How to Generate Extra Revenue with One-Time Boxes - Ep 186 - Launch Your Box Podcast

Spring is the perfect time to generate some extra revenue from your existing subscriber base. Let's dive into two different ways that you can do this very easily and effectively. Grab your notebook 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 Laundry Box Podcast. Today we're going to talk a little bit about spring sales. Now, spring is a time of year that kind of is kind of a rebirth. It's kind of a new beginning. Things are— when I look at like outside, things are regrowing. It's kind of the weather's changing. I kind of look at it as kind of this rebirth, and I want us to look at that as a rebirth in our business. Like the weather's changing, your wardrobe is changing. The activities that you do are changing. You're doing from indoor activities to outdoor, and it really provides a new beginning for us. And so I want you to think about it as a new beginning for your business. Now in this episode, we're going to dive into how subscription box owners can capitalize on the seasonal opportunities to bring in extra revenue with one-time boxes. I'm specifically talking about Mother's Day boxes and some spring cleaning mystery boxes. These are both great ways to boost cash flow, attract new, new customers, potential subscribers, and also clear out some of your inventory. So let's dig in a little bit. Let's talk about the why first. So when we talk about generating some extra spring sales and we do this with some one-time boxes, and let's talk about why this works for your business and why this is a good idea for your business. Number one, it kind of gives you a good cash flow boost. We usually have a great cash flow boost in the fourth quarter. We've done a lot of buying in the new year, and this really provides a cash flow boost before we go into our summer months. There's really no long-term commitment for your customer. So in thinking about it for like subscription boxes, there's a long-term commitment, and that usually provides a little bit bigger hangup for the purchase. With these, there's no long-term commitment. It's easier for them to make the buying decision. This is also an opportunity to test some new audiences. It also gives you an opportunity to test a different theme for your box. It is really great for kind of a list re-engagement and create some upsells to existing subscribers. So maybe you've had people that have been subscribers for a while, they canceled, they're still on your list, is a great way to re-engage them and get them to purchase something again. And there's a lot of easy marketing with something like this because it's a limited time, it's seasonal, and we have limited quantities. So when you think about why does this one-time box idea that Sarah's talking about make sense for me, it's for one of those reasons or multiple of those reasons, okay? Now let's talk about the two ideas 'cause I wanna keep this really actionable for you today. So we have two big ideas. We can do a specific Mother's Day box. This is a one-time gift box that we do for Mother's Day, or we can do kind of a spring cleaning mystery box. Let's talk about the Mother's Day box first, because I want you to leave this episode feeling like you have an actionable plan to go put into place, okay? So when I think about Mother's Day, it's a perfect opportunity for me to provide value for my ideal customer. My ideal customer is a Southern businesswoman woman. And so Southern busy women are typically buying a gift for their mother or their mother-in-law. Okay, so there's actually two gift options for them. They can buy it for themselves, they can buy it for their mother, they can buy it for their mother-in-law, or they can buy it for any, any mother in their life. Maybe they have a child that's a new mom. There's lots of gifting opportunities there. It's kind of one of those emotional gifting opportunities because they're buying for someone else. Okay, a lot of times they buy it for themselves as well. Let's talk about some popular themes that we can do around those boxes. A great one that we see works well for us a lot is that self-care for your mom. Maybe it's a pampering box, maybe it's mom's night in. Think about a theme that goes along with your box products and along with your ideal customer. This could also— we try to play this up as a treat yourself box. For moms that don't usually prioritize themselves, which is perfect for my own audience. So it could be a way to treat yourself. And then one way that we make this different and special is that we create a custom box for this. So it doesn't come in my existing monogram box, turquoise box that we ship out every month. This comes in a unique custom box. We've used the same box year after year so we can buy them in bulk. We use the same box, but it's specifically designed for mothers. "Mother's Day," so it makes it unique and different. We also allow for customized gift notes inside this box, which we don't do for our subscription box. So this is just another way that it'll make it different from your subscription box and make it special for the person gifting it. Now, when you think about a theme for a Mother's Day box, hopefully you're brainstorming, you've got your notebook out, and you're taking some notes. Think about how you could provide a Mother's Day box, a Mother's Day gift box with your products or with your customer. Here's a few tips that I have for you. I've done this for years. We've sold gift boxes for years, so I've learned a few things over the years. Let me give you some tips specifically for Mother's Day, okay? You need to promote this early, and as a matter of fact, I was just on a call with Scale Your Box. People aren't waiting to buy the Mother's Day gift in May. We need to sell it in April. Selling it mid-April is pretty key to the success of this, okay? Because we have get it packaged and we have to get it shipped so it'll arrive on Mother's Day for them. What we want to do is we want to build this up as a very specific marketing promotion. So I like to have a waitlist, I like to create urgency with it, I'm going to create a lot of hype around this and get people excited that this is coming and there's a limited number, okay? So tip number 1 is to promote it early. Tip number 2 is you've got to have a clear order deadline and make sure that it ships the beginning of May so it arrives on time for Mother's Day, okay? Tip number 2, deadlines. Let them know when it's shipping and you gotta make sure they have it in their hands for Mother's Day. So you don't wanna ship it out too late because you know, you and I both know that we cannot rely on shipping carriers all the time, okay? Number 3, your messaging around this box is very important. Remember how I said this is emotional gifting opportunity? Our messaging around that needs to be driven emotionally. We're going to evoke emotion with our messaging. So this could be something like, show mom that she's appreciated, treat yourself to a Mother's Day gift that you know you'll love, this is shipped directly to your doorstep. So make them feel like it's super convenient and that you're helping them out. But you want to make sure that your messaging is on point for this because that's going to drive sales for this gift box. And then my last tip is on pricing. I want you to keep pricing simple. So I typically like to align pricing with a similar price as my subscription box. I already know people are spending that much money monthly with my box, so it makes sense that I would align that price with the Mother's Day box as well. So I want to keep it simple. I want to make it a similar price to my subscription box. If you are not selling a subscription box yet, maybe you want to start with a one-time Mother's Day box, you can really make this something like your average order value. If you know people are typically spending— your AOV is typically $50, make this box a $50 box, and that's going to help you keep it simple and keep it aligned with your particular buyer, your particular customer. Okay, so I hope you got some ideas for a Mother's Day box through that discussion. Let's shift over and talk about a spring cleaning mystery box. If you're like me, you probably have a little bit of extra inventory laying around, and I do this a lot of times after Christmas. I'll do like an after Christmas, you know, mystery box, but this is a perfect time to kind of clear through your remaining winter items that you may have. And for me, and don't tell anybody, but I have some remaining summer items from last summer I would love clear through too. So no matter what season, the spring is such a good time to clear through leftover winter inventory before you get into the nicer months, and maybe some leftover inventory you have from last summer, prepping them for summer months. They're gonna feel great getting either of those items in a spring cleaning mystery box. Now the goal here is to turn your leftover inventory into cash to put back in your bank account. And really provide a surprise and delight for your customer. For me, doing a mystery box is so much sexier than doing a clearance sale because clearance sales cheapen my brand, they devalue the products I put in the subscription box, and then it kind of diminishes the subscriber experience as well. So I try not to put my products into a clearance sale because clearance to me is just a negative word and it puts a negative connotation on my subscription box. So I am able to clearance these items in an effective way without calling them clearance by doing these mystery boxes. So the part about the mystery box, the best part about the mystery box is the mystery element, okay? It's what creates FOMO, it's what creates excitement. I had a member tell me just recently that she sold 99 boxes in 2 hours. People will just love to grab these. They don't know what's in it, and they're just ready to grab something that you offer because they know they already love what you offer. I want you to just pack these boxes full with leftover subscription box products or any other inventory that you might have on hand. We do need to let the buyer know that these could be from past subscription boxes. There's always that line in my description of these boxes: your mystery box may contain products from previous subscription boxes. So that if they're a subscriber, maybe they've been a subscriber for a long time, I don't want them to feel disappointed if they get a box that has some items that they may already have. So I always put that kind of disclaimer on the description of the product. Let them know it's going to be a mixture of one-time products and subscription items. It's all random. Nobody's going to get the same box. It is what it is. And then the other thing that I really want you to do with putting together the mystery box is I want you to show the value of the box. So this could be like $100 worth of products for only $49 or whatever you want to price it at. Just show them the value that they're getting a high-value mystery box with, you know, with whatever they're going to get. So I like to put a range like $100 to $150 value for a $50 price point so that I can— I have the flexibility to put whatever I want in those box. Now, you're thinking about doing a spring cleaning mystery box, or it could be end of summer mystery box, it could be end of fall mystery box. This could be for any season, okay? I want you to give— I wanted to give a few different tips to make this successful for you. I want you to again keep it simple, okay? So I want you to keep it simple by only offering 1 or 2 price points. We don't want to overcomplicate the offer here. So with 2 different price points, one might be a $50 box worth $100 or more, or it might be a $100 box worth $200, $250 or more, okay? So I'm going to give 2 options. I always kind of have some leftover boxes. It could be from a past gift box, it could be from a subscription box. I like to kind of put them in two different size boxes, so I always have boxes laying around. So I'll pick a couple sizes and I'll price them accordingly. Okay, you could also do this with poly mailers. So you could have like, you know, like a $30 grab bag, and it could like, it could be soft goods like t-shirts or cardigans or kimonos or soft goods. And then you could have a box which might be $60, and it has some soft goods and hard goods in it as well. But no more than 2 price points and options, okay? And then I want you to make sure that it is filled with a couple of your high perceived value items, and those are the ones that are kind of bigger in size. They're perceived to have more value. I don't want you to fill the box with just a bunch of small stuff because it feels— even though the cost is there, it doesn't feel as valuable as when you put bigger items in it. So I want you to think about that. If I stuffed a whole box of just jewelry, like earrings and necklaces and bracelets, it would have a much different perceived value than if I put some t-shirts and a hoodie and some accessories in it. So I want you to think about that as you're building these. We want our people that buy these to have a great experience opening them as well, because again, it's a reflection of your brand. So it's a direct reflection of how they view your brand and who you are. So we don't want them to be disappointed when they get these boxes, okay? So 2 options: Mother's Day gift box, spring cleaning mystery box. I want you to think about these. I want you to pick one, one of those. We don't have to do both. You could do one right now, you could do one a few months later, but I want you to really think about doing one of those different types of options. And so I want to talk a little bit about how we're going to market them, because we can have the best laid plans of putting it together, but if we don't market it well, um, then we're not going to sell them, and then all of our time, effort, energy, and focus is all to— all for nothing, right? So let's talk about marketing a little bit. And I— these are just basic marketing things that you're going to do with any promotion that you do. These are things I do with any kind of sale, any kind of promotion, any kind of new product, okay? So number 1, I want you to go live. And I know I say it all the time, but I need you to start hearing me when I say it. I want you to go live. I want you to tease that it's coming. I want you to build a waitlist if you're doing a Mother's Day box. You don't necessarily need to do a waitlist for a mystery box unless you just want to. I want you to create buzz and excitement around that this is coming. It's not like I'm just going show up and sell this thing to you. I need you to prep people that this is coming. That's how we sell most often. That's how we sell a lot of things most often, is that people are expecting it, people are waiting for it, and we built up some hype around it. So I want you to go live to really kick that off. Number 2, email, email, email. That should be number 2, 3, and 4. Email, email, email, and then email again. Your email list is your biggest asset, okay? And I love giving our box subscribers first access. It's just one of those benefits that is extra and unexpected. So make a plan to email your existing subscribers first. Hey, Mother's Day box is going on sale tomorrow. You get first dibs on it. That could be your waitlist, but you need to be emailing, and I would email every single day during this promotion period. Every day they need to hear from you, and that's how we build up the hype, and that's how we build sales in. That email list is your biggest asset, okay? Number 3 is social media. We need to do some sneak peeks. That could be a Mother's Day box sneak peek. That could be a video of you packing a mystery box, showing a few of the items in the mystery box, or even like a picture of one full mystery box where you can only see what's on top and not what's underneath, but you can see that it's packed full and it has a ton of value. I need you to get this on social media. Don't just talk about it once and hope it sells. We need to keep talking about it during the promotion period every single day. So find a way to talk about it on social media a lot, okay? And then number 4 is paid ads. We will use paid ads for our Mother's Day promotion. So I want you to make sure that you consider that. I typically don't use paid ads for our mystery boxes because I'm really just getting my money back and I don't want to have a bunch of extra marketing expense. But if you need paid ads, you use paid ads, period. We need to leverage paid ads to get it in front of our warm audience. So I would not target cold audiences with these. I would definitely get it in front of our warm audiences. That's people that follow us, that's people that have had website visits, visits audience, that's people on our email list, but I would definitely get it in front of your warmest audience with paid ads. That's just gonna help put it in their feed, make you visible, and hopefully get the purchase. All right? So that's your action. It's a short and sweet podcast episode today, but it's very actionable because I want you to be able to generate extra revenue with some one-time boxes in this this season, whether that's a Mother's Day box or a mystery box. I want you to pick one of those box ideas and I want you to take some action towards it this week. That could be setting a date for the promotion, that could be building a waitlist for this promotion, that could be just planning out the promotion on your calendar with when you'll do lives, when you're going to send the emails, what the content of those emails and those lives will be, who's going to make graphics, What are we posting? Like create the plan because when you create a plan, that also creates action on your part. If we don't have a plan, we tend not to take action. So I want you to sit down and create the plan so that you can make some sales, get some cash back in your bank account, and keep connecting and delivering for our audience. All right? All right, I'll be back next week with another great episode.