141: Over 500 Subscribers with a Super Simple Subscription Model with the Polka Dot Poodle

Have you been stuck thinking about your subscription box contents? A lot of times we overthink everything. Today's guest on this episode honed in on what she was passionate about and streamlined her simple subscription and now has over 500 subscribers. Grab your headphones and come join us.

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 I have a guest from Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box. I have Emily here from the Polka Dot Poodle, and we've got a great topic of discussion today because we're going to talk about how simple Emily's subscription is. She's got a digital component to her subscription. She's got a physical component. But here's what happens to most of us. We get excited, we get started, we want to launch our subscription box and we want to do too much. We overdo it. We overcomplicate the process. We overcomplicate the subscription box. And Emily has figured out how to make it super simple, how to make it work for her and how to streamline everything. And I'm excited to introduce you to her. Emily, thanks for joining me today. Why don't you give our listeners a little bit of an idea of what your business is and what your subscription is for me.

Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for having me on the podcast today. And as you said, my name is Emily Vincent. I am in Kentucky, and I started a, basically a personalization gift boutique online back in 2008 when my little boy was still in my belly. I was growing a baby, and my husband is a tax accountant, and worked crazy hours at night, and I found myself at home bored and didn't know what to do. And I just loved monograms and making t-shirts and all these things for myself that I decided to start my Cricut business and doing this on the side. And so what I have kind of evolved into and shifted over the years was I was getting to the point I was designing and I was in creating And the design part I loved, and it brought me joy. It brought me so much, just, you know, taking something in my head or in my mind, or maybe even seeing a little bitty glimpse of something on the side that I could create something, and then creating or designing something into a product. And then I would take a picture and I would share it and people would want it, and then I would sell it. But when it comes time to redo it for all these other people that I was selling it for, I was noticing the joy wasn't there anymore. And so that's kind of where, you know, it's evolved over a 10-year span of time. I was in a couple different coaching groups and one of my sweet member friends in there just said, I said, I think I'm going to quit. I think I'm just going to enjoy being with my new baby at the time and just focus on that. And she was like, before you quit, I want you to take a piece of paper and I want you to write down everything about your business that you love, you know, from the sticker that you put on the outside of your package when you fix them to ship something to, you know, what is it that brings you joy about your business? And when I did that, it all came back to the packaging and the details and the making a gift for someone. And, and it just kind of got me thinking, you know, I need to help people create gifts. But how can I do this without physically shipping you a gift to give to someone else? And so that's where the design process of creating a gift tag came from. So I started out with, um, you know, designing gift tags more so in the sense of being personalized. So these would be the ones that would have your family name on them. And so I was having to recreate those for every family that was purchasing those. Yeah.

Okay, let's, let's stop right here because you know exactly what you do and I know exactly what you do, but our audience has no clue at this point. So I'm going to let them in on what you do. What Emily's talking about is she creates the little gift tag that would be on a gift instead of you going buying a $3 card at the grocery store. She's creating these gift tags. She wants to help people create gifts and make it easy for them. And so she has shifted her business from making all the things that was burning her out little by little to just selling gift tags. And I know it's hard to wrap your mind around because it is the simplest thing, but it's what she loves to do, and it's the way that she uses those gift tags that draws in her audience. So you were doing all the things, you were burnt out because of all the custom things that you were doing. You wrote down the things you loved about your business, and that was the gifting aspect of your business. You knew you wanted to do that, but in a way that was easy for you to do. And so you created basically your business around gift tags, and you've created your subscriptions around these gift tags, correct? So now tell us a little bit more. Now that they have an understanding, tell us a little bit more about your subscriptions.

Okay. So Graciously Gifted is basically, like you said, I wanted to have to quit going to the Dollar General or the grocery store to pick up a card every time that I wanted to send a gift to someone. And all of this happened all through the COVID times too. So, you know, you have to think about, you know, I want to send a birthday gift to my friend down the street. but I can't go see them and we can't get together. And so, you know, the whole doorstep drop-off kind of evolved and we started putting gifts together and dropping them off and people would pick them up after we left, you know. So that played a big part, I feel like, into people wanting to connect with people in a dark time when no— this was all new to everybody, you know. So we started designing the gift tags. And we were getting to the burnout mode with the personalization part. So I said, how can I scale it back and do it where it would work for everyone? And that's where I started thinking, I give gifts at birthdays, I give gifts at anniversaries, I give gifts for, um, somebody that's lost a loved one, you know, somebody that just needs a little pick-me-up, just because I'm thinking about you, you've got this kind of gift. And I thought, okay, whether I'm designing this for 10 people or 1,000 people, it's the same amount of work. And so that's where the digital thing just, it just clicked like a light bulb. And it was like, even my husband now, he's a tax accountant and he's very money-driven and very numbers, you know, kind of person. And he will say, Emily, you make more money on your digital subscription than you make on your printed subscription. And they're two different costs.

Yeah, let's talk about that. So you started Graciously Gifted— did you start it as a digital subscription, or did you start it both physical and digital?

Because I did not have a source or know how to figure out how to print the tags for the people to print them. I had a local printer, but that was just a mess trying to figure out the spacing. And so, I mean, you're talking to somebody that's not a graphic designer. I've never done any of any stationery, nothing. This was just visually, I see an idea in my head of a cute birthday tag and I want to make it cute. How do I get it from my head to paper, you know? So that's where we just started designing and putting it all into— they would get 2 to 4 little designs each month, and then as it has evolved over the years, they get more in their subscription. And then we also have a private community where my other members can all share what they're doing with their same gift tags each month as well.

Okay, so you started Graciously Gifted as a digital-only subscription. It was $10 a month. And so you started that June of 2019, and I see that you started with 37 members. So you got 37 subscribers for your digital subscription. You're making $370 a month. How did that feel in that moment? Because you're not having to physically deliver anything. You're just making the one design and it's going to all 37 people. Did that like strike like this light bulb moment for you?

Yes, absolutely. It was to the point that I was thinking, okay, if I have 37 members in one month, what can I do in two months? What can I do in six months? What can I do in a year? And I still to this day tell my— rack my brain, how can I get this in front of more people and how can I get this in front of the right people? Where I could have thousands of members for the same amount of work that I had for those same 37 that I started out with on the very first month. Yeah.

So let's fast forward a little bit. You're going through the COVID months. We know how the world just flipped everything upside down. We now get into 2021. You've got 144 members, so you have drastically increased. And now people are saying, hey, Emily, we— can you print these out for us? Is that how this happened?

Yes, that's where we got to the point of people were starting to cancel the digital subscription because they weren't printing them off. They were getting the emails, they were, you know, messaging me saying, my favorite day of the month is the first day of the month when my tags come in, but I get busy and I forget about them. And then, oh, I need a gift right now, I need to wrap it all together and I don't have time to go print it out. And so I had to just research and figure out how in the world I could get the same concept but in a printed version where it just shows up at their doorstep and it's all one price, one shipping, you know, it's all included. So it's basically double. So instead of $10 a month, theirs is $20 a month.

Okay. So that once you introduce the physical goods and you started shipping those out, it started to increase your subscriber count, right? Because you had people that really wanted the physical. And now I look at your numbers in 2022, you grew to 250 subscribers. Would you say you have more digital or you have more physical subscribers?

I still have more digital subscribers than I do printed subscribers. I have about 245 digital subscribers and 135 printed subscribers. You know, you look at the cost of what it costs to have them printed, have them shipped, pay for that shipping, pay for, you know, someone to help me collate them all into the packages and all the cute, you know, confetti and all the cute bubble mailers and things of that nature. But those are costs that obviously come away from if it was just digital, you send an email and you're done.

Yeah, for sure. So around this time you started a third, so it's really a second subscription, but we're going to call it third in this episode because we want to put the digital as number one, the physical is number two. And now we've got another subscription. You're kind of going back to your roots with this one. People follow you and love you for your monograms and your personalization. And so you decide you're going to start another gift tag subscription. Tell us about that one.

The Monogram Club is the same concept, except instead of getting multiple designs within the monthly subscription, you get one design. So this is just like your t-shirt club. You have one t-shirt a month. I have one gift tag for this month, and it is seasonal to whatever's coming in the following month because we work a month in advance. So like right now for the November subscription, those monogram members will get a gift tag that will work for Christmas. And so it is 25 individual cards that they can use, you know, on any gift throughout the Christmas season. And so, and that changes seasonally each month. You know, as the year goes on. You know, if we're in pumpkin season, it's going to be orange and have pumpkins and things of that nature. But it will have your personalized name, so it will say Sarah Williams or the Williams family, or, you know, we switch it up. We do different monogram fonts and do different names, family names or personal names, and we change it up each month. And they love it. Yeah.

And so, and you charge a premium price for that one? That one's now $25 because you're physically having to go in and make this design for each person because it's customized, right?

Right, right. And that is exactly how I found you with Launch Your Box, was I was searching for an automated way, I guess, to try to figure out how I could design the tag but then code it basically to make it do it for me, you know, because it's such a tedious process. Um, and I've not yet figured that out. So we do these individually. So we do have to cap this subscription just for the amount of time, right at about 140, 135, 140 subscribers in there right now. And just with the workload that I have with the other subscription as well, that's just about all I can physically handle.

Yeah. So basically, this is what I love and this is what I want everybody listening to take away from this episode. You took something that you love to do, something that you were passionate about, the gift tags, and you didn't overdo it. You're not sending out a box that has gift tags and raffia and wrapping paper and bows and ribbons and all the things. Like, you made it so simple. You just are sending literally the gift tags. That's all it is. And you've got 375 subscribers in your first subscription. The Graciously Gifted subscription, and now you have like 140 subscribers in the Monogram Club. You got over 500 subscribers of people that are literally just getting gift tags, right? And it's incredible because it's so simple, but it's so effective. And so many people overcomplicate the idea of having a subscription box business. Tell me what it feels like to have over 500 subscribers.

It's, it's hard to put into words to have the monthly income that's coming in every single month. And I don't have to worry about, you know, what's coming next. I know, I mean, I've had people message me that say, you know, like I said, they, they love the first day of the month because if they know what's coming, it's, it's the surprise, it's the gift that they give to themselves that they know they're going to use it for someone else to be a blessing to someone else. And so it's such a rewarding experience for me to take my creativity and know that it's going to help someone else, bless someone else. And that in and of itself is beyond the money, you know, knowing that I helped make somebody else's life a little bit easier by something that was, you know, that I created.

Well, and it kind of goes beyond that too, because now you've got this really stable recurring revenue in your business. And one of the things that you've been great at doing, a lot like I do, is, okay, How do I take this subscriber, this loyal customer of mine, and how do I offer some more things to sell to them? How do I monetize this further? Talk to me about other things that you sell in your shop aside from the gift tags.

I don't really know where this came from, but I just started using raffia and curling ribbon and bows. Like I said, it all goes back to packaging and what I love to do as far as making a pretty gift. And I was like, I could offer this. And so I just started individually selling the raffia rolls and showing people how to make bows. And then we started selling them in bundles and they match the gift tags each month. And so in the back of my mind, I want to kind of start a subscription, another subscription with a raffia bundle a month. Um, but I'll also know, you know, how many rolls of ribbon do you need each single month, you know? So I'm trying to work through the logistics of that. But I love that it all matches and it all coordinates. And so, you know, as I'm designing and picking colors and picking things, I'm, you know, in the back of my mind thinking, okay, this would be really cute with this, just like you do matching a bracelet or earrings with a t-shirt or a cardigan. I'm trying to think what gift topper would be really cute with this as well. So we are really kind of looking into some party supplies, you know, paper plates and cute little napkins and things that you can add in addition to your monthly subscriptions. And they're kind of more like an à la carte thing right now, but we'll see if we decide to do more of a seasonal or monthly box in the future as well.

It's almost like a companion pack. Like, it's like, if you're a subscriber, here's your companion pack. And you could even offer it— like, let's just do a little coaching here, Emily— you could even offer it like a quarterly subscription. If you know what your gift tags are going to be for the quarter, you could say, okay, here's your companion pack for the next quarter gift tag subscriptions, and you could send it out once a quarter, and it could be the colors that are going to go with what tags you're going to have for the next quarter. So you could even think of it in that way and build something like that. But I love just offering kind of as one-offs too, like, okay, I've got 50 companion packs, you know, for this month, here they are, and they'll sell out. And then you've got you know, maybe 70 companion packs next quarter or next month. And so you don't have to, you know, you don't have to overthink it. You just can add on that additional revenue. It's called expansion revenue. Whenever we can take something that we're already successful at, which are your subscriptions, and we can add things that add value to that subscription, we're expanding the revenue of our already recurring subscription. So girl, lean into that. Let's do that. Let's find some way. It doesn't have to be another subscription. It totally can. But you could lean into it as some one-offs throughout the year so that if you're fearful, because I can hear it in your voice, like you're fearful of what am I going to get myself into again, like this is what I'm not trying to do. So you can do that as one-offs, you can do that as different times of year, more seasonal. It could be your seasonal companion pack or something like that, but definitely lean into that because what we realize as we grow our subscriber base is we're growing our know, like, and trust factor every single month that someone gets a package from us, or even a digital subscription from us, even that email every month. We're growing that, and they're going to want more from us. They want everything that we're delivering to them. You're making it convenient for them because it's all together. They're not out running around trying to find some raffia or ribbon to match their gift tags. You're making it convenient. You're putting it all together for them. Like, the amount of people that tell me, like, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't even know how to put an outfit together because I'm gonna give you the cardigan and the t-shirt and the earrings and the bracelet. Like, I'm gonna give you the whole thing, just throw on your jeans and go. You're doing the same thing. You're making this convenient for them where they don't have to think about it because they're not you, they're not Emily, they're not— they don't have all these creative ideas, they don't know how to put things together in the way that you do. So you're providing a convenience and a service for them.

Yes, yes. And we love that part. And I love the community side of it as well, um, being able to pull these— I have a private Instagram and a private Facebook group where these— all these members, when you join, you get access to that group and they share how they're using their gift tags as well. And so that takes some of the burden off of me of needing to go to Target and buy the cute things for the gift. They're doing it for me, you know, and they're all showing. And that makes the other subscribers want to go out and do buy the same things so that they also are using their gift tags, which means they keep coming back to me because they're using what they have.

Talk to me a little bit about this private Instagram community. I know you're very Instagram heavy. And so I have not heard of someone using a private Instagram community. Did you create like a private page and you have like request approval to get in? Is that how you're doing the Instagram?

Yes. Yes. I have a private Instagram. It's just like a normal regular page. So you do have to request. When my members join, they get a welcome email from me basically thanking them for subscribing. And then it has a link directly where they can ask to join that page. And so that information goes into spreadsheets on my end so that I can find them so that once they cancel, I can get them out easily because I know their login names or not their login names, their handles so that I can get them out once they cancel. But inside of that, they can see stories and lives and just past gifts that we've done with previous tags. And I struggled with this in, um, the beginning, but what I have decided to do— I don't cancel, I don't try to delete old pictures and old lives and old things that we've done. I leave the content there. And so even though the gift tags for Halloween last year, those ideas are there, you just add this year's gift tags with that. Same concept and still use the content from 2 years ago, just with the current gift tech.

Yeah, it's a great way for you to actually request user-generated content without having to request it. It's— you're building this content, um, platform on different ways that they can actually consume your product, and it's genius. And I love it. So we go with that, keep doing that. And you know, I don't think I've ever seen that content on your public page. Do you ever share what someone else has done or is it always just what you've done?

I do both. And that's another little tiny, I guess, past business experience hint that I have picked up along the way is I have brand reps as well. And, um, what I do is I have, I don't know, several— 5, 10, 12 reps that I send gift tags to each month. And they of course get the product for free, and then they make the gifts and send me the pictures. And I use the pictures on my website, and all my people and community think that it's me doing it, where it's not. So, um, a lot of times my subscribers will send pictures and I will share that this is from a subscriber, and then sometimes I just share, you know, it looks as if it was me posting. But that has really taken the time of physically putting the gifts together out of it for me so that I can spend more time in the designing world.

I love it. Well, Emily, if there's someone listening to the podcast today and they maybe they've just been overthinking their subscription and they haven't moved forward on it, What advice would you give them to help them get unstuck?

I know this is cliché to sound, but just start. When I started, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't even know what Shopify was. I was looking at just basic free website things, but had no idea anything about coding. And I just finally took the plunge and spent the $29 on the basic Shopify site and started building it. And I look back now at what it looked like then and, and laugh at how minuscule it was, but how it's evolved over the years and how it gets better as the years go on. And I know that we just, we learn and we grow as we go. So just start. It's not going to be perfect. Um, but you'll look back in a year from now and be so glad that you started. And even if it's not perfect.

So you can't make progress if you don't start, right?

Right.

From 37 to over 500 subscribers, Emily, where can they check out all your cute gift tags?

You can find everything about our business at thepokedotpoodle.com. We're also on Facebook and Instagram.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today. We'll be back next week with another great episode.