I Doubled My Subscribers! 3 Simple Retention Tactics I'm Using to Keep Them

Good morning, good morning! Happy Monday, everybody. Um, we got a lot to celebrate today. First, I just want to talk about how our little Monday text group has been growing quite a bit. So if you are not receiving my texts, I want you to go ahead and text me the word Monday if you would like to know every Monday that I'm live. I'm going to send you a quick text before I go live so that you can join me and get a little pep in your step for your week as you start your momentum from the week. So that's what we're doing today. If you're watching, let me know that you're here. I'd love to say hi to you. We are streaming live right now on Facebook and YouTube, so you can catch me at Sarah Williams Subscription Box Business Coach on YouTube. You can find me at How to Start a Subscription Box by Sarah Williams on Facebook. But let's talk a little bit because I feel like my launch high has come down a little bit. You know, when you're just having a great launch, everything's excited. Well, it kind of, you know, it all ended yesterday. And so then my brain starts to shift a little bit to, okay, I more than doubled my subscribers last week, which is crazy pants to me. I've never more than doubled any subscription that I've ever had, so that was crazy to me. Um, it was almost unbelievable, like I couldn't believe it. Every time I would hit refresh on my screen, I'm like, I got more, I got more, I got more, and they were coming in so fast, and I was just like, this is wild. And in my mind— and you guys probably do this too— in your mind you're like, oh my gosh, this is so exciting, and like Oh my gosh, I need to keep these people. I need to make sure I retain these people. I've had such a great launch and the last thing that I want them to do is to grab their bonus and cancel their subscription. Right? So that's the immediate fear that I have is that, can I keep them? And so I went through a little bit of brainstorming yesterday that I'm going to share with you, um, with the team and I did a little brainstorming on just some very simple retention strategies. Now that I've more than doubled my subscription, I need to switch to retention mode because here's the biggest problem that I see. We get out there and we launch and then we feel like we're done. But my goal is how can I keep these people? How can I keep all of these new subscribers that I had? I want them to feel excited about their subscription. I want them to stay. And on average for this subscription, they stay for 14.3 months. I need all these new subscribers to stay for 14.3 months. And so I put together just 3 simple strategies that I'm going to use to help keep all my new subscribers for another 14 months. All right. Are you with me? So let me come to the chat and say good morning to everybody. I see lots of Facebook and YouTube watchers this morning. Good morning, Shawna, good to see you. Hey Sierra, good morning Rebecca, thank you so much. Antoinette's here, good morning. Hey Sam, hey Simone, good morning everybody. Lexi's here, hey Christina, hey Amanda. How we doing on Instagram over there? Amanda, I think you're launching today. Is it today or was it yesterday? And she realized that right before her launch, she has to have 1,000 Instagram likes in order for her to go live. And so we got to rally like we can't give up. We got it. We got to rally, right? So let me know how that's going. Good morning, Jocelyn. Hey, Doris. Good to see you. Good morning, Sonya. Good morning, Nikki. Hey, everybody. Oh my gosh, everybody's here. It should make you excited to launch. And this is what I want you to feel. Is there's momentum here. And when I can go out and more than double a subscription, I have never had this many subscribers in this subscription. I launched it in January of 2020. So it's 5 and a half years old now. And I have never had this many subscribers in this subscription. Hear me say that. Hear me say that. Right now, I have had, I have more subscribers than I have ever had. So these excuses that you tell yourself, now's not a good time to launch, the economy is really rough right now, no one's buying, no one's subscribing, these are lies that we tell ourselves to give ourselves excuses to push things off. So I'm just gonna give you a little tough love there and say, If I can do it, you can do it. And I know you're like, but you're Sarah, and I know you couldn't say that. But listen, I have never had this many subscribers in this subscription. I've had a big win right here, and that should encourage all of you that it's possible right now in this economy with everything going on in our lives. It is possible right now. And I want that to be encouraging for you. Okay, okay, now let's talk about the strategies. So after all the dust settles, after your launch high kind of wears off, I was like, okay, it doesn't end here. It doesn't end here. I have to keep going. I have to keep I have to keep these subscribers because that's the long-term play here. And so I put together 3 strategies. And strategy number 1 came from my amazing copywriter. She's like, I think we need to spend some time emailing them. I have never sent a segmented email to this group of subscribers. I lump them in with all the subscribers, but they're different. They're teachers. And not all my subscribers are teachers. That's not all that I do. This is a small segment of my list. And so I was like, you're absolutely right, Marilee. We need to be emailing them. We need to show up and love on them in a different way, in a way that we haven't before. And so I sat down and kind of brainstormed a little bit on what that would look like. It's not just a, bunch of welcome emails. We— I do need to send them a welcome email, like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited that you're here. But I really wanted to think about what could I do regularly over the next year, um, that could really show them that I'm there for them, that they're in the right place, that they're seen and they're heard. And so I thought about a couple different things, and I want you to write these down because you can do these too. But what if you did like subscriber-only secret newsletter or something like that? This could be like some of the behind the scenes that are happening with their subscription. This could be exclusive previews for upcoming items that they would love. This could be like, I was thinking about like free wallpaper, free checklist, downloadable things that teachers would love. Like subscriber-only secret newsletter was number 1. And I thought this would be great. I could send this. It doesn't even have to be weekly, but once a month or twice a month, whatever frequency you think about. And then the other thing is like, I need to send right now, like, like a founder's note, like a note from Sarah, just writing from the heart, telling them that I see them, I hear them. They're getting ready to go back to school. All of my teachers are. And so it just needs to be like, thank you for subscribing. You're in the right place. I can't wait to send you your first shipment this week. So that's going to go on my plate today is sending them a founder letter, welcoming them. And I'm actually going to send it to all my subscribers because they're all getting the bonus this month. And so they need to hear from me. And then I'm going to start sending a subscriber-only secret newsletter just for this subscription. I've never sent an email just for this subscription. So that's strategy number one. Emails just for them. Okay, not a, not a big welcome email, but something from the heart, something that helps them feel seen. That's, that's the goal here. All of you can do that. All of you can do that for whatever subscription you have. I want you to think about what that would look like for you. Now, strategy number 2 is something that I do all the time. I teach this in Launch Your Box. We have, um, actually you can text me the word surprise and I've got a free download. So you have to text it to my, you have to text it to my text number. Let me find my text number real quick if you want to do that. Here we go. Text me the word surprise and I've got a PDF of like 10 ways to surprise and delight your subscribers. I need to very intentionally surprise and delight them, at least for their first 3 to 6 months. I need this to become a habit in their routine of getting their subscription. And how can I surprise and delight them? And so if you want that PDF, go ahead and just text me the word surprise. Not comment, not on the, not on the live, but get on your phone, dial in my phone number and text me. It'll come You'll, you'll get the landing page and then you can opt in and get that for me. Um, but my thought here is I need to immediately surprise and delight them because they're going to get an extra t-shirt this month. They're going to get this bonus t-shirt, and then what's going to come next month? And I was thinking about this. I'm thinking, okay, the next month's tee is very teacher-specific, so I'm going to take the design and put it on a sticker. They're going to get a free sticker. Teachers love stickers. I'm gonna add that. I'm gonna send the email to, hey, when you open your bag, don't throw it away. Look for your free sticker. Look for your bonus sticker. I'm gonna surprise them next month with a cute sticker. Then I thought, okay, that would be great for August. In September, maybe I could, um, put a gift card in there for them to get either a discount coupon code to my shop or a gift card, like spin 20, get 10, or something like that. I need to let them go shopping for some cool new teacher, you know, gear they're wearing, things to school. And so that could be another one. I'm also thinking like one great thing to help retain them month to month, if they were excited about what was coming next, could we print a little card that had the next month's tea with a little teaser on it? Like, I can't wait for you to get next month. I'm getting into a point where they're going to get seasonal teas They're going to get, you know, like fall tees, Christmas tees. And so those can be really exciting. What if I put a little 3x3 card in there that showed them the next tee to help them be excited? And so these are just a couple things that we can do to keep the momentum, keep the retention, and they're inexpensive. It costs me this much money to put a sticker in there. It costs me this much money to put a card of the next t-shirt in there. Um, if I give them a $10 coupon to my shop, I bet they're going to spend more than $10. That benefits them and me. So I want you to think about how you can create some surprise and delight moments, especially in their first few months. Okay, then strategy number 3, and there's more ideas. Those were just a couple ideas on my PDF. There's more ideas on there that you could do. But strategy number 3, I really need, like, I know, and I'm real good at this, like, let me just toot my own horn. I know that building a community is important. People want to be around like-minded people. And so I feel like I need to do something to create more of a community for this group of subscribers. And maybe this is a subscriber shout out on socials and email. Maybe it's a is sharing more of these teachers' real life, like requesting more of their in-classroom images. Are you wearing your tee in your classroom this month? Shoot me a picture to be entered into some giveaway that has a bunch of supplies for their classroom in it. Like, I need to figure out how to create some more subscriber spotlights. That's what I'm calling strategy number 3, subscriber spotlights. And then It's sharing their photo in my social media, sharing it in one of those emails that I'm sending specifically to them. But how do I create a sense of community with these teachers? That's what I need to start doing. And so these are the subscriber spotlights that I want to work on. It's— I want to encourage them to submit photos, stories. I want to ask survey, I want to send them surveys, but how do we build our businesses to feel like a community? And that's what I want to do with this. And so those are my 3 simple strategies. I can do these very easy. I don't have to jump through hoops to do any of these, but if I'm intentional about my retention, that's when I'm going to see that number. Right now I have, I believe, a 92% retention rate for this subscription. How do I get that to 94%? Because that 2% makes a big difference. And so I just got, I just more than doubled my subscriber base. I have more subscribers in this subscription than I've ever had in 5 years. I want to keep them. And so now I've got to shift from acquiring them to keeping them. And that's what I want you to think about as you guys go through launching. I know several of you are launching in the next couple of weeks, but I want you to think about once you're done launching, I need you to shift into retention. How do we create community? How do we surprise and delight? How do we make them feel seen and heard? And I think we can do it very easily without a lot of cost, without a lot of time. Because people will remember how you make them feel. And we need to make them feel like they're more than just a number to us. And so let me know in the chat, which strategy are you going to try right now or after your next launch? Which one makes the most sense for you? But we have to be actively thinking about retention, especially coming off of a big launch like this. Like, how do we make them feel seen and heard? I don't want them to grab their bonus tee and be out. I wanna keep them. And so let me know in the chat. We have some, I'm gonna be doing an entire launch debrief next month inside Launch Your Box. I'm gonna break down my launch step by step. If you're curious right now, there's 3 lives that I did in Launch Your Box last week during my launch. There's launch update 1, 2, and 3. You'll see them in the guides for July. You can go watch me in the moment as I'm in the launch, and I'll be doing a full debrief, um, in a couple weeks inside the membership once we have all of our stats together. So think about retention, put some plans in place, and let's build momentum as we go into the fall. All right, y'all have a great day. I'll see you soon.