149: From Waitlist to Launch - Identifying Potential Subscribers & Building Authority

Finding and collecting people interested in your subscription box on a list is one of the most important things you can do before your launch. What you do with that list before your launch is equally as important. Grab your notebooks and come join me for this episode.

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 going to talk about different stages in subscription box marketing plans, and there's really 5 stages when we're talking about the beginner subscription box owner and their marketing plan. So I'm going to talk through those 5 stages for you, and then we're going to dig into a couple of them. Okay, so stage 1 is audience building. You have heard me talk about audience building a lot. We focus on it a lot on the podcast because it's all about building a following and building a list. And without audience building, we don't have people to sell to. So number 1 is audience building. Stage 2 is really identifying potential subscribers. This is where we're going to build a waitlist. Number 3 is the pre-launch campaign. So this is where we're going to build authority and expertise, plus we're gonna nurture our following and our list. So we're going to take 1 and 2, and then we're gonna build in a pre-launch campaign in stage 3. Now stage 4 is the actual launch that is actively selling your subscription, and stage 5 is post-launch engagement. That's where you turn your products into an experience. You're creating FOMO and you're evoking emotions from your subscriber. It's all about the feeling and not the stuff in our post-launch engagement. So that's really the 5 stages for a beginner in their subscription box marketing plan. On this episode, we are going to dive into stages 2 and 3. Stage 2 is identifying potential subscribers and stage 3 is that pre-launch campaign. All right, if you're a member of Launch Your Box, One of the first things we talk about is building a waitlist for potential buyers when you get ready to launch your subscription box. Now, a waitlist is an email opt-in form that puts them on an email list. So they're opting in, they're giving you their email address, it puts them on a dedicated email list. They're telling me that you're interested in knowing more about my upcoming subscription box. So someone that's on this list is saying, hey, I'm interested in this. So I'm just collecting those people on a waitlist. The benefit of being on this list is that you'll be the first one to know about the launch. You'll have an opportunity to get the early bird bonus, and you'll have an opportunity to get a subscription box before they sell out. So there is a benefit to them being on this list, but it's also a benefit to you to really see how many people are interested. These strategies, the first to, to know about the launch, the early bird bonus, all those are strategies that we discuss inside my membership launcher box in the launch module. So those are different marketing strategies that we do during the launch. But the goal with the waitlist strategy is to build a large list of warm people who are interested in becoming subscribers. Every time we talk about our upcoming subscription, The call to action is to join the waitlist. You can really learn so much from this list. Are people actually interested in my offer? Sometimes when we build a waitlist and we get no hits on that waitlist, we really need to go back to the drawing board with our offer before we launch, or that could be a really kind of traumatic launch for us if we don't see any interest before the launch. So are people interested in my offer? How many people are interested in my offer? There's a lot to know based on that, the interest level, and you're going to get your interest level based on that waitlist. And it really helps you plan, like, how much do I plan for quantities for those first couple boxes? We've seen stories from our other members about their waitlist grew so quickly and they knew that they needed to plan for more boxes than they actually did. So we're going to find a lot of information in building that waitlist prior to our launch. Plus, you're going to have a built-in marketing campaign dedicated to these people when you first launch. If you've listened to any of my interviews on this podcast, you know the most successful launches from my students come from implementing the waitlist strategy. So when it comes to building the waitlist, it's important to start building that 30 to 90 days out from your launch. Okay, so let's talk about that. If we're going to launch in 30 days, let's get that waitlist up now. We have to have time to build that, but we also don't want to talk about it too early. If we talk about it 120 days out or 6 months out, that list can become cold before you ever launch. The goal is to really have a warm list when we launch, and that's building it 30 to 90 days out. Okay. You want to give yourself enough time to build that list up as well. If 90 days gives us a good time, 60 days gives us a good time. 30 days is the minimum there, but it still gives us plenty of time to build that list up. Don't talk about it too early, so don't go longer than 90 days because your list is going to be cold by the time you launch. But give yourself enough time to really build that list. It's all a numbers game. You guys have heard me say this multiple times. The more numbers we have, the higher our conversion numbers are. Okay? One of the main questions when someone is building their waitlist up, whether that's 30 days out, 45 days out, 90 days out, whatever that looks like, is what happens to this list between building the waitlist and actually launching? Say they're 90 days out. We don't wanna simply get them on this list. And then 90 days later, we hit them with our launch emails, right? Like we don't want to get 'em on a list, maybe send 'em a thank you reply or some, something from that list. And then they don't hear from us until we start hitting 'em with all of our launch emails. We do not wanna do that. They're gonna unsubscribe so fast. They're gonna bounce so fast. They know nothing about it. They know nothing about you. They know nothing about your subscription. So let's talk about what to do in between building that waitlist and launching, because it's very important. The goal in between the waitlist and the launch is to get them bought into who you are and what your box is about. We want them to understand the who, the what, the why, to build up the concept behind the box and let them be part of the process. Now, depending how far out you are from your launch, whether you're 30 days or 90 days, you're going to need weekly or biweekly emails going out to this list. If I'm 30 to 45 days, I want to make sure I'm hitting them weekly. If I'm 60 to 90 days, maybe that's biweekly. I don't want to just blow up their email box, but I need them to, I need them to get warmed up before I launch. Okay. I've got 3 categories here that you can use when you're writing these emails. Because we've got to send regular emails to this list. And you're like, well, what do I send them? I got 3 categories of things to send them. And then I'm going to give you— I've got 6 email ideas for 6 weeks. Okay, let's go through these 3 ideas first. I want you to really understand what we need to do in between the waitlist and the launch to really warm up this waitlist and for them to be ready for the launch. So the first category of email types is really about building your credibility, building that know, like, and trust factor. These emails are about you. And yes, I know you don't like talking about yourself, and neither do I. I actually loathe it, and I'm so glad that I have a team that when something has to be written about me, somebody else can write it. I don't like doing it. And I don't know, I just have a, I have a weird feeling about it, but we have to get over ourselves. My friend Susan Bradley would say, get over yourself, get over yourself. We are content creators, so we have to create really good content and we have to really understand why should someone buy from us? What about us makes us different from somebody else? What about me and my box makes me different than FabFitFun? Super cute stuff in FabFitFun. I'm never going to be FabFitFun. I can never put that amount of product in my box and sell it for the price that they sell it. So what makes me different? And one of the main things that makes small business owners different is that we're actually people. And not that FabFitFun is not actually people, But I am a personality. I am the face of my business, and this is a superpower that we get that big brands don't have. Whether you're selling a craft box, a pet box, or even a self-care box, are you the expert in that area? What makes you credible? Share your why. What did you do to create this box? Why is it important to you? We can talk about my Monogram Box or my t-shirt club. The Monogram Box, I'm credible because I've been monogramming for 10 years. I have stitched probably over a million different monograms on items. That makes me an expert in my field of monograms. Okay. If we talk about my t-shirt club, one of the reasons why I started the t-shirt club, and this gets personal, and so it really depends on how personal you want to get with your audience and you can pull back or you can pull back the curtain as much as you want, or you can just give them a little bit. But at the time of starting my t-shirt club, like, I was overweight and I would hide behind big baggy clothes for a long time and I didn't feel good about myself. And what happened in— gosh, it was 2010 or '11— I bought a t-shirt from somewhere and it was the most comfortable t-shirt, and it made me feel good about my body every time I put this t-shirt on. Okay. I hadn't started my business yet then. It was 2 years later that I would start my business. But when I realized that I could have things that made me feel good about my body and in the form of a t-shirt, which made me feel comfortable because that's what I wore every day, I shared my story of creating the t-shirt club. With high-quality t-shirts that fit really well. I wanted to be size inclusive, and I would be styling each tee so that you could hold your head up high and feel good about each day. That was my why in starting that t-shirt club. I wanted women to put on a t-shirt and maybe have the matching cardigan or kimono or accessories that went with it and just feel good about themselves and walk out and face whatever they needed to for the day. And when you can share your why in that way, it doesn't have to be as deeply personal as that was, but it will resonate with your audience so much because I guarantee somebody reading that— and at that time I was a size extra large, and that even— I even went up to a 2X at one point. I had gained more weight. And just being able to say, hey, I wear an extra large, I wear a 2X t-shirt, and I created this t-shirt club so that people like me could feel put together and go out and slay their day. And that was my why. And that will resonate whatever your why is. Okay. I want you to think about a lot of us are just like our ideal customer. I think about Anne from the Brighter Life of Dennis box. Anne is a dentist. She shares her story and the why behind starting her box for other women dentists. And by sharing that story, she immediately builds a connection with her ideal customers. They feel seen, they feel heard, and they feel understood. Anne was one of my very first interviews I did on this podcast. If you'd like to go listen to her story, you can hear it on episode number 3. But Anne struggled with the pressures of being a woman dentist, the day-to-day grind, the feeling that she had at the end of the day, and she created a subscription box for other women dentists, very niche, and in that box, it was ways to uplift them because she felt like many of them felt burnout the way she did. And when she shares her why, any woman dentist that feels the same way is instantly connecting with her. And that's what I, I'm talking about, building your credibility, understanding your know, like, and trust factor. We've got to share our why. We have to, people have to know who we are and why we started our subscription. The next category of email topics that we can put in this nurture sequence between the waitlist and the launch is to talk about customer pain points and how your box is a solution to these pain points. Why do they need your box? And here's the thing, a lot of our subscription boxes are not need-based, they're want-based. So we need to help them understand what will be better about their life by having your box. Maybe it solves a problem. Maybe you've got a craft box and it provides all the supplies to make a project, plus the step-by-step of how to do it. Solves a problem. I want to make a craft. I don't know how to do it. I'm not creative, right? Maybe it provides a benefit. My box, for example, here's the problem: walking into your closet and feeling like you have nothing to wear. Have you ever said that to yourself? Any woman listening right now knows that they can have a closet full of clothing and still feel like they have nothing to wear. But the solution to that problem is Having a brand new t-shirt delivered to your door every single month. On-trend designs without having to go shopping. Never let your wardrobe be stale. Get something new every month. That's a problem. It's not a problem in a way of like, you know, I've got an illness or I've got something else going on, but it's a problem. We can walk into our closet, we can feel like I've got nothing to wear because I wear the same things over and over and over again. But that's a problem. And if you can translate that into an email, other people realize they have the same problem and your subscription box is the solution to their problem. I need you to remember that our subscription boxes are more than just the stuff. We need to help them see that it's an experience. It's not just about the stuff. Okay? So that's category number 2. Pain points, benefits, solutions, all those things. What does your box provide for them? That's another category of emails that we can send out in between the waitlist and the launch. Again, we want their buy-in. We want them to realize they need this subscription. The third category is really to take them behind the scenes. What decisions have to be made to start your box? Are you prepping for your first mailout? Are you designing, making, packing? Bring them along on this process of starting your subscription box. The potential subscribers on this waitlist will feel like they've been a part of the process all along, which will result in a much higher conversion rate. So we need to take them behind the scenes. We need to show them that there is a real person making, designing, curating, packing, doing all the things. I, I put this example sometimes, and I recently— maybe it was like 6 or 8 months ago— recently I was in Florida for a series of meetings, and there was this little street fair going on outside of my hotel. And so I walked down the street and I just walked through. It was a lot of food vendors and crafty vendors, and Artisans and stuff like that. And I saw this booth making beaded earrings. Okay. She was sitting there and she was actually threading and beading these earrings, and she had a whole booth of these beautiful beaded earrings. Well, if you know anything about me, you know that I probably have 200 pairs of earrings right now in my closet, and I sell earrings, and I probably have 300 or 400 pairs of earrings in my warehouse right now. Of different styles. So I need a new pair of earrings like I need a hole in my head. That's something my mom would say. Okay, I'm instantly drawn to this because one, I like earrings. It's something I, I love to wear. I love to accessorize my outfits with earrings. So I'm automatically drawn to her booth because it's something I like. But the fact that she was sitting there making them and I could see her making them had me so bought in, I bought 3 pairs. And these weren't just cheap earrings. These were 3 pairs of $45 earrings when, you know, I can get them less than $5 myself. But the fact that she— I could see the process, I could see behind the scenes, I could see how carefully she was making each one of these. It was a person that made these earrings. And every time I wear one of those pairs of earrings, I think about that woman sitting there making those earrings. That's what I need you to take your potential subscribers on, that journey of behind the scenes. I will always buy something handmade. I will always buy something that I can see the process of because it, it puts me in a place where I'm bought in more to the process. And the product is just not about that pair of earrings. It's about the person that's behind making those earrings. And that's what we do when we can take people behind the scenes in our business. And what we think is silly or nobody's interested in are the most interesting things. You have to remember that 90% of this world are not small business entrepreneurs. They don't know what it's like to run a business. They don't know what it's like to be a maker. They don't know what it's like to build a subscription box, even if you're not making anything. Just the process of fulfilling those boxes is fascinating to people. I want you to take them on the journey of getting ready for your launch. What decisions have to be made in that process between the waitlist and the launch? Let them go on that with you. Okay, let them be part of that process. Let them see you prepping that first mail out. Let them see you designing, making, packing, all those things. Okay. And I put together, as I was doing the notes for this podcast, I decided, let me put together an example of 6 emails to send between the waitlist and the launch. So this would be if I'm 45 days out, I would send these once a week. If I was 90 days out, I would send these every other week. Okay. So I'm going to send 6 emails. You could send one every week, even if you're 90 days out. But I just put this example together so that you could visually see this. You're not visually seeing this, you're listening to this, but I want you to understand like what this would actually look like based on those 3 email categories that I gave you. So here's an example of 6 emails. Number 1, and if you're taking notes, go ahead and write these down. We'll also put them in the show notes for you so you can reference them, but number 1, This email, I would do an introduction of who I am and I would share my why. I would tell them, hey, I'm Sarah Williams, I'm from a small town in Texas, I'm a mom of 2 teenagers, and this is why I started my subscription box. And I would take them through that why. So they would be like, oh, I live in Texas, or oh, I have teenagers, or oh, I love monograms, or I love t-shirts, or maybe I felt this way about myself. I really think I could relate to this person and be a part of this subscription box. Okay. So number 1, introduction and share your why. Number 2, I want you to take them behind the scenes in your second email. And this could be some of your beginner things like picking a logo, picking brand colors, picking packaging designs, get them involved. If you're working on your packaging design and you could say, do you like this or this? Hit reply. And let me know. Get them to vote on something, get their buy-in, get them to help you do this. Okay, so that's behind the scenes. And these are also— these are emails that I'm talking about, but these are also very important social media posts that you can create on your pages. So don't just put them in emails. We're going to put stuff everywhere. If you don't know me by now yet, if we create something for one area in marketing, we're We put it everywhere. So our introduction going on our social media, sharing our why going on social media, behind any behind the scenes email we send, that's going on social media too. Okay. So number 2, let's send a behind the scenes email. And I just put maybe your logo, maybe packaging designs, get them involved in decision-making process early on. Email number 3, I'm going to pull a pain point or a benefit of my subscription. Remember I told you the pain point of walking into your closet and not having anything to wear? Put that in an email. It could be me standing in my closet, looking at my closet, because every woman that opens that is going to know what that feeling is, and they're going to be like, yep, I do that all the time. Okay, so number 3, use a pain point or benefit. Number 4, we're going to do another behind the scenes. And for this one, I put maybe this is me working on something for the box launch. We need to connect the person with the product. Okay, so me and the box, that could be me designing the next t-shirt design on my iPad. That could be me folding the t-shirts. That could be me folding the boxes. That could be me standing in front of a whole bunch of t-shirt colors trying to pick the color I want for this design to go on. Think about any behind the scenes that you could do and put this in email number 4. Email number 5, I put why they deserve to have your box. Convince them to believe in themselves. This is another pain point problem solution type email, but a lot of times people don't believe they can do something. I, I'll bring those craft boxes back up. If I've never painted before and I'm interested in your subscription box, I need to believe that I can make this project. I need to believe that I can paint this. I need to believe in myself that I can put on that t-shirt that Sarah made and look good like she does or feel good like she does. I need to believe in that. And so we just have to take whatever our subscription is and convince them that they need this to believe in themselves. So we're really cultivating a community of like-minded people and we need to portray that in our communication with them. So number 5, why they deserve to have your box. It could be as simple as treat yourself. I say this a lot in my marketing for my monogram box, and it's on my sales page, but I talk a lot about women being wives and moms and caregivers, and how often do they treat themselves? That could be this email, why they deserve to have this box, why they deserve to treat themselves once a month. And because I personalize that box with their monogram, It's something just for them. And so that's how I'm convincing them to believe that they deserve this box. And then the last email, number 6, I do like a save the date, watch your email, this is coming, exciting bonuses are coming, you don't wanna miss it. Okay, we're almost to launch. Here's what you need to look for. Here's the date coming and get them excited. But this is 6 emails. That you can send between the waitlist and the launch. And you can do that weekly, or you can do it biweekly based on that timeline that I gave you. But we can't just put them on a list and let them get stagnant before our launch. We have to do some work. The more work we do from the waitlist to the launch, the higher the conversion rate is going to be from waitlist to subscriber. Okay, If we can keep them warm, if we can keep them bought into what we're doing and take them along on this journey with us, that conversion rate is going to be so much higher than if we just put them on a list and waited for our launch to start emailing them. I've got 4 brand new training lessons around creating your waitlist, announcing your subscription launch, driving traffic to that waitlist, and nurturing it before your launch. They're coming up in the Launch Your Box library in the next few weeks, and I would love to have you join us. You can head over to joinlyb.com and be a member too. I'll be back next week with another great episode. Make sure you subscribe to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review it. Let me know which episode is your favorite so far. Don't forget to join me next week right here.