5 Ways to Increase Perceived Value in Your Subscription Box without Blowing Your Budget

Already have a subscription box but struggling to plan ahead? Or maybe you're dreaming of starting one but don't know where to begin. Join me for my free 6 in 60 workshop on Sunday, March 2nd at 7 PM Central Standard Time, where I'll walk you through my proven method to curate 6 months of subscription boxes in just 60 minutes. By the end, you'll have a plan, clarity, and confidence to move forward. We start soon, so sign up now at 6in60workshop.com. Is your subscription box missing something that will increase its value in the eyes of your subscribers? Maybe it's gotten a little monotonous or routine. Let's shake it up and increase the perceived value for your subscribers without spending a lot of money. Grab your notebooks and come join me.

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've got a great topic for you. It's something that I saw inside the Launch Your Box membership over the weekend. It was a question about someone that had just gone through one of the lessons inside our library about increasing your perceived value. And I talk about a lot of things in that lesson. They're all great suggestions, but her question was, well, Sarah, how do I increase the perceived value when I don't have a lot of money to spend. And not that the things that I was suggesting inside our training library would require a lot of money. It's just that she's at the beginning stages and she would love some different ideas of creating perceived value inside her subscription box without spending a lot of money. So that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm excited to dig into it. I don't want you to overthink this because when we talk about perceived value, It's really just about the customer's own perception of a product or service, okay, that's desirable to them. It's, it's just how someone sees the value of your items and the value of your box, and it's just measured by the price that people are willing to pay for that product. And so what we're going to get into today is I have a box and I have, say, 3 to 4 items in it. I want to give it a higher value without busting my budget because again, we've got to stay in budget to be profitable. Okay, so what happens as subscription box owners for us in the beginning especially is that we're like, oh, I want to add one more thing. Oh, I'm going to add one more thing. And you feel like, okay, I'm adding one more thing. It's going to give this a whole bunch of value. My subscribers are going to see the value of this particular box, and it's going to be better, and they're going to tell their friends, and it's going to— it's just going to work in my favor. And then what happens is the next month you do the same, and the next month you do the same. And maybe that's a $1 item, or maybe that's a $3 item, and maybe that's next month two $2 items. But every time you continue to do that, you're decreasing your profit margin and you're also blowing your budget. When we set our budgets for our subscription boxes, we set a product price. So we have a product budget within the total budget of our subscription boxes. So you might have a product budget, a packaging budget, an advertising budget, whatever your budget is, always have the overall budget, and then I have the product budget. I know the products that I put in my box cannot go over X dollar amounts. So when I look at something and I think, oh, the perceived value of this is not going to be as high as, say, the last month's box, and what can I do to add a little bit more perceived value? Not that the products didn't cost me the same, because I'm still maximizing my budget every single month, but they may be smaller items that typically has a lower perceived value, especially the jewelry items. So if I have a big sweatshirt, I have a sweatshirt in my subscription box, and then next month my main item that probably cost me the same as the sweatshirt is say a necklace, you can instantly see the perceived value of that necklace versus that sweatshirt is lower because it's smaller and the sweatshirt is bigger. It's gonna fill the box and that necklace is not. So if I send that necklace, in my box is going to be empty. So that's, that's what I'm talking about. We're going to find ways to increase the perceived value of your box without spending a lot of money. And there's lots of different ways that we can do this. So I'm going to give you 5 different ways today. If you want to grab your notebook, grab that so you can jot these down. If you're on your phone, open up your notes app. Let's just make some notes on today because I know you guys can think about this in a lot of different ways. Each of these 5 items you can think about specifically for your type of box. And while you're listening, I'm sure you're going to have some thoughts and some brainstorming ideas about ways that you can increase your perceived value. So I definitely want you to make some notes while you're thinking about this. If you're brainstorming, if something, that light bulb hits about your subscription box, I want you to jot that down. I want you to have, have some space to jot that down today. All right, so we're going to talk about number 1. So the first thing when I think about increasing perceived value, and this is probably the most important thing that you could do with your subscription box, is customization. Okay? Anytime you can customize someone's experience or subscription box or both, you're creating a higher value. It's not just this mass-produced item that everybody gets. It is custom to you. And that could be different things. It could be custom preferences. It could be lots of different custom ways. I'm not specifically talking about, say, personalization like my subscription box, but that's gonna be on this list of customization. But I'm talking about lots of different ways that you could customize a box for your subscriber. And so the first one under customization is style. So I think about this, I was brainstorming like lots of different types of boxes here, and I was thinking about the way you could customize someone's experience according to their style. And I thought about home decor. Home decor boxes. So if maybe somebody is more farmhouse style versus modern style, or maybe they want neutrals versus pops of color— so if you could customize a box and let them choose one of these styles when they're signing up, and then you have X number of subscribers that get your farmhouse picks and X number of subscribers that get your modern picks, that's a way that you can customize it. I also think about, we've got a couple members inside Launch Your Box that have college type boxes. They're for your college student. So a mom would buy their box to send to their college student a few times a year while they're at school. So this would allow them to customize maybe school colors in that box. It would customize like where they're going to school. So I think about team colors, school colors. That's a way that you could customize a box. And I think that's great. Other ways could be, you know, Maybe you're a floral or a pattern. Maybe you're a light or a dark. Like, think about different styles. I was having a discussion with one of my mastermind students, Jessica, the other day about she wants to add in some customization to her box that doesn't have any customization right now. Everybody's getting the exact same thing. And when she sent out a survey recently, the feedback on that survey said that some people really loved the tank tops. And some people really love the t-shirts. And some people will never wear a t-shirt and some people will never wear a tank top. Her subscription box is called Act Live Life. And so she sends like some workout and healthy habits. So she has some workout swag in her box. And she said, you know, I'm thinking about maybe asking all of them, do they prefer tank tops or do they prefer t-shirts? Everybody that loved tank tops, they would only get tank tops. And everybody that loves t-shirts would only get t-shirts. And I told her, that's a great idea. You're adding customization. You're making the customer feel important and that they have a choice. And that's all customization is. Okay. We do this with sizing. Anybody that has clothing or anything that has sizing variables, that's one way that you customize that box for them. You could do this with pet subscriptions. If you think about certain, you know, we do this with like dogs or guinea pigs or bunnies, but when I think about dogs, there's so many different breeds. So what if you allowed them to pick their breed? So the things that you were sending them were either bulldogs or goldendoodles, or maybe you just had a miscellaneous where they just got general things. But what if you could customize that box based on the dog that they had? There's several subscription boxes in our group that have pet boxes, and they also give something to the owner of the pet. And so if you could customize that in a way where they could choose, you know, between a group of different breeds, that is one way you could customize it. I think about like my teacher subscription, and I think about wanting to do something sometimes where I created a design on the t-shirt per grade, and I know they change from year to year, so they could update that from year to year, and not everything would be by grade. But what if I could offer, you know, a couple times a year something that was specific to the grade that they taught or the type of school? Maybe they're elementary teachers, maybe they're middle school teachers, maybe they're high school teachers. That's one way that I could customize someone's experience and I think it's a great way that you could add a lot of perceived value to your subscription box. And of course, another item here is personalization. And we see that in a lot of different ways. Personalization for me, obviously, because I have the monogram box, means that I'm putting someone's initials on one of the items in every single box. And so that's one way that I can customize. It has a high perceived value when they open that box. They instantly see their initials, their name, and that's important. It makes it feel like it's just for them, and that has a higher perceived value than just a sweatshirt or just a cup or just a bag because now it has their monogram on it. You can do this even if you don't want to customize your products, which, you know, I don't blame you. Some days I wish I didn't, but even if you customize, I've seen where people have customized the packaging and written their name on the outside of the package or customized it in some way that that person really felt seen. And you can do this really well in the beginning of your subscription box when you don't have thousands of subscribers. But that's one way that you could send customization in your subscription box without it costing a lot of money. Does it cost Jessica a lot of money to send some people t-shirts and some people tanks? No, it's not going to. Is it, is it going to cost someone a lot of money to change a design based on the grade that they teach for teachers? Maybe a little bit because you could buy in bulk just the one thing, but it's a low dollar amount when it is compared to the value that they perceive for that custom item. So it's really going to increase the value of your subscription and it will most likely increase your customer satisfaction. Number 1 ways to increase perceived value is customization. Okay. Number 2, number 2 is, is you. Okay. And I know that sounds weird, but there are ways that you can put yourself, your connection, into your box. And I do this a lot, and there's a couple different ways, but I was talking with my Scale Your Box students last week and we were talking about paid traffic, organic traffic, acquisition costs. And the benefit that we have as small business owners is that we have the ability to connect with people, and that is a lot of organic marketing. And I said something that one of my students wrote on a Post-it note and I absolutely love it, but it said, being me is free marketing and it is. And I want you to lean into that. A lot of big brands spend high dollar in ads every single month to drive traffic. We can do that by just being us. And so I want you to put a personal touch into your subscription box. That could be a handwritten card. That could be signing your name or saying hi on their packing slip. That could be any way that you could put your handwritten touch on something. I initial my t-shirt designs. So this is one way that I can really increase perceived value and put my connection point onto my subscription box. And that is just Signing my initials, and I talk about it when I do the box reveal. Here's my initials. I designed this. Anytime that I design one of the designs from start to finish, I put my initials on it. And so that gives a higher perceived value. They know that I designed that myself. It is from me. They see my initials. And that is one way that I can increase perceived value. It's you. It's connecting. You can do that with a handwritten note. I can remember when I started my subscription box, I signed every one of the invoices and I signed it, thank you, and with a heart and my name. Every single one, I would sit down and do that. And it was okay in the beginning because, you know, I started with 44 subscribers and then it became 75 and then it was 300. I think about 600 subscribers. I remember sitting down and signing everything and I'm like, my hand hurts so bad. And I thought, I can't do this anymore. And so from that point, I started to just pick like a small stack and I'm just gonna grab a small stack every month and I'm gonna put a little thank you note on them and send them in there. I can't do all of them anymore. And so that was one way that I could do that. Another way that you could do this is by asking for people's birthdays, when they sign up. Just give them like their birthday. You don't need to know their year, just ask for their birthday. And then you could put that in a spreadsheet and once a month you could pull that list and you could send a birthday card in their box that month. And that's just a really great way that you can have a connection point from you to them inside their subscription box. So I want you to think about number 2, you connect with your subscribers within their subscription box. All right. Number 3, number 3 is a surprise gift. Okay. So I want to talk about that a little bit. They know what they're getting. They know they're getting a subscription box every single month and that it has products in it. And what I want you to do is I want you to find a way and it, I don't want you to do this every single month because then the surprise and delight factor kind of goes away because they're expecting it. 2 to 3 times a year, I will surprise and delight my subscribers. And the way that I do that, I can look at a box and if I feel like it has a little bit lower perceived value because of the size of the items, typically that's my issue. Sometimes I'll look at it and I'm like, the size of these items is just doesn't give me a bigger perceived value. And I'm more conscious about it now than I was in the beginning as I'm picking products out and make sure that I have a good balance of sizing. But every now and then I'll be like, I really want to add something to this box, but I don't have the budget to add something. So I can do a surprise and delight throughout the year and I do it 2 or 3 times a year. So I can do a coupon or a bonus box or a subscriber exclusive, anything that says VIP, subscriber access only, anything like that is such a great thing for them because they're not expecting it. So what I've done in the past is I've given them a dollar amount off to grab something in my shop, or I've given them a percentage off and I let them use it for the month where they can grab something else that they might want from my shop as a subscriber perk. I have done the golden ticket. Before, kind of like Willy Wonka. I have taken some months where I've just put one in a box and we've talked about it. Some I've done 5 in different boxes, like just pick 5 out of all your subscribers and maybe that's a, maybe that's an exclusive perk. Maybe that's an extra item. Maybe that's an upgrade. Like here's your golden ticket. You pick the month and you can upgrade and get the t-shirt and the earrings or whatever else they might want to upgrade to. I even gave away like an extra box. So a couple of months I did a golden ticket for redeem this ticket for an extra box to gift to someone. So now they could grab an extra box, gift it to their mom or their sister or their best friend for their birthdays. So think about ways that you could use a golden ticket and then you could really have some fun with that. And then there's your subscribers are excited to open that box. When I'm launching, I do an early bird bonus and I always put that in all of my subscriber boxes. If you do something like the golden ticket or the bonus books, you're not out a lot of money. If I gave away 5 extra boxes, literally that's nothing to the thousands of boxes that I send every month. And so I want you to think about that. In the beginning, I just did 1 because I had 300 or 400 subscribers. 1 was nothing compared to that. With the discount to my store, I'm not spending any money except to have that little coupon printed and put in their box. And I'm going to get back money because they're going to go to my shop, they're going to spend that, they're going to buy something or lots of things, and I'm going to make more sales and generate more profit from that bonus box or that coupon. So that is one way that you can surprise them with something. I've also seen something that I really love is when you put a teaser for the next box in your box. I've seen it a few times with a few different boxes, but having something in that box and it says on there, this is a hint for what's to come next month. And it could be something in that color palette. It could be something to tip them off that gets them excited for the next thing. And it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. So I want you to think about ways that you can do unexpected surprise and delights, little gifts or items in your subscription box. Okay, so that's number 3. Number 4 is exclusive content or collectibles. So this is for subscription boxes that you could either add like a collectible item. So maybe it's once a quarter you add a collectible that only the subscribers get. They want to keep collecting them. That keeps people on. That's also a really great retention tactic. Think about it like trading cards. You know, people want to collect things. Maybe they're collecting to redeem something later. I also want you to think about exclusive content. And this could really be like first access. I give my subscribers first access a lot to things that would go with the items in their subscription box. So say that we have a cute new t-shirt in the box. And I've got a cardigan that matches it perfectly. I'm going to send that out in an email to my subscribers first. Hey, subscribers, I'm giving you first access to this cranberry cardigan that matches your blue and cranberry shirt that's in your subscription box this month. You have 24 or 48 hours to grab yours before we share it with the rest of our audience. That could be first access. Okay. They could be the first ones to shop Black Friday. They could be the first ones to know about your sale. They get first access. So that could be exclusive content. It could also be for— in the form of digital bonuses. So if there's a design that's maybe on my t-shirt or on a towel or on a bag or whatever is in your subscription box, maybe you also make a digital product that goes with it. That could be a printable. That could be, you know, a phone wallpaper. That could be a checklist that goes with your beach theme subscription box in the summer. That could be whatever it is, a digital bonus that you don't necessarily print and put in the box, but that they can access because there's a QR code inside your box. That could be another great way. You could also put a QR code in your box that showed them a sneak peek of next month. So you could do that with a sticker QR code. You could do that printed on one of your inserts, but that would be a fun way for them to get the sneak peek for next month as well. I also think about exclusive content as far as tutorials and training access. There are a lot of, you know, craft and art type boxes in our membership, and that's one way that you can provide a lot of value by giving them a video tutorial or a printed tutorial or both, or if you have, say, like a business type box and you're giving, you know, business tips, or I've seen like realtor boxes and you're giving like social media templates for realtors so they can pop their house pictures in them and have a marketing package, anything like that where you can give a tutorial or training access. That's really important and it's great. It's easy for like makers that create items in their boxes or they provide items to create something in their boxes. Another example of exclusive content could be exclusive member meetups. And I'm thinking instantly about a couple of our Launch Your Box members, Casey with Whatever Letter. She has a lettering Box where she teaches different projects and lettering skills with different supplies, and she hosts member meetups in her studio in Alabama a couple times of year, and you have to be a subscriber to come to that. I think of Jenny with the Flower Mama Box. A lot of her subscribers are local to her, and so she hosts these Flower Mama flower arranging events at her flower shop. And so you have to be a subscriber to get to come to those. And it's such a great way to not only connect with your subscribers, but to create this huge value for them as subscribers. And you don't have to do it every month. It could be once a year, it could be once a quarter, whatever your capacity is. But that's another way to give them exclusive content. I think about Daisy with Wilshire Collection. She is the one that I interviewed a little while back about the digital subscription, and she does these Zoom parties. They're for subscribers only. You get your printables and then you jump on a Zoom call and everybody creates together and laughs and connects. And it's a way to do those kind of meetups digitally or virtually. And so think about ways that you could provide exclusive content or a collectible item inside your subscription box that would increase the perceived value. Number 5, this is the last one on my list. I hope that your wheels are turning and that you're thinking about things. As you're thinking about them right now, I want you to jot them down. Because if you're like me, I will have a lot of great ideas while I'm listening to a podcast. And if I don't write them down anywhere, they will be removed from my brain in literally 30 seconds after the podcast is over. So just pause it real quick right here before I get into number 5. I want you to either voice message yourself, like if you're driving, I do this a lot. I'm listening to a podcast while I'm driving and I'll voice message myself some thoughts. I can come back to it later and write those down. Flush them out, or grab your notebook, grab your notes app on your phone, make some notes about what you've been thinking about so that you don't forget, and then just go back and unpause me and we'll talk about number 5. Number 5 is bundling items together. Okay, so one small item by itself can kind of be lackluster. It could kind of be like Oh, okay, I got this one thing. Especially if you're trying to add another item and you don't have a lot of your budget left, and so you have to get, you know, a good deal on something or something cheaper, I want you to think about bundling 2 or 3 of those together, okay? So that it has a higher perceived value. In my mind, I'm thinking about like chapsticks. If I wanted to add a chapstick to a box, one, it's little. Two, it's probably not going to have a great perceived value. But what if I added 2 chapsticks and I tied a little ribbon around them and put them in a little organza bag. Now those 2 chapsticks have a higher perceived value because it's not 1 but 2, and I've got it packaged in a way that gives it a higher perceived value. I'm doing something right now for an upcoming box and I want to add a hair clip to it because my budget is pretty tight on this box, but I need another item. I think, oh, one hair clip that doesn't really do much for me. What if I added two with different, different colors and different sizes and then I packaged them in an organza bag inside their subscription box and that was a hair clip set? Now it's not one item. I spent about $0.40 more to get another clip, a smaller clip made. So now it's a large one and a small one. And then I spent like $0.05 on an organza bag. So now I have a higher perceived value for like $0.50 more. For my subscription box because I've bundled them together. Okay? And so that item now is bulkier, it feels better, and it has a higher perceived value. I want you to think about like adding a sticker. I've done that sometimes, but I've also added sticker sheets to a box, which are not surprisingly not much more than one die cut sticker. You could add a whole sheet to a box of like 5 or 6 different stickers, and it doesn't increase the cost of that very much. When we go back to, say, the pet subscriptions, if you want to add a dog treat, what if you added 2 and bundled them together in a package? Think about different ways that you can bundle the smaller items together so that they have a higher perceived value than just one of them by themselves, and that can really create more value for your subscriber. So I think about like bath bombs, I think about like there's so many different things that you could do this with that, um, in any different type of subscription box. And maybe that's like if you have a self-care box, maybe that's if you're gonna put like under-eye gels in there, maybe you put the eyes and the lips and you just spend a little bit more and you have now a bundle. Maybe I mean, there's so many different ways. Like, I could go on and on on this podcast talking about all the different things that you could bundle together, but that perceived value increases when you put items together and package them in a way that it feels like more, it feels like a gift, it feels bulkier. So I want you to find ways to do that. Okay, so let's just recap really quickly. Let's go back through those 5. I know within those 5 I gave you lots of different examples because there's lots of different industries of subscription boxes. So I want you to be able to apply these to your type of box. And so I want you to make sure you take some time to brainstorm these. Okay, so number 1, customization. We talked about that in like 6 or different, 6 or 7 different ways. How can you add some form of customization for your subscribers? Number 2, that connection point, you. That could be lots of different ways. Being you is free marketing. Okay. Number 3, surprise and delight them. What can you do to surprise and delight them periodically? Not every month. Number 4, what kind of exclusive content or collectible can you add to your subscription box? And number 5, take smaller items and bundle them together for a higher perceived value. All right? So I'm gonna encourage you to at least take one of these ideas and implement it on your next subscription box. I'm sure you're gonna get a lot of great feedback on it. And I just wanna thank you for tuning in and listening to another great episode of The Launch Your Box. Podcast. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, click the little plus button to make sure that they get delivered to your podcast library every single week. 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.