5 Ways to Promote Your Subscription Box

Good morning. It's time for Monday Momentum. And today we're talking about National Subscription Day, which is coming up next week. It's October 9th. So we're going to talk about that. This is the first ever National Subscription Day. I'm going to tell you how it came about. Something going on with my hair this morning. And then I've got 5 ways that you can promote your subscription for National Subscription Day. And you can promote these, you can use these for different days. We're going to talk about how you can rinse and repeat these. We're going to— I'm going to talk about 5 different promotions that you can set up. So I want you to grab your notebooks. We're going to write some notes today and we're going to talk about ways that you can promote your subscription box now and in the future. And if you don't have a box launched already, I've got one idea that can help you promote launching your new box in the future on National Subscription Day. So let me know that you're here. Why don't you tell me what you're doing on this Monday morning? I'm still playing catch up from being gone. I'm feeling better. I'm not completely caught up. I'm going to feel better after this week, probably when I'm actually ahead instead of still playing catch up. But tell me what you're doing this Monday morning. I'm going to jump over to the chat and say hi, and then we're going to jump right into 5 ways to promote your subscription box today. So let me come over to the chat. I see that Andrea's here. Good morning, Andrea. And I can't see this person. So just a reminder, give StreamYard permission if you haven't. There's a little link in my description of this live. Debbie's here. Good morning, Jay. Hi, Debbie. Good morning, Beverly. Good morning, Gina. Good morning. I don't know who this is, but they're working on planning a cookie classes through December. I've got to get some planning for this after December, so I'm going to give you like a gold star because, um, I gotta get some planning today, um, done. That's top of my list is to get, um, the rest of my fourth quarter promotions planned out and so that we're locked and loaded. Good morning, Sandy. Good morning. Is that Alicia? Alicia? Alicia? Alicia? I'm gonna go with it. Good morning. I'm glad you're here. Newbie in the house. Good morning, Tita. All right, can we just— let's just clap. And Jay says, I'm sitting at the bank depositing money from the weekend sales. Y'all, I have had a crazy September. Like, crazy. It's so good. If you are not actively selling stuff right now, you are missing out. People are ready to buy. We had a huge weekend of sales, probably one of the best weekends of sales I've had in, I don't know, a while. I had a huge September. I was up 70% in September. I was up 40%, 46% in August. And let me just tell you, I'm going to— let me put this in context for you. I was down in July, bad. I was like eating tubs of ice cream in the corner, down in July, like sales were down, down. And it was a direct reflection of me. I wasn't selling in July. I took vacation. I took some time off. I was burnt out. I was like, uh, I need a break. My sales were down. My sales were down in June. My sales were down in May. My sales were kind of teetering in April. I had been down. So I'm feeling like on top of the world right now because August I was up 46%. September I was up 70%. We're already killing it and it's only October 3rd for the month of October. Um, so listen, it's time to rethink what we've been doing, okay? And that's what I had to do in August after I had my horribly painful, terrible July sales. I sat down and I thought, okay, we need to reset because I can't continue like this. I have a huge staff to pay. I have inventory coming out my ears. Like, I have to reset my mind frame, my mindset, um, on what's going on, and I have to shake it up. I got to do something new. I got to do something different. I gotta have fun. I gotta show up and be excited, and I gotta bring the energy and start selling again. And that's what I did in August, and I did it again in September. And even last night, I meant to send my weekly campaign again on Saturday, and I forgot. I got busy doing things around the house, and I completely forgot. And then I was at soccer all day yesterday morning, and so I sat down after dinner, and I was like, Okay, let me get my mind ready for Monday, right? Like, let me plan out my week a little bit. I thought I never sent my, my follow-up email from my weekly campaign, so I'm like, I'm just gonna send it. It was 7 o'clock. I'm just gonna send it tonight. Maybe I'll get a couple sales. I got 24 sales after 7 o'clock last night. I had 3 sales all day. Okay, I'm just gonna put this in context for you. I had 3 sales all day yesterday. I sent an email at 7 o'clock last night, and I got 24 brand new sales from 7 to midnight. Listen, we can't give up. We've got to keep selling. People are buying. I'm tapping this, and it probably was horrible in my microphone, but we can't give up. All right, so go to the bank like Jay, deposit your weekend sales. We have to keep selling. This is our time. Show up and sell. Stop tiptoeing around selling. People come to your Facebook page to buy. Okay, okay, show up, be excited, show them some new things, mix in some old stuff, put a few things on sale. It's going to be fabulous. Okay, we got to keep doing it. We got to shake up what we've been doing if it's not working and try some new things. So that's my little, little, um, momentum for you, my poke for you to go get sales this week. But I want to talk about National Subscription Day. My friends over at SUPTA— SUPTA is the National Trade Organization for subscription box, B2C subscription box owners, and that means business to consumer. So business to consumer, which is our people, it's, it's a national trade organization for us. They went through the ends of the earth to get a National Subscription Day on the National Registry. And the first ever one is coming up next week, October 9th. Write it down, October 9th is officially National Subscription Day, and we are going to promote the heck out of it, okay? And we're going to use it to our advantage to show up and add subscriptions, to add subscribers to our subscriptions, okay? It Sunday. So you have the week to figure out what you want to do for National Subscription Box— not box, because subscriptions are digital as well. So it's National Subscription Day. Okay, so I've got 5 different ideas, threw them together for you last night. I thought, let's talk about it, let's get your ideas going so that we can show up with a promotion, um, on National Subscription Day. Okay, so the first one, this is the easiest, okay? This is the easiest thing that you can do. You can set up a 24 to 48 hour flash open. And this might be like if you're closed, if you have a closed cart, you only open to the waitlist, let's take National Subscription Day and open to our entire list, okay? That could be a set of emails, it could be a live, it could be both. I would like you to do both. Post all day about being open, grab your subscription, get in while you can. We're opening for 24 hours or 48 hours, whatever you want to do for National Subscription Day. So that is promo number 1. You could do a 24-hour to 48-hour flash sale to open your subscription boxes for if you are closed subscription. All right, the next one is a free gift to new subscribers. So I'm thinking about this. Now, anytime that we do like an early bird bonus for a launch or we do a free gift, I, I always tell you, you got to give it to your existing subscribers, right? Because you don't want them to feel left out. So I got to thinking about this. How could we do this? One, if people sign up, say, next week, We're technically not sending them anything till November, right? Most of us, depending on when your, your dates fall. So for me, that would be people sign up, they're going to start with their November box. So I could do an added bonus item in that box and that would— I could give that to every one of my subscribers and I could give it to anyone that signs up on National Subscription Day as a bonus. So that's one. Then I thought, if we've got to send it out quicker than that or we don't have time to get another product, we could do something that's left over from October or not even October, but even September. Okay, so right now I'm thinking about my September box. I have a sweatshirt and a hat. I had a leopard bag and I had a keychain. Okay, that was, that was. And then I had a t-shirt and earrings. Okay, so I'm thinking about my September box. Anyone that signs up right now doesn't have that box, right? And I had about 50 of our leopard hats left over because they were custom made for me. So I could do a promotion next week that said, join now and we'll give you— you'll get a leopard hat. Because all my existing subscribers have that hat already. They don't want that, they don't need that, they're not going to feel left out. I have something left over from that box, so I can even say the next 50 subscribers, or depending how many I can even add, we'll add this leopard hat to your box. So that could be an idea too. You could add something new and give it to everyone. You have time. Or you could take something from your last box that everybody already has, and you could give it to anyone that signs up on National Subscription Day. So that is, that is promotion number 2. I'm just, I'm trying to get you thinking about what you've got laying around and what you can do to promote. Promotion number 3 is refer a friend promo. So this could be a great way to get your subscribers to help you promote for National Subscription Day. And it could start with an email. You could do that later this week, like, hey, Sunday is National Subscription Day and we're hosting a special promotion. If you refer a friend to our subscription, we're going to add this to your box and one to their box too. I've done this in the past. For me, I did a pair of earrings, so I sent a picture of the earrings. I added a little box at checkout that said referred by. So when someone came in new, they could put the name of who they were referred by. It was a little bit of a manual process. We printed them out, we saw who referred them, we added those earrings to that referred person's box and the new person's box. So this is an idea of a way that you could do a refer a friend promotion for National Subscription Day and get your existing subscribers to help you with that. You, you have time to order something, you have time, you probably have time to make something if you're a maker, but that could be another option, a refer a friend promotion. Number 4 in my little bag of ideas that I was thinking about was an affiliate promotion. So if you have affiliates for your subscription box— an affiliate is someone that would show up and sell your products, kind of like an influencer. An affiliate, um, typically affiliates are subscribers, so maybe they get a dollar value or something extra for being affiliate. For me, my affiliates get a percentage of the recurring revenue. So you could say, hey, affiliates, I don't have a bunch, I just have a handful. We're doing a special affiliate promotion on National Subscription Day on Sunday. Here's your codes, here's your link. If you promote, we're going to do a prize for who brings in the most new people and you could do a prize package for them. Plus they're going to get their affiliate commissions. So that could be another way that you could bring in some new subscribers by setting up an affiliate promotion just for National Subscription Day. Okay, so that's number 4. Number 5 is the easiest, and I put it at number 5 because I want to do 1 through 4 before I think about doing 5. I don't love 5. Okay, I don't, I don't do this often, but I know that it does work. So I just have a funny feeling about giving discounts. But number 5 is to do a dollar or percentage off their first box if they sign up for National Subscription Day. Now, obviously you cannot do that for existing subscribers, and sometimes that leaves a bad taste in, in people's mouths because like I'm paying full price and a new person gets $10 off or $5 off or whatever. But it's also an easy way to put a promotion around your subscription box. You could do $10 off your first box, you could do 20% off your first box. You could do that if they sign up on National Subscription Day. I prefer 1 through 4, but I put 5 on there just so you know that it's an option. Okay, so now I have, I have a number 6, but it's really not a number 6 if I haven't launched my subscription yet. So the 1 through 5 are all ways to get new subscribers into your subscription. If I haven't launched the subscription yet, can I still use National Subscription Day to promote my things? Yes. This is where I want you to do a giveaway. So if you haven't launched your subscription box yet, I want you to use that as a launch to a giveaway. You're going to give away either a subscription, you're going to give away a box, you're going to give away something that would tie into your subscription. So I'm not going to go give away a Starbucks gift card for, for giveaway because that doesn't apply to my subscription. It's not the same thing. People that are interested in my Starbucks giveaway are not going to— are not the same people. They might be a few of them, but it doesn't align. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get some things. I'm going to get a mug and a t-shirt and a sweatshirt and some jewelry, and I'm going to put that in a box. And I'm going to do a giveaway. And I want you to go over inside the Launch Your Box library and I want you to go through the giveaway lesson, how to set it up, how long to run it. And then you can give away either an upcoming subscription, a gift box, something that aligns with your subscription. This gives you the opportunity to talk about your subscription and to really promote a giveaway for National Subscription Day. So if you haven't launched your subscription yet, I want you to do a giveaway. Now, if you're really close to launching, like in the next week or two, I don't, you can do a giveaway, but I want you to be able to promote your launch harder than your giveaway, okay? So that's, we're gonna call that number 6, but that is an option for anyone that one, hasn't launched yet, or two, you're closed and you're full. Okay, if you're closed and you're full and you cannot add any more subscribers in, if you run a giveaway for National Subscription Day and get people on your waitlist, that's going to be a great way to bring people in ready when you do have more boxes. Okay, so those are my top things. But now I have some other ways that I want you to work National Subscription Day. So keep your notes handy. We're going to go through some things and I've got a free gift. For all of my members here, we've got some Canva templates for you for National Subscription Day. I'm going to drop those into the Facebook group and we'll put them in the email this week. That'll go out on Friday, but I'll drop them in the group. You can go ahead and start working on those Canva templates this week. But let's talk about a few things on National Subscription Day. It is Sunday. Okay, so let's talk about what we can do on Sunday to promote any one of these ideas. So if you got 1 through 6, you're like, okay, I'm gonna do number 2, okay, I'm gonna do number 3, whatever it is, let's talk about how we can make the most of that. You can use National Subscription Day to announce a sneak peek, maybe of— if you haven't shown like a sneak peek of the October box yet, that's the day that you show up and say, in honor of National Subscription Day, here is the October sneak peek or the October box opening or the November sneak peek reveal. Okay, so use it to promote something that's eye-catching so you can create excitement by doing the November sneak peek, the October sneak peek, or the October unboxing on that day. So plan that in there. I also want you to spend time this week grabbing some of your subscribers' stories and pictures. Okay, I want you to fill your feed, your stories, your reels, your posts. I want you to fill your feed with subscriber shares. So this week I need you to ask for them. Okay? Hey, when you get your box, send me a picture. If you're wearing the t-shirt— this is mine— if you're wearing the t-shirt from this month's box, send me a selfie. I want you to share reviews, testimonials, pictures. It's all about our subscribers on National Subscription Day. So I want you to work on that, and you can even do it Saturday and Sunday. You probably have enough content to do it Saturday, Sunday, and even Monday, ramping up to, hey, tomorrow's National Subscription Day. You can start sharing on Saturday, you can share all day Sunday, you can even share some things on Monday. Hey, yesterday was National Subscription Day, here's how much fun we had. So I want you to use that as content— subscriber shares. You could also plan a live on Sunday with some of your current subscribers. So do like— I've done like a girl talk live before. I got about 5 subscribers on a call, a live like this, and we just talked about— I had them bring their favorite thing that they've received in their subscription box for the year, and they all had different things, talked about why they're a subscriber. And we just kind of had some girl talk. So it was like we had a glass of wine or not everybody drinks wine. So we just sat and we talked about what it means to be a subscriber and some of their favorite things and why they continue to be a subscriber. So you could plan a little bit of a live like that. You could go live on National Subscription Day yourself in the morning. You could say, you know what, today is National Subscription Day. I have this subscription box. Business. Let me tell you what it means to me. Share your story. Tell them why you created your subscription box, what it has done for your subscribers, what it does for your business, what it does for you, how it lights you up, how it's your passion, and then invite them to join in on getting a subscription. So those are different ways that you can create excitement through the weekend. Also, I wrote down what would be great for the weekend is to do like a montage of the boxes that people have received this year. So we're in October now, so I could do a little slideshow, I could do a video of the boxes that people have gotten this year. I'm creating FOMO, I'm creating interest, I'm creating buzz. And that's what I want you to do this coming weekend for National Subscription Day. Use this day to our advantage. That's what it's there for. Let's promote our box. We have a reason to promote them. Let's use one of those promotions, 1 through 5 that I gave you, to give them a reason to buy this weekend. And then, and then we can go forward with adding some new subscribers. It's a great opportunity. I also want you to write these down because these are great things to do on any holiday. Okay. So when you think about these things, you could do these things for a Black Friday. You could do these things for New Year's Day. You could do these things for Valentine's Day. Like all of these promotions and change them up so it's not the same one over and over again, but it's different ones for different holidays. But jot these down. Okay, let's go through them one more time. Number 1, do a 24 or 48-hour flash sale open. Okay, just, it's open, join now, get in. You have 24 hours, you have 48 hours. Number 2, free gift to new subscribers. So if you join now, if you join today, you'll get this bonus item in your next box. All right, number 3, refer a friend promotion. Put a little box at checkout that says referred by and give a bonus gift to the person that referred them and your brand new subscribers. So they're both getting a free gift. Number 4 is an affiliate promotion. So grab your affiliate, grab your influencers, get them an email sent out this week telling them what's coming, and set up an affiliate promotion around, um, this day so that they can push in front of their audiences too. Number 5 would be the dollar or percent off. So set up a promotion to get $10 off your first box, 20% off your first box, something like that. Um, and you can promote that as a 24-hour or 48-hour only. And then my number 6 one is create a giveaway. And this is great for anyone that has a closed cart that cannot add anybody in right now. Or it's also great for someone that hasn't launched their subscription yet. Set up your giveaway, announce it on National Subscription Day, and then, and then you can start promoting it. It gives you a great reason to start promoting this day for you. So hope you took notes. Hope you took notes. There's lots of things that you can start doing, but You have a week, so it's, you have a week, it's next Sunday. I want you to sit down and map out your plan to get new subscribers, grab some sales, and build your list, all right? Have a great rest of your day.