5 Mistakes to Avoid This Q4 to Skyrocket Your Subscription Box Sales

Liam gives the answers . It's as simple as that .

On today's episode , we're discussing Q4 and I'm going to highlight five big mistakes subscription box owners make during this time of year , which stops them from growing their company and making extra money , and when I highlight these mistakes , you'll know exactly what not to do . You should do the opposite to ensure you have a very healthy Q4 .

So we all know the busiest period for subscription boxes and e-commerce in general is October until December , and if you play your cards right , you can get some serious growth in your business over these months .

Now we've been running BusterBox for a long time now and this is historically where we get a lot of our growth , and everybody should be looking to make the most of this time of year , try to get as many new subscribers as possible and try to grow your revenue as much as possible .

Now , the only bad thing about these months is they can be challenging and you can end up not moving the needle at all if you don't know what to do .

That's because competition normally heats up for advertisers on the run-up to Christmas , so you really have to stay ahead of the game Now , after running my own business for years and working with countless other subscription box owners , I'm very familiar what the biggest mistakes are .

So , in the hope of helping as many people as possible , I've decided to record this podcast and highlight the biggest mistakes subscription box owners make . So let's jump into it . What are the five most common mistakes that subscription box owners make ? Okay , number one there is nothing you can do about ad prices .

In case you didn't know , facebook ads are run on a auction and on the run up to Christmas , more companies will decide to advertise and spend more money on the platform . This means ad prices will go up and there isn't much you can do about it .

There are a lot of subscription box owners and business owners in general who get frustrated by this and decide to completely stop advertising . Now , I don't personally believe this is a good idea . You should be looking to make the most of this period and , if anything , you should be looking to ramp up advertising .

Ad prices may be increasing , but so is consumer spending , so you should be looking to make the most of this on the run up to Christmas . Now , unfortunately , if you have poor metrics in your subscription box business , it may not be possible to do much advertising during these months , as it won't be financially viable .

So make sure you are tracking these three things . Number one customer acquisition cost . Number two monthly churn . Number three customer lifetime value . Now , as a general rule of thumb , you should be looking at a three to one ratio . This means the value of a customer should be three times more than the cost of acquiring them .

Now , if you're making more than three times the profit , fair play , but you are most likely leaving customers on the table , so you should try and market harder . Now , if your ratio is less than three to one , you should stop what you're doing and try and fix it , because you will most likely run into cash problems as you advertise and scale up .

Also , remember , if you have a poor ratio , it's more than likely you don't have a marketing problem , but a product problem . If you have good metrics and people stay signed up to your box for a reasonable period of time , say over eight months at least , then you should be looking to crank up your advertising spend and get as many people in as possible .

Number two not selling other products . Now , this is a very common mistake and I completely understand why . There are a lot of subscription box owners who don't sell any other products around this time of year and choose to focus exclusively on growing their subscriber base .

This makes complete sense , as you should be focusing on growing your subscriber base , but why not do both ? There are potential sales that you won't have to pay for , as you already have these customers details on file . Now , the biggest mistake most subscription box owners make is they think existing subscribers won't buy anything else from them .

This means they leave them out of their Q4 marketing efforts . If this is your thought process , you are leaving a lot of money on the table . I promise you happy existing subscribers are extremely likely to buy more products from you . You should put together some expensive gift baskets and gift bundles your existing subscribers can buy in the run up to Christmas .

You're going to be very surprised by the amount of extra sales you can generate by doing this . If an existing subscriber buys one of these products , it will not affect their current subscription in any way . They will still receive their normal box , but they will also receive the extra gift bundle as well .

This allows you to boost your lifetime value significantly by making more money from your current subscribers . Now , the common mistake everybody makes with this is they don't apply any thought or strategy into the process . They wait until the last minute and then start blasting out emails and SMS messages to their contacts , hoping to see a influx in sales .

Now you probably will see a increase in sales , but you have the opportunity to make this strategy much more effective with a little more effort . You should look to warm up your contacts and engage them before you start trying to sell them anything . You can do this by providing value building hype or pre-qualifying them before trying to sell them anything else .

What works very well is sending out an email saying you're thinking of doing additional gift bundles this year and would love some feedback . You can then ask them to fill out a quick survey asking them what kind of products they would like to see in one of these bundles .

Then , when it comes to release the gift bundles , you can tell everybody you took their feedback on board and they can now go ahead and purchase . Doing this will make a big difference compared to just randomly blasting somebody's inbox or phone with a message asking them to purchase an expensive gift bundle .

You can do that or you can just do a normal launch using a waitlist . Both can work very well . And another tip is make sure you put your gift bundles and your more expensive hampers into your post-purchase upsells .

Now we use Subli and Subli has this natively included in the platform post-purchase upsells and it's a really great way of increasing your average order value , so you're earning more money from the customer up front , which can be used to recoup your advertising costs . Number three If you don't do anything , then don't expect anything .

If your marketing plans for the next few months involve doing nothing but posting organically on social media , then don't expect miracles . To really make the most of this period , you need to have a proper marketing strategy that involves paid traffic .

You can do other advertising , like influencer marketing and affiliates , but paid traffic is more than likely going to bring you the most results . So if you haven't done this already , you should spend some time figuring out your strategy and what your Q4 offer will be .

If you have some historical data from last year you can look at , then go through that to get a rough idea of what the next few months could look like from a CPA perspective . You should then start advertising as aggressively as you possibly can .

Number four make the most of the assets you have A lot of subscription box owners completely overlook any assets they have in the run-up to Christmas . Instead of trying to make money from contact details you already have , they spend all of their time focusing on new customers . These are the assets I'm talking about Number one email list . Number two SMS list .

Number three Facebook Messenger list . As I already mentioned , getting new subscribers signed up to your box from paid traffic is very important , but you shouldn't overlook the assets you have already collected . You should take things back to basics and try and sell to these people .

Spend some time setting up some sales emails , sms messages and messenger blasts to run beside your ads . If you engage these people correctly and have a good offer , you are likely to get some decent movement from this .

If it's a case where you haven't been collecting any assets for the last year , you should look at this as a learning exercise and you should start straight away , so this time next year you will be able to make the most of this strategy .

The best way to increase sales and subscriber numbers massively over Black Friday is to have a gigantic email list , sms list and Facebook Messenger list . You won't build this overnight . It takes a lot of effort over a period of time to achieve this .

A bonus tip is to highly consider direct mail around this time of year , especially for reactivations for high value customers that cancelled in the last couple of years . It's a really powerful way to win people back during the holidays . Number five have Christmas ad creative ready . It's pretty obvious why sales increase from September to December .

The majority of this is down to Christmas . People tend to spend a lot more money on themselves and on gifts for others . As soon as Halloween is finished , you should be focusing your marketing message towards Christmas . This means you will need to have Christmas videos and images ready for your ads .

You should plan these out in advance and have them ready to go . You can contact your suppliers now and ask them for some samples which will be used for marketing materials . A big mistake a lot of subscription box owners make is they don't bother doing this ahead of time . They wait until they are deep into November before getting any of this ready to go .

This isn't a good idea , as you will end up missing out on a lot of Christmas sales . Get prepared now and you will be glad once the Christmas rush hits Now . I hope you found this episode helpful . There are just five common mistakes that I see time and time again when it comes to the subscription box industry .

So what you need to do is completely do the opposite of everything I just covered there . Avoid these mistakes and you're putting yourself in a much better position to have a very successful Q4 .

Now we'll be back next week at the exact same time and , as always , if you have a question you want answered on the show , make sure you head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom and join the free Facebook group and post your question there

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