how to increase revenue by selling subscription boxes

Building a subscription box business is one of the most creative and fulfilling businesses to own.

You find true happiness in wrapping all of your valuable products into one solid package to be delivered to a customer’s door, but at the end of the day, you want to make a profit, right?

And not just any profit – recurring profit. How can this be done?

Here’s 5 tips on not only building your subscription box business, but increasing your revenue as well!

1. Build your Branding

Building your brand is one of the most important steps of building a business. Your brand is how your audience perceives you, what people say about you when you’re not in the room, and how you make your audience feel. Although you are in the business of sending your audience their very own box of goodies from multiple different other brands, it’s time you started thinking about your very own.

Subscription boxes aren’t just about the products inside anymore. You are now creating an overall experience for the customer when this box arrives on their doorstep. How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to think? If they wanted to refer someone to you, how would they describe their experience each month?

One of the number one things to consider when it comes to building your brand as a subscription box business is color. Colors have a huge effect on the vibe and mood you can put someone in. With self-care boxes, you’ll find that most of them go with very light, relaxing colors like light blues and lavender. With boxes for kids, you’ll find that most of them go for the more bright, playful colors like yellow and orange.

You also want to focus on things like fonts, logos, presentation and so much more to ensure that your audience starts to look at your box as an entire brand and recognize you as a package experience – not just a box of random products.

The biggest challenge of a subscription box is wanting all of your subscribers to STAY subscribed and refer you to others so that you can constantly increase your revenue. How do you do that? By establishing a genuine connection with them through your brand.

2. Pay attention to your numbers

What good is it to build a business if you never check on performance? Of course, we all love packing our super valuable products into our adorable boxes and shipping them off to our smiling customers, but frequently checking on your analytics is a part of the job, too.

Here are a few pieces of information your analytics can give you better insight on:

• Feedback from customers for each product
• How much money you’re generating per month
• Any errors with your products
• How many people cancelled their subscriptions
• How many new subscriptions you are receiving per month
• Where all your new customers are coming from

How does knowing all of this increase your revenue?

It’s simple: When you know where your business is failing, you can take action in areas that need improvement. When it’s very clear where your business is excelling, it’s super easy to upscale the entire business. THAT is how millionaires are turning into billionaires.

The key to increasing revenue is knowing your audience and their behavior, their likes, their dislikes, etc. Luckily for you, Cratejoy gives subscription box owners the ability to have all of their analytics in one dashboard. They want to make sure you’re up for success!

In addition to ongoing performance, you want to make sure your box is set up for for success with margins that will help your business grow and a price that makes sense for your offering. Cratejoy’s subscription box calculator will help you price your box to perfection and start your business on the right foot.

3. Audit your inventory

Analytics play a huge part in this area as well. For example, if you know that you ship out about 300 boxes per month, when approaching a new brand for product or looking for places to source your products, you know how much inventory you should have for that month.

If you need to put in a new order each month for an awesome brand you know your customer’s love, it’s important to know just how much inventory to order. Your customer base may not be the same as prior months. Those 300 boxes per month may turn into 500 boxes in the next couple of months and you need to be ready to deliver if you plan to increase your revenue.

Not only do you need to make sure that you have enough products to include in each and every box, but you also need to make sure that each box that is ordered is definitely delivered. By selling your subscription box through Cratejoy, your seller dashboard includes a shipment tab that breaks down the shipment status of all merchandise. You’ll be able to clearly see what you need to ship, what’s already been shipped, print labels, and more!

4. Focus on quality

Quality will always win over quantity. Many subscription boxes think that the key to a satisfied customer is to give them more products than any of their competitors can offer. This is not true. If you’re a self-care box, your customers would rather have a few solid soaps and calming sprays that don’t break them out or wear off in a matter of hours, than to have 8-10 items that are on the level of average-low quality.

Remember when we discussed giving your customers an experience back in #1? Well, the overall experience isn’t just the mood you put your customers in or how your package is presented on delivery day. The more important experience your customers will have is when they actually USE the products in the boxes.
People continuously come back to buy Prada perfume, Michael Kors bags, and Louboutin shoes because of the quality. It’s very rare that someone will say that their Prada perfume gave them a rash, that their Michael Kors bag began to rip after a couple of months, or that their Louboutin shoes were worn out after a handful of wears.

Quality will always win and it always keeps your customers coming back. When more customers continue to come back, your revenue continues to increase.

5. Invest in convenience

Convenience will always be one of the quickest way to increase your coins in business. We live in a society where making things more efficient is the way to get people’s attention. Think about apartment complexes adding laundromats on site. How about colleges adding dorms, coffee shops, and ATM’s on campus?

Not only do you want to invest in more convenience for your customers, but that convenience will always turn right back around and benefit you as the subscription box owner. Here are a couple of things that are worth the investment simply for the sake of convenience:

• Express mail to make sure your customers receive their packages in a timely manner
• Social media ads so your audience can easily share your content with others
• Product testing to make sure your goods are up to par before sending out to customers
• Cratejoy to make sure you are always constantly and consistently expanding your enterprise

From analytics software, to website design tools, to keeping tabs on shipment, Cratejoy is the perfect place for any subscription box owner to get their business known and get their goodies out to all of their lovely customers!