125: 5 Ways to Do a Monthly Unboxing - Every Month

What if I told you there were 5 different ways that we do a subscription box unboxing every single month? It's not complicated. Go through my box opening checklist with me and start implementing these this month.

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. Today we're talking about doing a monthly unboxing 5 different ways. Now, last night I did an unboxing for my monogram box on my retail page, and when I got done with my live unboxing, I started to go through my checklist to make sure that we had everything in place to push out the box opening in the 5 different ways that we do every single month. And as I was going through that checklist, I thought I really should share this with all of you, and it would be great if I could share this on the podcast. And so for me, I put together this episode. It's definitely one that you want to take notes on. So if you are a note-taker, grab your notebook. You're going to want to write down some notes. If you're on your phone listening, grab the notes app and just jot some notes down so that you have these later. If you're just out walking or driving, just listen because we're gonna go through 5 different ways and you can always come back to this episode when you're ready. So for me, a monthly unboxing is not just a one and done thing. It's something that we're gonna do very consistently every single month. If you're bi-monthly or quarterly, you're gonna wanna do this either bimonthly or quarterly. So the frequency of your subscription box is gonna determine how often you're going to do this 5-point checklist here. I just talked a little bit about me doing a live unboxing, but there are different ways that you can do this. It doesn't always have to be live. That's one of the ways. It doesn't always have to be on video. So I'm just gonna walk you through the 5 different ways that I do an unboxing every single month. And if you are already being consistent with doing a live unboxing, then these are other things that you can layer in on top of that. You don't have to do them all at once, but you could start to layer in consistency with the next one and the next one. So I don't want you to just jump right in and try to start all 5 of them right now if you're not doing any of them. I want you to start with one. I want you to create a habit and get consistent with it. And then as you build those habits, I want you to start the next one. Okay? So it's all baby steps. We don't do anything that's overwhelming. I don't want you to do anything that's gonna be like, I either have to do all 5 or I do nothing. I don't want that. I want you to at least do one of these if you're not already doing them. If you're doing one or two of these, let's layer in some more because what you're gonna see as I go through them, they all just build off of each other. Okay, so let's dig into the 5 ways of doing a monthly unboxing every single month. The first one I already mentioned, and that is the live unboxing. It's the one thing out of all 5 that I want you to do. If you do none of the others, I want you to do a live unboxing every single month. Turn the camera on, invite your followers and subscribers, and take them through the box one item at a time. And I don't want you to be afraid of that. I'm going to talk you through how to do a live unboxing if you've never done one. And if you've never done a live, this is a great way for you to start doing live video. Okay, don't overcomplicate it. This doesn't have to be complicated at all. So there's a couple steps. Let me take you through. There's like 6 or 7 steps that I go through to create a live unboxing. Number 1, you have to set the date. My date is not always preplanned a long time ahead of time, but my box is a mystery box. And so I like to wait until I can see that 90% of my boxes have been delivered or more because I don't want to ruin the surprise for anyone. So I watch them travel. It's usually about 10 to 14 days after they all ship out. Is when I will do the live unboxing. So I set the date and then I let everybody know, hey, I'm going live, okay, we're gonna do a live unboxing. I do a post about it, I set up an event in Facebook so everybody knows that's the date and time that I'm going to do the live unboxing. And then the next thing is set the stage. So for me, I always like to wear something that complements the box. It might be one of the items in the box and they don't realize it yet, or it might be something that complements box. I have a good setting. Sometimes I do that at my home office, sometimes I do it in my warehouse, but you've got to set the stage. I have a full box in front of me and I'm getting ready to unbox it. So number 2 is to set the stage. Number 1, set the date. Number 2, set the stage. Now number 3 is you got to go live and state your hook. Okay, so here's what I see a lot of times out in the social media world. People will go live and they will wait for someone to join their live before they actually start talking. And what you will find is that more people will watch your live on a replay than will ever watch it live. Okay, so that's just number one. So when I'm watching a replay of something, if somebody's taking 3, 4, 5 minutes to wait for people to get there, I'm already gone. My attention span is gone. So I want you to state your hook within the first 15 seconds of you being live. It doesn't matter if anyone is there or not because you have to remember that most people are going to watch this on the replay, and if you wait too long, you're going to lose them. So my hook is usually like, good evening, we're going to unbox the June Monogram Box for you tonight, and stick around because I have the July sneak peek for the Monogram Box. So I— that's my hook. I'm going to do an unboxing, Also stay because I'm going to give you the first look at the sneak peek. So state your hook right away. After I state the hook, I encourage engagement early. So sometimes I talk about what I've been doing for the day, or like yesterday I was talking about how I just got home from a basketball camp. I was like coming in hot on two wheels to do the live. And so that's how I started to get engagement going because I asked them what they were doing on their evening. And so I said, tell me what you've been doing today. Let me know in the chat. So I'm getting engagement early. So what this does is it creates the algorithm to push your live out in front of more people. Okay, you're getting conversation started, you're engaging with the people that are there. So now they're invested in the conversation. If they're typing back and forth, you're getting engagement. I come over to the chat, I talk about what people are doing. This is my way to get more people on the live without saying, I'll just wait for more people to come, right? So I'm engaging with whoever's there, and that creates more engagement because when they see me talking to someone, they want to talk to me too. And so I try to talk to as many people as I can for just like 30 seconds or so. I don't want to do that too long. I don't want to lose people that are bored that I'm just talking to random people. So I just get some engagement going on in the chat. I get them involved. And then I start talking about the Monogram Box. So set the date, set the stage, go live and state your hook, encourage engagement early, and then I want you to start talking about the curation process. So this is where I'll talk about the Monogram Box. I'm going to introduce the Monogram Box as if everyone there had never seen it before, because there are people watching that don't even know you have a subscription box. So you can't just talk to your subscribers. You need to talk to that person that doesn't even know you have a subscription box. Well, what is it? What's inside? How does this work? So I start talking about, this is the Monogram Box. This is what we do. Every box is like this. And I start to talk about my curation process for this particular box. And so I'm talking about how I selected the pieces. A lot of times we have them manufactured. A lot of times they're custom designs of mine. And so I'm talking them through the curation process of this particular box. And that is a huge connection point for me and not only my subscribers that get a box, but for all the people that are not subscribers. So I'm creating this know, like, and trust factor. I'm creating this connection point so they understand how this box came to fruition. And so that's the next piece of that. After I get through the curation process, I'm gonna show each piece. I'm literally going to unbox each piece. I'm going to start with one, usually the main item in the box is what I start with, and then I show how every other piece in the box ties with that main product. And I talk a little bit about the ups and downs. Like last night when I was doing my opening, we were— they got delayed a little bit because we were waiting on one final piece. I'm like, we literally had everything ready, and when this last— the sunglasses showed up, we threw them in all the boxes and shipped them out the same day. And so They want to see behind the scenes. They want to hear. They want to understand the process that you go through. For us, we monogram every one of these pieces. So I talk to them about how I select the monogram for the month and how I select the piece that's being monogrammed and the style of monogram. And so I'm just really carefully walking them through every piece of the box. And then I give them a call to action. And that call to action is either subscribe I've got 30 spots available, or get on my waitlist. We're currently sold out, but get on the waitlist. Or the third thing is, hey, I've got 30 extra pieces of this kimono. They're in the shop. You can grab one here, and here's a link. So those are my 3 call to actions that I have whenever I am doing a box opening, and that's subscribe, join the waitlist, or purchase something now. Let me go through those with you again, just so if you're writing them down, you have clear notes. Set the date, set the stage, state your hook, encourage engagement early, talk about the curation process, tell the story. Oh, I skipped one. The next one was continue to engage with your subscribers. So as I'm talking about the box, I'll say, hey, if you're a subscriber, let me know in the chat. Let me know which subscription you have. I want other people to see on this live how many subscribers I have and their comments. I want to see that. So I'm engaging with the subscribers on the live too. Then I'm showing each piece and how it ties to the next, and then I'm giving them a call to action. So just flip the camera on, talk about your subscription, because I guarantee there's a whole bunch of people watching that didn't even know you had a subscription box. You think everyone knows, but they don't. It gives you an opportunity to show your personality for people to connect with you. I talk about it so much, that connection, that know, like, and trust factor. It brings a person to the brand. Like, I'm the face of my brand. It's not just a brand. I'm the personality. They get to know me. They want to buy from me. I want you to do a live unboxing. Talk about the theme. Talk about the color palette, talk about the curation process. Sometimes I talk about the mishaps that happen in the making of the box. I'll talk about, well, we ordered this and it came in in the wrong color. We had to send it back. I talk about one time I lost a whole, like, I don't know, thousands of cardigans in the ocean. They just, they just fell off the face of the earth into the ocean one time. So I had boxes get run over. The FedEx truck didn't close the back of their truck and my boxes were all over the main street of my town and so many of them got run over and we had to order more product. I mean, I talk about the mishaps. It's part of the making of the monogram box. Sometimes we have to pivot last minute. Stuff happens. And I just love telling them how this thing came to be or how it was designed or what it was inspired by. I just talk about all of that. So it gives them a connection point. And do all of that before you actually open the pieces because you want to create that conversation. I'm creating connection with my subscribers and anybody else that's watching. And then I just talk about each piece one at a time. I take it out of the box, I show them, sometimes I try it on if it's a wearable. I talk about how I found it, how I created it, how I designed it, and how it all goes together. And that's it. Think about it as if you were just talking to one of your girlfriends about this box that you just put together. That's exactly how you should do a live unboxing. So if you've not done a live unboxing before, you've got to start here. All this other stuff doesn't matter if you don't start with a live unboxing. So I want you to challenge yourself. If you've never gone live before, this is a great opportunity for you to start right here. You have a great topic of conversation, you're going to build connections and you're going to get people to know, like and trust you. Okay. Number 2 on the 5 ways to do an unboxing is our email unboxing. Now, this is the same content that we just created for our live unboxing in email form. Literally everything you just did for your live We're going to go put it in an email form, and I usually do it the same day or the next day. I'll send the email out. Okay, so here's what I do. I'll get done with my live and I will go start the email. So I love to attach a screenshot of me live to the top of this email, and when they click it, it's going to take them over to my Facebook page so they can watch the unboxing. If they want to watch it. So that's just driving more traffic over to the live. And I know if I drive more traffic to the live, that's going to be more connection points. They're going to connect with me better watching me live than they will reading my email. But if they don't watch lives, I've got it in email format for them. So then I just go through and recreate the live using photos and text in an email format. Here's the box, here's the main item, here's what I monogrammed, here's what I paired with it, here's the t-shirt that matches, and then boom, here's all of it together in a great picture at the bottom. And oh, you know what? Here's a sneak peek of July. And I have all that in the email the same way that I do the live unboxing. Okay, I'm just putting it in an email format. It's so easy. You've already created the content with your live. And if you do it right after your live, it's all fresh in your brain so that you can just go type it up and pop your pictures in. Now here's the thing, every month we do a little photo shoot with our box. We do the box with all the things in it. We do each item separately. We do some of the items together. We create little outfits or, um, how some of the pieces would go together. So we have some pictures where there's multiple items. Some pictures where it's single items. We do all of those photos before we ever do the live unboxing. So we have them, we have them for social media, we have them for email, and we have them for number 3, which is a blog unboxing. Okay. And if you do them up front, when you get done with your live, it's not like you have to stop and then go take a bunch of pictures to write an email. You're already going to have them. It's like when our boxes get out the door, That's when we stop and we do the photo shoot because we know that's coming. That's the next part of our monthly box process. We get everything packed and out the door and then we catch our breath and then we do the photo shoot and the video shoot. And I'm going to talk about that here in a minute. It's just a— it's a process. If you just put everything into a process each month, you're just going to knock it out and you won't get tripped up with these things because you already have the assets that you need to create them. So number 2 was email unboxing. And I just spilled the beans on number 3, that was a blog unboxing. So that email that you just wrote, we're gonna turn that into a blog. We've talked a lot about SEO and searchable keywords on our sites inside Launch Your Box. But do you know how many keywords you can add in a blog unboxing your own subscription box, even if you don't have a blog, you could start a blog and just do one post a month, one blog post a month, and it would be the unboxing. Not everybody out there is searching the word subscription box and finding you, but they might be searching the word— and this is for my own box— monogram sweatshirt, graphic tees, bracelet, earrings, tumblers, crossbody bags, backpacks, you just name it. They could be searching for these products that I'm talking about in my blog because my blog is talking about each piece of the box. Each product somebody is probably searching for from your own subscription box. Then they will find the fact that you have a subscription box when they weren't necessarily they're really searching for a subscription box. Do you see where I'm going with this? The search terms are not about the word subscription box. It's about the different products in your box. Somebody could be looking for them, and when they find that you have a subscription box full of these things, it's a no-brainer for them to subscribe if that's what they're looking for. If you can get consistent With one blog a month, an unboxing, you will have 12 very robust pieces of SEO content added to your site, making you more searchable and more visible. And you already wrote the blog in your email, so it's not more work that you have to do. You're just and putting it in blog format. Do you see how each one of these builds off the next? So it's very easy to do all 5 of these pieces because we're creating the content with the live unboxing. Very easy. Okay, are you with me? All right. Number 4 is a short video unboxing. Remember I told you we do that photo shoot right after our boxes go out? We're also doing a, a short video shoot. So we're setting up the camera, which is literally just our iPhones on a camera stand, and we're recording either boxing or unboxing that box. And we're doing it vertically so that we can use it on Reels, TikToks, YouTube Shorts, Pinterest idea pins, all of those things. So we're doing our photo shoot and we're also doing a mini short video boxing or unboxing. And now you have the same unboxing and you could record a voiceover on top of that video talking about the products. You don't even— you can put it to music and do some text overlays showing what the pieces are. But this is a way that you can do a short video unboxing along with all the other pieces of content that you just created. Seems pretty easy, huh? We're repurposing everything. And now you've got content for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, all the platforms that we want to be on. We're making one unboxing video a month, and now we can use it on 5 different platforms. All right, number 5. This is the last one in my 5-point checklist, and we make sure we do these 5 every month. But number 5 is that we do picture stories. So we'll usually just do like 3 or 4 slides. So we have, and this is a story slide, so it's a tall vertical story slide, and we do an unboxing with it. Maybe 3, 4, maybe 5, depending on how many items we have in the box. But we do a long story layout. You can go into Canva, you can find a story layout, and we put the pictures in there and describe what that product is. and then the next picture and the next picture. And so each picture builds off of each other. And then the last slide, we put the full box open so they can see all the stuff together, and we tag our monogram box on there so they can click on it and join. So sometimes we put 2 products on one slide, sometimes we put one product on the slide, just however it looks good. You can find this if you want to take a look up one of these examples of mine, they're in my highlights. On my Instagram for my Monogram Box subscription, and that's @framed_monogramgiftsandmore. That's the, that's my Instagram is @framed. But you can go look at those is what I'm talking about. But the last slide in that story slide is don't miss out on another Monogram Box, join today. And then I'm able to put a link in there that takes them directly to the Monogram Box sales page. What I love about these picture stories is that then I can save them to my highlights in Instagram. Now I have a full sales funnel to my monogram box inside my Instagram highlight section. Anyone that checks that out can see several of my past boxes and there are links to join right there. We also love to use these story slides on Pinterest too. There's so much repurposing going on within the 5 of these ways. To do an unboxing. It's like, let's work smarter, not harder. We can do this. We repurposing everything. And it starts with number 1. It starts with that live unboxing. And everything just builds off of that live unboxing. Then we put it in email format. Now we have it all in text format. Let's go ahead and put that into a blog with SEO keywords. We can also create the short video unboxing. We do that ahead of time while we're taking pictures. We already have the assets for that. Let's go ahead and go into Canva and make number 5, which is a story slide unboxing. Now you have your unboxing everywhere in every different format that somebody consumes. Not everybody's going to watch your lives. Not everybody's going to read your email. Not everybody's going to look at stories or short videos. We need to put it everywhere in different formats. We just need to meet people where they're at. We can't expect them to do what we want them to do. We just have to keep putting the content in front of them in ways that they can consume it. Okay, and if you're not doing any of these 5 right now, I don't want you to try to do them all at once. Pick 1 or 2. If you're not doing any of these 5 right now, let's do number 1 and number 2. Let's go live, and then I want you to email it out to your list. Okay, I've got 3 more tips for you that I wanted to share with you. I was thinking about this. These are 3 tips in this process of unboxings that I would love to just talk about for a minute. Number 1 is always invite your subscribers. I'm specifically talking about your live unboxing, but this could also go for email. I don't want you to exclude them. And I know you're thinking, but Sarah, they already know what's in the box. They know what's in the box. They already have it, but it's a connection point. It also creates a lot of social proof as you're unboxing on your social media that you can use in other places. When someone says, this was my favorite box, I loved this t-shirt, I'm wearing it right now, like all those things that are getting said in the comments of your live unboxing, you can put those in emails, you can add those to your sales page, you can put them on your product page, you can create quotes and use them on social media. Invite them to come to the unboxing with you even though they know what's inside. It's fine. They love to show up with you and they love to see you explain their experience. Do you know how many times I've put something in the box that maybe they didn't understand how to use? When I'm live and I'm showing them how to use it, they're like, oh, that's what that's for. That's awesome. You're helping them. Always invite them. That connection you have with your subscribers every month will help your retention too. And that leads me to tip number 2: always give a sneak peek of the next month. You heard me mention that when I was stating my hook for the live. Always give a sneak peek for the next month. And I tease that there's a sneak peek coming, especially for my subscribers, because they already know what's in the box. They don't need to come and watch me live. But if I tease that I'm giving the first sneak peek for the next box, they're like, I gotta go see what's coming. So they're automatically going to come show up. I've got to see that sneak peek. And it helps with the excitement and it helps with the engagement and it helps with the content and it helps with the social proof. You want people that don't have the subscription box, see all the people that have that subscription box. You want to emote a feeling from your subscribers while you're live. It's not about stuff. It's about the experience. And I really want you to understand it's about the feeling that they get when they receive their box. And if we can show people that don't get our subscription box how the people feel when they receive their box, they want that feeling too. So we need to show them how they feel. That's why we want them there. So if the unboxing is not enough to get them there, we got to give them a sneak peek and we get them automatically excited for the next box. And then tip number 3, we've gotta have a call to action on every one of these 5 ways of unboxing. Join now or get on my waitlist. That's your call to action. If you have open spots for them to join now, you're an open subscription model, that's the call to action. Join now, get in on the next box. If you're a closed cart and you don't have any spots available, your call to action should be get on the waitlist. Never miss another Monogram box again. You have to be constantly building that waitlist for your next opening, your next launch, your next cancellation. You have to be building that waitlist all the time. You can't be building that waitlist right before a launch. It has to be something that you're actively doing. And this is a great way, and you can do it in those 5 ways. You can do it at the end of your live, you can do it in the email, you can do it in a blog, you can do it on a short video. All of the ways that we just talked about, you can do that. You can either ask them to join or ask them to join your waitlist. So those are my 3 tips: invite your subscribers, give them a sneak peek, and give them a call to action. And you can do all of those on all 5 of these. So here's your challenge for today. You've made it through this entire podcast episode. It wasn't a long one, but I want to challenge you to do a live unboxing this month. Start with the live. Get consistent with it and layer the next thing in. If you're already doing a live unboxing, are you sending an email? If not, let's start there. If you're doing those two things, can we make a short video? Can we write a blog? Can we do some story slide pins? I hope this builds some momentum for your subscription box because you can do these 5 things every single month and build your subscription box content.