8 Ways to Build Community in Your Subscription Box Business

Good morning. Happy Monday, everyone. Today on Monday Momentum, we're talking about 8 ways that you as a small business owner can build community in your subscription box business. And we can do this in a way that big businesses don't have the opportunity to do. So that's what we're talking about today. Let me know in the chat if you are here. I'm going to give you 8 different strategies to help you do that. This is something I was just on a podcast last week with Tony D'Urso, and we were talking about whatever you do, whatever you do in business, whatever you do in life, whatever you do, it doesn't matter if you're selling subscription boxes. He's actually a sports agent, but you should always be building a community. And so we talked a lot about how you can do this in your subscription box business. And I think it's important that a lot of us are already doing this. Okay. A lot of us are already building community and we may be doing it in a few of these ways. And that's why I want you to write them down today, because I want you to go back and look at this and remember these ways. Like, I might be doing 2, 3, and 4, but you know what? This year I'm going to incorporate 1 and 6 because we should always be building a community. And those people that have had the most success with their subscription box businesses have incredible communities. And it doesn't mean you have to have a large community. It just means that you have to have the right community and then you have to spend time building that community. A community just doesn't form on its own. You have to do something to build that community. So we're going to talk about that. I'm going to give you 8 ways that you can do this. Take some notes, get your wheels thinking, and I want you to give yourself a pat on the back like, hey, I am doing number 2. I am doing number 6. I am like, I am doing some of this, but how can we get better? That's what everything in our business is about. How can we uplevel? How can we do more? How can we do better? And we don't always have to do more, but how can we take the little things that we do and make sure that we're doing them well and make sure that we're doing them consistently? Okay, because that's important. I'm going to come over to the chat and say hi to everyone, and then we're going to jump in. So grab your notebooks, grab your coffee, um, because we're going to get started this morning. I'm going to get your Monday started off right this week. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Now I see, and I don't know whether to call you Jay, tell me your name. So when I see you on YouTube every week, I can give you a shout out. Just pop it in the chat for me. I always skip your name because I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I want to say good morning to you. So good morning. Let me know your name in the chat so I can remember that going forward. I see Andrea here. Good morning, Rebecca. Hey, Tina. Good morning, Laura Lee. Good morning, Joan. Good morning, Sam. Hey, happy Monday, Nikki. Good to see you here. Tons of good mornings from people that I can't see. So if this is you, you're probably watching me from one of the groups. I'm streaming in 4 places right now. So if you're watching me inside Launch Your Box, this might be you. If you're launching me inside Scale Your Box, this might be you. If you're in the groups, I need you to give StreamYard permission so that I can see who I'm talking to. Good morning, Lisa. Hey, Denise. Good morning, Vanessa. Good morning, everybody. First time here, you're probably watching from Launch Your Box. Um, so just give StreamYard permission. There's a little link in the description. Um, I'm excited for you to be here. Hey Bev, good morning Stephanie. Hey Amy, good morning Sandy. Good morning everybody. I'm so excited. Okay, let's get going now. Now I have questions. Is that Jonica? Is that Janika? You got— I'm gonna need more than this. Um, put it in the— put it in the chat so that I'm gonna get it straight. I'm gonna get it straight in my brain so when I see you on YouTube, I'm going to know your name. That's my goal for today. Good morning, Amber. Good morning, Carrie. Good morning, Lisa. Good morning, everybody. Okay, here we go. I know that's what I was thinking. Another Jonica. That's going to be easy for me to remember if that's how it's— if that's how we say it. So it's going to be awesome. Okay, now let's talk about this. Let's talk about 8 ways to build community with a subscription box business. And I wrote some notes while I was getting my hair done this morning. So I'm referring to those over to the side, but make sure, make sure that you're writing these down because I don't expect you to run out and start these 8 things today. That's not what we're doing. I would say I hope several of you are doing some of these things and I want you to write them all down with me this morning because I think that builds repetition in our brains. That one, when I write it down, I remember it. And two, I want you to go back and circle and highlight what you want to do going forward. Okay? I want us to check off what we're doing and I want to write down what we're going to do going forward. Okay? So number 1, we've got to clearly define our niche and our target audience. This has to be the first step when we're building a community because it's really hard to build a broad community. We have to niche down and we have to clearly define that niche and who that target audience is. So many of you have already already niched down. So many of you know exactly who your ideal customer is. So many of you speak to that on a regular basis. But I know there are people sitting here that are saying, maybe I'm too broad, Sarah. Maybe I don't know exactly who my target audience is. Maybe I haven't niched down. And I want you to, if this is you, I just want you to circle this. We have to do this before we can do anything else because you can't build a community of like-minded people if you don't have like-minded people in your world. In your audience. So if we're not clear on who we're for, the traits of this person, I want you to go into the training library and I want you to consume the lesson on your ideal customer. I think that's going to help you with this. Okay, so it's in the building your audience module. I want you to go into the Launch Your Box training library and I want you to go back through that because if we've been going through building our business without clearly defining our niche and clearly defining who our ideal customer is, We're speaking to no one. And when you're speaking to no one, your messaging is going to land flat. Your sales are going to land flat. Who am I speaking to? Who am I building this community for? What does that person look like? What does that person do for a living? Where does that person live? What is that person's interests and traits? We need to know that before we can build a community. So that's number one. Okay, once we figure that out, and if you've already have that figured out, the next thing that you're going to need to do, number 2, is you're going to create content to serve, not to sell. Okay, and we're gonna sell. Oh yes, we're gonna sell. That's what we do. That's what we, that's what we're trying to do. But we have to serve before we sell, and we have to constantly serve our audiences. And it's hard. It's hard when you have a business that doesn't teach anything. Have this on my shirt. And so when you have a business that doesn't teach a skill or a how-to or a DIY, like, you look at a business like mine, I'm going to show you something. This is a new way that we're— it's a new initiative that we're working on, and this is going to help us serve our audience. Um, I'm going to show you an example. So when you think about if you are a crafter, if you are a DIYer, if you are training, teaching, coaching in some way, I can show up like this and serve all day long because I'm teaching you something. And that's really easy. And so anybody that's in those spaces, they're used to that. They're showing up, they're serving. If you have a subscription box like mine, the Monogram Box, give you cute things. I monogram it for you. It's just fun. It's just cute. I'm just delivering the goods, right? So how do I serve this audience? I'm going to show you something I was working on this weekend. It's called wear it versus style it. I can serve my t-shirt wearers by showing them how to wear it versus style it. Here's, here's one of the examples. Can you guys see that? I should have pulled it up on the screen, but I'm just wearing the t-shirt with jeans, and then I'm showing you how good this t-shirt looks when you actually style it. I've got a cardigan, I got some jewelry, I got some sandals, I got a handbag. And so this is a new thing we're doing called Wear It Versus Style It, and I'm going to do that with every t-shirt every month. I'm going to do a Wear It Versus Style It. So how can you serve your audience with the things that they get in their box? You don't have to be teaching them, okay? You just have to serve them. If I serve up ways to style a t-shirt, do you think that's gonna help my audience? Absolutely, they got a closet full of t-shirts if they are in my subscription. If I can show them how to style it, they're gonna wear it more often, they're gonna use it more often. I'm serving them in that way. They feel good about their purchases. I can help them use it and style it. So I want you to think about creating content to serve, not to sell. And then something like that, creating that one template of wear it versus style it. Every month, guess what? I have a new t-shirt that drops for my subscription. Every month I can do a wear it versus style it content for my audience. So how can you serve them? How can you serve somebody in the pet space? Teach them things about their dog, teach them things about habits, teach them things about grooming, teach them things. How can you serve boutique style? This is what I'm talking about here. How can you serve your audience? Number 2, if you're not currently creating content where you're serving your audience, that needs to be high on your priority list for this year. Now, number 3, social media engagement. This is a huge way to build community. Okay, we can't just post stuff and walk away. We can't just have this great social media plan where we take the pictures, we do the videos, the little short reels, we post it and we walk away. We've got to engage. We've got to engage with that community. We— they have to feel like they know us, right? When I come over here and I talk to, um, Javetta, I don't know Javetta personally. but I'm going to engage with Jovetta right now. And so she's going to feel seen. She's going to feel heard. She's going to feel like, oh, I'm, I'm in the room with Sarah right now. And that's what we have to do to our community. That's how we have to, we have to engage with our community. We have to engage with them. We have to talk to them. We have to speak to them by name. Why do you think I come on here and I say hi to you guys every, every Monday? I'm engaging in the chat. I want I want you to want to be here. And if I show up and I pull your name over to the screen, that makes like, oh, Sarah knows I'm here. Absolutely. I know. And that's why it was important for me to know the name. And I saw it up here. I'm going to figure this out before. Johnica. I'm going to know Johnica's name when I see her. It's not going to be J. Walden anymore. She's a part of my community. And I know she's a part of my community because, you know what, she shows up every Monday. I see her name here every Monday and I skip it every Monday because I don't know what to call her. And I hate that I skip it because then I go, hey, Nikki, hey, Christy, hey, Kim. And I'm like, Jay, I don't know. But now it's Jonica and I can say hi to her every morning and she's a part of my community and I love that. And I hope she loves that I took the time today to know her name because I see her. I see her here every week on YouTube. And that's important to me. And it's not, it's not fake. It's who I am. That's exactly— it's authentic. That's who I am. And for a lot of you, that's who a lot of you are. You're authentic. You want to get to know people. And some of you are shyer than others. You know, whether you believe it or not, I am a true introvert and it's taken time for me to get over that. But I have to engage. I have to engage. And so you can do that with Lives. Right now I'm live with you and I'm engaging with people in the audience. Okay, we have to engage. Comments. Go back on those posts, go back on those reels, talk to people. If someone's taking the time to comment on my post or my reel or whatever, whether it's a comment or a question, whatever, I want to engage with that. We can't just leave it out there. They took the time to say something. You should say something back. And it's having those interactions. Okay. And it's important to me. And that's another way how that you can build community by really engaging with your audience on social media. Social media is there to be social. So let's get social. Number 4, I want you to talk to your subscribers and get feedback from them regularly. So I, when I'm live, I'll talk to my audience. When I'm doing an unboxing, I will talk to my subscribers. I, the whole way I'm talking to my subscribers, and I know there are people watching that are not subscribers because they're curious of what's in this box. And my subscribers know what's in this box. They're showing up to hang out with me, to engage with me, and I want to give that back to them. Listen, our subscribers are very special to us. They are VIPs in our business. Number one, they give us their credit card every single month without question, right? They are, they are giving us their financial means every single month without question. Then they're showing up when I do an unboxing and they already have it and they know what's in it. So that means they're showing up for me and I don't take that lightly. I want to engage with them. I want them to get to know me. I'll tell fun little stories, whether I'm live, just doing a weekly live Whenever I'm, I'm doing a box opening or even like this, like I'll tell fun little stories so that you get to know my personality, you get to know who I am, you get to know that I am genuine and authentic. And so that's why they show up. They're part of something that's bigger than themselves. They're not just our subscribers. They're our subscribers. Okay? They're not a number. Those are people. And you need to talk to them. Hey, subscribers. Hey members, like how many people in the chat right here are a member of Launch Your Box, Scale Your Box, or my mastermind? Put it in the chat if you are a member. Tell me what member, what membership you have of mine. I do that exact same thing with subscribers, but seriously do it because I want to see who's here that is part of my world on a regular basis because that's important to me. So when I show up and I'm talking to subscribers, I'm like, hey subscribers, tell me, do you have the monogram box? Do you have the t-shirt club? Do you have the teacher subscription? Tell me what you have. I want to see in the chat, and then I'm going to recognize it. I'm going to acknowledge it in the chat. My members are here, y'all. My community's here. Look at, look at the chat right now. And you can't see all of the chat because I'm streaming in 4 different places, but, but look, look at this chat. Scale Your Box, Mastermind. I'm in all three. Launch Your Box, Launch Your Box, and Scale Your Box. Launch Your Box, Launch Your Box, Scale Your Box, Launch Your Box, Scale Your Box, Scale Your Box, Launch Your Box, Launch Your Box. Um, like, all these people are in my world, okay? And so I don't take that lightly. I don't take lightly that you give me your credit card every month to charge. I don't take lightly that you spend your time showing up when I'm live. I don't take that lightly. Launcher Box and a T-Shirt Club member. Hey, Sandy. Like, I need you to do the same. I need you to talk to your community, especially your paid community. Yes, I show up here publicly and this is free. And anyone, if you are not in my community, just say, um, new here. Just put new here if you're not in my community, in one of my paid communities. Put new here because I want to acknowledge that too. I want to acknowledge that you're here absorbing some information because I do give free information. I'm serving my audience. Okay. And that's important to me. You see me do that week after week without fail. You see me do that. You see me show up and serve my audience. I serve my public audience and I also serve my paid audience. Okay, so I need you to see that Maria's here. She's not in my group. She's in Brooke's group. And that's where she learned about me because I served Brooke's audience. Okay, I love that. Sam is new here. Hey, Sam, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you show up to get this information. Javette is here. She's new here. I'm glad you're here. Maria says, I'm listening to your book. Don't— we're like this. I'm glad you're here, whether you're a part of one of my paid communities or you're just here absorbing the information week after week. But I'm talking— I need you to talk to your subscribers. I need you to engage with them. I need you to make them feel seen and heard and part of your community. Okay, so that's number 4. Number 5, host events. Okay, um, we do this about once a year, but we do a subscriber pickup party at my warehouse, and it's mostly for our local people. And, um, and so if you're local, you come in and we have some food trucks and we have balloons and we have some giveaways, and we— you get to meet everybody and we have a good time. Okay, um, we do that about once a year. That's an event that I can have. Um, I think about my friend Casey Hope. She has a, um, an event at her studio. She has a lettering box called, um, Whatever Letter, and she teaches lettering, and she has a box that goes with it with supplies and projects. And a couple times a year she hosts people to come in, and people come in from all over the country. They fly in, they carpool together, and it is one of the ways that she's created her community so strongly. Think about her retention rate. For people that come into her studio and do some of the projects together and meet other subscribers. Like, it's amazing. So if you have the ability to host events, do that, even if it's just locally starting out, even if it's just in that space. When I think about Launch Your Box, SubSummit's coming, coming up. And while I'm not the host of SubSummit, I'm hosting my students there. So my students can get a ticket at a discount. They can come out, absorb themselves into the conference. I have a Launch Your Box lounge that I have negotiated into my speaking package. And that's for you to host you guys to be in person with each other, to meet you, for you guys to meet other Launch Your Box members. Having the community meet each other is so important. If you're watching me right now, whether that's live or on the replay and you met someone at Sub Summit and now you're biz besties, Let me know in the chat because meeting somebody in real life, especially when we're online business owners, especially when we do so many things virtually, having that connection with somebody in real life is so powerful. And so hosting those events for your members, for your subscribers to get together in person creates a lot of bonding. It creates a lot of loyalty. It creates a strong community. Okay. So that's number 5. Host events. Number 6, you could offer exclusive incentives or loyalty programs. We've seen this quite a bit in our community, um, about offering incentives. Like, if I'm a subscriber— I was talking with, um, Amy, her podcast episode's going to come out in, um, April, I believe— but she was talking about how her subscribers get 15% off everything in her shop. Think about the exclusive incentives that you could offer for your subscribers to really build this community. Could you offer subscribers free shipping? Could you offer your subscribers some VIP pricing? Like what could you do to create a community around that loyalty programs, things like that. And that kind of goes into number 7, which is celebrating milestones. How long someone's been a subscriber. So if you could take those loyalty programs and say, okay, at 1 year I'm gonna put a coupon in their box to give them 50% off anything in my shop, or I'm gonna create some kind of bonus, I'm gonna create a birthday bonus. So everybody that has a birthday each month, I'm gonna put a birthday surprise in their box. What could you do to celebrate some milestones to create a really strong, close-knit community. Okay, so that's number 7. And number 8, you need to have strong customer service. I call it customer service concierge. You need your subscribers to get VIP-level customer service, right? Your subscribers are paying you every month. They are the most loyal. We focus so much on acquisition, acquiring new subscribers, that we lose sight of if we just take care of them, if we just treat them really well, if we treat them like the VIPs in our business, that we could retain them longer. And then we're not constantly spending money acquiring. So do you have VIP-level customer service in your business? And that means if I'm dealing with a customer service ticket and I look up their account and I see their subscriber, how can I take care of them? How can I take care of them in the best way possible? Because these are VIPs in my business. So do your subscribers have VIP status when it comes to customer service? Like when I'm walking into a hotel or, you know, maybe I, you know, maybe I have a lot of points with this particular hotel chain. They don't know that while I'm standing in line. But once I get up to the checkout counter and they put my name in and they can see, oh, Sarah's been a member with us for a long time. Oh, she stays at this particular hotel everywhere she travels. We're going to upgrade her room. We're going to make sure we leave warm cookies in her room, like whatever. How can you treat people like VIP when they come through your customer service counter, whether that's virtually or in person? So I want you to think about those things. Let's recap the 8 ways. Okay, let's go through them one more time. And then as I'm doing this, I want you to pop into the chat. Which one are you going to start start working on now. Okay, number 1, define your niche and target audience. Number 2, create content to serve, not just sell. Number 3, social media engagement— lives, conversations, interactions on social media. Number 4, talk to your subscribers and engage in feedback from them all the time. You can do that in emails, you can do that in lives, you can do that on social media, you can do that in many different different forms. We do it through texting and SMS as well. Number 5, host events. Number 6, exclusive incentives or loyalty programs. Number 7, celebrate their milestones. And number 8, customer service VIP level. All right, so I want you to think about the— tell me in the chat which one you're going to work on. We don't have to do all the things. We just have to do some things really consistently. Okay, so let me know in the chat and then let's sit down with that one thing and let's make a plan because this is our superpower. We get in our heads a lot about what these big businesses and these big brands have the ability to do. They have the ability to acquire customers and spend a lot of money on ads, right? They have ability to get items really, really cheaply in their boxes. Okay, we don't. I can't go spend a million dollars on Facebook ads this month. I can't do it. I can't afford that. I don't have that kind of budget, nor do I have those kinds of sales. I also can't get product, um, pennies on the dollar the way they can because they're getting 10,000, 30,000, 50,000 pieces, right? So knowing that, I automatically have a handicap if I look at that. Like, how can I ever be successful when FabFitFun can get cute product really cheap, acquire customers like they got money coming out of their ears. How can I compete with that? I'm not competing with that. I'm building a community, and I've built a community of amazing women who loves monograms, who loves my graphic tees, and I don't need to have a FabFitFun audience. I have relatively small audience for the amount of subscribers that I have. And that is because I have built a community. All right. And I want you to think about that because everybody in this community here in Launch Your Box that has been super successful has an amazing community. It's part of the success. So don't skip over it and use it to your benefit as a small business. Let them get to know you. And you show up authentically who you are, the way you want to, and you serve your audience. Okay, I'm gonna go back and check all the comments for what you guys are working on, but I appreciate you. I appreciate our members for showing up every Monday, and I appreciate our people that are new and checking out my content and seeing what they can learn from me. I appreciate you for being here, and come join me back next Monday, every Monday, and get a little bit of Monday Momentum to kickstart your week. I'll see you guys soon.