gas. It costs a lot more to eat out than it used to. Do you know how much it costs to go to a movie right now? Like, I was floored with that. I mean, so I think that we need to spin it that way. We need to remind people that being at home is not a bad thing. It's actually really cost-effective to stay at home and do a project. And I also think that you could use a little bit of a friend over because we can be with people. It's not like we can't be with people like we used to, but how do we get our friends to come over and have a night in? Because it's so much more, you know, cost effective to do that. We can't go and do like we used to because it costs too much. And so we're saving. This is one way that we can save by having our friends over, grabbing a couple kits to do with your friends and creating more of an experience. I think your box in general is all about the experience, your brand in general. Is all about the lifestyle and the experience. And, and I think that you have an opportunity to bring that back home with them and really, really encouraging them to do these things at home because of the convenience and the price and what's happening in the world. And then invite them, you know, invite a friend to come along. And so I think there's a couple of things that we could do when you think about that. You're doing one Zoom in your group a month for the project, right?

And I don't even do a Zoom. I'm just live.

You're just—

they're not really seeing each other, connecting with each other. Some people I think would like that. So I think that is something that I could implement for the people that want to join. And obviously for the people that don't, they can still watch and not be on camera. So that is definitely something I can implement to help the inclusivity of it.

Yes, I think you can do it twice. Okay, so right now you're just doing it once. We need to give them another opportunity to consume your box. Okay, so if we're feeling the push on people are canceling because they're not consuming it, how can I encourage them to consume it again? So you do your live at whatever the regular date time schedule, and then I would maybe a week before the next box comes Do a Zoom, a last chance Zoom, or let's— a replay, not a replay, but you're going to, you're going to create another opportunity for them to grab their box and come sit with you. And this time it's in a different environment. This time it's with other people from your community. You can put them in breakout rooms for 10, 15 minutes while you're working on this and meet somebody, come meet somebody. Those connections are what people are still lacking, right? We were lacking them then in 2020, and now we're still lacking them. Them because we've lost a lot of socialness in our life.

Right.

Right. How can we recreate the scenario that grew your business so well? It was being, showing up and creating connections online and people still want that and people still need that. So instead of doing it once, let's do it twice. Let's change up the environment so we can do it the same way. Cause people like that. People do that. You have a lot, you have hundreds of subscribers, but also people want some of this too. It'll give you an opportunity to connect with them face to face. It will give them an opportunity to connect with each other, which is only going to make your community stronger, more loyal. And we can see this coming out of, you know, staying longer with your retention rate. So I would challenge you for 90 days, let's do a double, a double teaching set in your group.

I like that. And I could also, like some of the people that have done it, could showcase Yes, other people, hey, look at what I did, this is what mine looks like.

And I think if you create more of like the gathering, I know you do a lot of blogging with recipes and stuff, I think you could do, bring some of those to your Zoom room. Like, I've got this, whatever you were making, it's on the blog, you can reference that too. But you're just kind of bringing all the pieces of your world together in this environment, this controlled environment with your subscribers. They feel seen. They feel heard, they feel included, and that's going to bust through that hump there.

I love that idea.

The other opportunity, Beth, I'm seeing, since you know that you're— they're falling off more than likely in month 10, I would love for you to put some kind of automation in place in month 8. And it can be a simple email that is automated on their 8th month of their subscription, or it could be someone on your team, like a VA, manually following up with them on their 8th month, personally inviting them to a Zoom, personally inviting them to share their project. But really, the personalization of someone in your community, you know that at month 8 they're going to start stacking up. Could you create a giveaway for, you know, once you've completed your project, I want you to post it here. I think just this reach out. Hey, you're here. You've been here for a while. I know you're here. What can I help you through? Have you joined a live? Have you joined a Zoom call? Just kind of making sure that they're— they know those connection points are in your community and that they're showing up for them. Because if they show up for them, they're going to consume it, right? You know that, right? How do we get them to come? And maybe it's before month 8. Maybe we need to get them in this habit. Maybe it's month 6 that we need to check how many times has this person attended? A Zoom call? Have they at all, you know, just reaching out to them, asking them to share their projects or share what they've been working on? I think there's a touchpoint between months 6 and 10 that you could have with them that if you do, they're more likely to stay past the 10-month mark.

I agree. I agree. I like that.

For me, in my community, if I can get one touchpoint with them their first 30 days, they're likely to stay longer. But if we know the drop-off is at month 10, we need to have a touchpoint before they drop off. So we need to get another touchpoint with them. And that's where those Zoom calls are going to be great. Even your lives are great touchpoints, but maybe it's a personal email and maybe it's your VA giving you a report once a month that says, you know what, these 25 people are in month 8 and you send them a text or you send them an email or something. Hey, just checking in with you. Um, making sure that you're, you know, you know that we have this going on. I'd love to see you at our next Zoom next week, Wednesday at whatever whatever time, just that personal invitation, that personal touch goes a long way. It can also be month 8 or 9, you send a handwritten note in their subscription box. And again, if it's not for those 300 people, right? No one's writing 300 cards, right? 15 or 20 people. It's like, okay, here's everyone that's at month 8. Let's send them a personal note in their subscription. Just, I've enjoyed having you in the community. Maybe you can even go like, look in your Facebook post at one of their last posts that they've done and say, you know, I saw you posted 2 months ago, you did the Valentine project. I haven't seen any posts since. You know, I'd love for you to join me on Zoom, or I see that you've never posted in my community. Right. It's okay that you're a lurker. You don't have to be the loudest one in the group, but I'd love to see what you're working on. Just that way they kind of get that touchpoint for you. And I think that would go a long, long, long way.

Yeah, I love those. I will definitely implement those. Those are great.

So then the other kind of things, I think those are two things that you could implement very easy, but let's just go through a couple things that when I think retention, these are always on my mind. And so you might be doing them already, but let's just kind of talk through some of the, I have like six points that when I think about retention, what would I pay attention to? And it's really just the overall subscriber experience. So. The first one is their payment to box in hand. What's— when does their payment draft? When do they have their box?

So that varies. I don't draft on one day a month. I, I really— I show them their project, number one. I show them, they know what is always in the box, but I offer a freebie that is always a secret. Nobody knows what that is, just so there's still a little bit of element of surprise in the box. And the freebie is always a completed piece that matches the project that they're going to work on. Okay, so I show that on the 20th of every month, and that's when payments can start processing. And boxes don't get mailed until the 15th, so it's almost a whole month for some people.

Okay, okay.

Which, in the— they're trained now, but for newbies that come in, they may say, hey, I ordered this on the 20th, why has it been 3 weeks? Where is it? The ladies that are in there and have been in there, they understand. But there is a little bit of that in the beginning when we're first getting people in.

Is there any way to fix that? Is there any way to do that differently?

I have considered. And then do I go back and change everybody? Or you mean just going forward?

You could start with going forward and then you could slowly change like a group of people. Sometimes, and here's what, here's why that's important. Sometimes we live in this on-demand world, Beth, you know, like people, people can go to Netflix and watch a movie. Before we had to get in the car, we had to go to the movie store. We had to pick out and check out a movie. We had to bring it home. Like we live in this on-demand world. We live in the Amazon Prime world. You buy something, it's here tomorrow.

Right. So satisfaction now.

Yes. So knowing that I've given you my money and I have to wait 3 to 4 weeks to get my thing. That feels like a disconnect. And I, if we could push that closer to 2 weeks, that might eliminate any kind of weird churn that we would have from that. So that's always something that I look at when I look at people's retention rates and churn rates. And you know, if there's an issue, if it's too far off, which I think yours is a little far, I agree, that might be something that we could change. And I would start with, if you can change that for anyone new going forward, that would be great. And we could slowly change that with the rest of the people. It's kind of easier to manage too, from your perspective, because you know, all the payments are going to draft on one day, you know, and you don't have to like check every day and stuff like that. So it's like one chunk of workload out of the way, you know, while you're working on the other things. But that's, that's just one of those payment to box in hand. If we can reduce that, I would love to have that down to 2 weeks, 20 days max. So, and, and if you're making things, so that's a little different. People that don't have to make things, if you can make that really, really close because you're not making the things, that's what we, what we want. For my t-shirt subscription, they draft on the 5th, they're mailed by the 7th. So anytime you can, you can make that closer for your subscription, anyone listening, we want to make that, we want to reduce that time. Because that reduces customer service issues. Number 2 on my list of things that to kind of check in with is consistent communication and updates. Are you consistently talking to your subscribers on where the process is with the box? Because you do have a little bit of a delay time, like, here's where we're at, send an email, send a text, do a Facebook Live. Is there consistent communication with what's happening with their shipment every month?

I would say yes.

Okay.

Yes. Yep.

Okay.

And then, and most of the people that do have a question, um, again, they're new and they just aren't in that separate Facebook group. So, so how do I—

yes, in that Facebook group, um, they get an email when they sign up.

Obviously not everybody reads their email, um, but typically in their box when they get their box there's a QR code that will take them straight to that. And most people don't join the community until they actually get their box. Okay, so from time of payment, it— there, there is, there is definitely— they're not seeing what is happening with their box, which is why they're asking. They're not seeing that I'm cutting the wood. They're not seeing that we're packaging all the paint.

So that's all done behind the closed doors of the group, right? Maybe we should share that on our front-facing page a little bit more.

Okay.

With the reminder to go join the group if you're a subscriber. Are you using, are you using text or SMS at all?

Yes. Yes.

Another thing would be if they're signing up on a text-specific list, you could send the link to the Facebook group in the text reminder. Everything we do happens in the groups. Just encourage them to get over there as much as you can.

So my Group in and of itself is not private. When I started it, it, it's a public group. There are people in the group that don't get the kits. And I started it that way because I thought it would create FOMO. Yeah, people— and it has. There are people that are in the group that have not been subscribers, and then after a few months they're seeing people posting their projects. And so That's kind of why I did it that way. I don't know if it should still be that way. So that's something I'm trying to figure out.

I don't think there's a need to close it. Just encourage people to go join that group more often than you're, than you're doing on your existing page.

Okay.

I don't think that I saw that when I was going through your Facebook page.

Oh, I don't. I don't share that with people. I mean, if they join, it's because they have just kind of searched what groups I'm in or what groups I have, and they go ahead and join if they want.

So get them over there because that's where you're, that's where you're going to find one new subscribers. You're going to get people, you're going to encourage people to join from there. So let's talk about that a little bit more. Let's talk about it a couple of times a week. I think I went through about a month of your posts and I don't remember seeing that at all.

No. Okay. Nope. I don't.

Let's do that. Um, and then they'll consistently see that communication and updates from you. So let's work on getting them into the group. Um, do you have a cancellation survey?

No. And that is on my list of things to do.

Yeah.

Yes.

I think that's going to tell you a lot and it's going to help you adjust to what they need from you. Okay. Like if they're saying, I have no time, I have no time. Well, hopefully this Zoom call is going to fix that. If it's the money thing, hopefully you can spin that with, this is an opportunity to stay home and save money and do some fun. So I think that you're going to learn from that. If we can have, make sure we have a cancellation survey. And then, you know, get personal. We talked a little bit about that with checking in on, you know, the bounce payments, but checking in on the group with the Zoom call, just getting more personal is going to be great. Checking in with them at 8 months, 6, 8 months is going to be really great for you. The customer service response time. So just making sure that someone owns that, whether that's Hopefully, hopefully you have a VA that can help you with that. I do. Okay. I'm like 300 subscribers. I hope you have a VA that's doing that.

Yes, I have 2.

Our response time to our subscribers when they have customer service is locked and loaded. I'm checking in on that.

And then that's good.

Um, one, the 6th thing is customer reviews. And I didn't see these on your Facebook page either.

They're not really on my Facebook page. On my website, I have a spot where I— and I don't share that very often. I probably could collect those more, but I have a whole bucket of those that I do share probably only once a month though. And not, not—

they're important. It's not to like boost your self-esteem that you have this amazing subscription box and I'm just going to tell everybody about it. It's because if people don't know, like, and trust you already, Beth, they see other people that do. And when they see other people that love your subscription and know, like, and trust you, that just ups your know, like, and trust factor. So if we can consistently post one of your reviews even once a week on your main page about your subscription box, we're building excitement for that. And you can even tease them. You could put one of— and they're just like, comments. They don't have to be anyone emailing you or sending you a video or anything. It's comments on posts that you're, you're creating, and you're sharing those in a graphics. You're pulling them out, you're putting them in a cute graphic on Canva, and you're sharing them. And then you lead people over to that group. That's a great way to share your group is like, here's, here's what so-and-so says, come hang out with us in our, in our group.

So I do a drawing every month and there I pick 2 winners. And I usually put their projects in a Canva graphic and share that in the group. So it'd probably be better to share that on the main page, right?

Share it on your— post it on your main page, then share that into the group.

Okay.

You don't have to do it twice, but post it on the main page because you can't share from a group to a main page. You can share from a group. So then you'll have content for both and you'll encourage people to come join. Okay. I'm going to run. I'm going to talk through those 6 one more time for you, for everyone that's listening. If you feel like you're having some retention issues, one, I need you to know your numbers first, because it might not be an issue. You might think it's an issue, but it might not be. Um, so make sure you know your retention rate and your churn rate. Number 1, payment to box in hand is important. So if we're having some retention issues, Let's look at that. Let's, let's analyze that and see if we can do better there. Number 2, consistent communication with your subscribers. Beth is doing that inside her group. Let's make sure all the subscribers are in the group so that they're getting that communication. We really need a cancellation survey. We need to understand why so that we can adjust. And I don't need to look at all of those. Like I don't need to look at everyone's comments of why they're canceling my subscription. And that's going to put me in a bad mood for the day. But what I do look at, my team will build me a graph. Of the reasons. And I'll see, okay, 70% of people are canceling because of this. Now, like, okay, how can I combat that? So if it's not finishing the project, okay, let's add another— let's add the Zoom and see if we can get completion rates up. So just learning from that and adjusting from that. You don't have to read every cancellation, you know, survey that comes through, but have, have your VA put them into a chart so you can really see what's happening and why, and you can make an adjustment. Investments from that. And also you can, you can encourage them from that cancellation to come back when they're ready. Every— if they leave on a good note, they're going to come back when they're ready. Getting personal. I love automations, but people need the personal touch and people— we live in this automated world and it's not, it's not the best thing. So anywhere we can put those personal touches in is great. Your customer service Response time needs to be really awesome. And then we need to be making sure our customer reviews are everywhere. And I, I just— I'm working on an ad for Launch Your Box. We have coaching week coming up and we're going to do a carousel ad that just has quick quotes. Best $10 I've ever spent. I love coaching week. I've learned so much in one week. And those are quick and they're just on my brand colors on just a plain background. People can read them easy, they can start that know, like, and trust factor, and you can do the same thing. Best project I've ever done. This was easier than I thought it was. I love this community. Like, whatever they're saying, they don't— you don't want them long. You want them short and sweet. And then we want to encourage people to come hang out with all the people that love us. So I think those are some great ways that you can do it. We talked about, you know, adding that Zoom call in. Really finding the drop-off point and hitting them. I think you've got a lot of great things. Don't try to do everything at once, Beth.

Right, right.

Start, start with a little bit, work it into, but I think that you're gonna see, um, your retention rate really level out, um, and then also get better. And then when you grow, you're not filling empty spots, you're actually growing because you've leveled off your retention, right? Um, which will be really, really great. Right.

I love it. I love it. That helps so much.

Okay, if you want to go hang out with Beth and craft with her, Beth, where can they find you?

My page is The Ruffled Daisy by Beth, and from there you can find the craft group is actually Daisy Makes. Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you. 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.