Phases for a Subscription Box Company

Visitor to email conversion rate

• A reason to care: In other words, answer these questions: Why is this something I should opt-in to? How does it relate to me and why should I be excited about it?
• Call to action: Tell them what to do! In this example, we’re implying that you have to put your email address in to get invited. I also think the ‘get invited’ CTA adds a sense of scarcity.
• Exciting incentive: If anyone is on the fence about putting in their email address, usually an exciting incentive is enough to push em’ over! The lifetime subscription gimmick worked really well and yes, we made good on that!

The first step is to create a list of around 100-300 bloggers/influencers (remember, stick to your niche). Contact each of them individually, tell them about your concept and ask for their support (preferably in the form of a shoutout or e-mail notification to their readers/audience). Offer to send them a courtesy box when you do your first shipment – feel free to reserve this offer only for influencers you feel are the most significant. I find it’s also important to acknowledge their value and apologize for not being able to offer more at this time. All of this is so much easier if you actually have a compelling product. For Yogi Surprise, the concept of a ‘Yoga Retreat in a Box’ was really interesting to the yoga influencers we reached out to.

Lead Nurturing

Since the teaser phase is run for up to a month, it’s important to keep your email list engaged during this time so they don’t lose interest. There is actually a great opportunity here to build more anticipation and excitement, turning your leads into even better leads. I suggest an email each week to your growing list featuring new teasers (release something new about what they can expect), countdown updates (how many days left till launch), and other types of anticipation building content.

Phase 2: Start Taking Pre Subscribers (Founding Membership Sales)

Generally I would start Phase 2 after about 1 month of running Phase 1, but you should aim to get at least 2,000-5,000 emails from your teaser page before opening up to pre-subscribers. The day you start collecting your first orders should feel more like opening the flood gates. If you’ve got crickets on your first day, it’s likely you skipped one of my steps, failed to build anticipation or simply didn’t collect enough interest.

The main goal of Phase 2 is to collect revenue to fund your business and to see how well your list is converting so you can accurately estimate how much product to order for your first shipment.

I recommend running Phase 2 for about a month and a half. For example, if you open up for pre-subscribers on October 1st, your very first shipment should go out November 16th. It’s important to make this clear and set expectations – as long as you do this properly, you’ll only get a minimal number of complaints from the people that pre-subscribed early on. By the 2nd week in October, you should now have enough cash in the bank to place your product orders. It’s likely you’ll have under 1,000 subscribers for your first shipment, this makes the lack of generous lead time to vendors manageable.

When it’s time for your first shipment, don’t forget to send out the boxes you promised your influencer partners! For your first shipment I recommend sending out as many courtesy boxes to influencers as you can. This will create some great momentum for your official launch and help ensure even more success for your second shipment!

Phase 3: The Official Launch

I like to save Phase 3 till AFTER your first shipment to the ‘Founding Members’ has gone out. For Phase 3 you’ll now launch your full site.
This is a good time to follow up with your influencers again (who hopefully now feel good about the partnership after receiving the courtesy box). Ask them to announce your official launch. It might even be a good idea to create a new promo code in celebration of your launch (make sure not to make it as good as your founding member discount).

This is also a good time to make a second announcement to your original leads list, just make sure you’ve scrubbed the list of people who already become customers, Zapier is a great tool for this if you’re using Mailchimp.

Good luck! Please keep in mind, this guide doesn’t include everything, think of it like a blueprint and be creative – this is not the only way. Just remember that professional execution is key. Take your time to do things right.