Getting Explosive Growth During Q4

It's as simple as that .

And I've always said this For us usually when you get by August's box , the year just flies by , because it's all the rundown to Christmas . You literally only have four boxes left until January and then you start all over again . But yeah , absolutely crazy .

So on today's episode we're talking about Q4 , because Q4 is just around the corner and Q4 can be a gold mine for your subscription box if you know what you're doing . We have got a lot of our growth historically in Q4 . Q4 is usually the time of year where we'll put the foot down .

We'll try to acquire as many customers as we possibly can and we'll look to sell as much other products as we possibly can as well , because people go a bit crazy on the run up to Christmas , consumer purchase intent increases and people are just willing to spend more money .

So you need to be taking advantage of that in your business and looking to maximize these months , especially after summer , because for a lot of different e-commerce businesses , summer is a slower time Not for everybody , but for some niches it can be a bit slower , but that all changes pretty rapidly as soon as we get into that Q4 period .

Like I mentioned , the average consumer goes a bit crazy in the run up to Christmas , and if you play your cards , you can make a lot of money around this time of year . I remember at one point we actually doubled our entire subscriber base during Q4 .

Now , obviously , that's tougher to do when you get bigger , because you need to sign up for a ridiculous amount of subscribers , but when you're smaller , that is certainly possible , and it's very encouraging when something like that happens as well . Now , in the past , getting the most out of Q4 was actually pretty easy .

All you really needed to do was send out holiday ads and increase your email frequency , and that would lead to a pretty big increase in subscribers and revenue . Over the last few years , though , q4 has become ridiculously competitive . This is what's happening nowadays Ad prices are higher than ever , as there is so much competition .

Now Well , it was like that , I don't know . Q4 ad prices may be a bit cheaper . We definitely have noticed that CPM prices drop because of the economy and , fingers crossed , it stays at low enough level for Q4 because , if it does , you'd really be able to get some impressive growth in your business . But last year , yeah , ad prices were higher than ever .

Companies are also sending way more emails now , especially around Black Friday . Last year my inbox was getting slapped around to levels that I've literally never seen before . Companies were sending out multiple emails a day and it's just noise . It's literally noise .

And if you're not prepared , q4 can be counter productive because you don't stand out and you don't make the most of that increased consumer purchase intent . You really need to be careful , because you can get produced out of the action or your marketing activities , like I said , will get drowned out in all of the noise .

Now , despite these challenges , there is still a lot of opportunity . If you prepare and if your company has a effective strategy , you're still going to do really well .

So on this podcast , I'm going to write down some things you should definitely do and should definitely be aware of and , in certain cases , definitely get ahead of , so you're prepared for Q4 and you can see some impressive growth in your company . So number one right , and I kind of touched on it briefly already , but I'll go into it in more detail .

Ad prices are more than likely going to increase , even though they've dropped down a good bit this year . More than likely they will increase in Q4 . So you just need to accept that we have absolutely no control over CPM prices on Facebook or TikTok or any other ad platform , and you can bet your house .

On the run up to Christmas , competition will increase in the auctions and that will drive up the prices . Now this can be frustrating and I've actually heard of some direct-to-consumer companies cutting their advertising budget fully around this time of year . Now I personally do not believe this is a good idea .

I think the correcting to do is really dig into your metrics and understand what is the maximum you can spend to require a customer and then try and make the numbers work in your favor . At BoosterBox , we have a firm grasp of our subscription metrics and we know exactly how much we can spend to get a customer and still remain profitable .

And when I used to do a lot of one-on-one consulting or when people joined my subscription box experts program , I really try to help them understand what they can actually spend to acquire a customer , because it's really key . You have to know that information .

We monitor our customer lifetime value and our cat ratio very closely and once we hit 3 to 1 , we're happy . We even take it a step further and we will dig into our subscription cohorts from previous Q4s and then we know which offers are going to give us the best churn and the highest lifetime value and we focus on those .

There's no point running offers around Christmas where your company would track a load of bad quality customers who will actually take the first box and then they'll disappear and they won't pay for anything else . These businesses do not work if that happens . A subscription box business will only work with good churn and high lifetime value .

Now , if you don't know what subscription cohorts are , that is just basically a fancy way of saying .

We look at the group of customers that came in during previous Q4s , we dig into those months and we look at what offers we were running in those months and how many people stayed on and what the lifetime value actually was , because a few times we have run offers that were probably too aggressive for Christmas and the lifetime value wasn't high enough .

To be honest with you , people were taking boxes as presents for dogs and they had no intention of actually staying on long . So we want to avoid that . We want to focus on the high quality customers who are going to sign on , see value in what we're doing and stay subscribed for a very long time Now .

A problem that many direct-to-consumer companies have is they don't have a firm understanding of their metrics and they either overspend during Q4 on bad offers and get themselves in trouble , or they underspend and they miss out on a lot of grout . The next point make the numbers work in your favour .

Like I previously mentioned , we have zero control over CPM prices , but what we do have control over is the back end of our business , AKA we can sell more products to make the numbers work in our favour .

Consumers will go crazy around this time of year and if you give your subscribers the opportunity to buy more products from you , a lot of them probably will and if you make more money from your customers , then you're less likely to worry about the increasing customer acquisition cost around Q4 .

We make up a lot of different gift baskets around this time of year and these gift baskets will be much more expensive than just a regular box of toys and treats . Now , we tried this many years ago , really as an experiment , and we never had a big email list .

Back then we were mainly marketing to existing or previous BusterBox subscribers and we were thinking they're already signed up , they're already getting a box off us every month , why would they buy a more expensive gift basket ? But they did .

We were blown away by the amount of people that actually bought these , and I've told this story before in the past , but this was in the very early days of BusterBox , when we just went full time in the company and , truth be told , back then we were struggling to pay ourselves proper salary .

Christmas was coming around and I was like , oh , this won't be a great Christmas , but basically I paid barely anything and working around the clock .

Then we came up with the idea of the gift baskets and we sold a substantial amount of them and we all got paid a good salary and we actually ended up getting a Christmas bonus as well after a very , very tough few months .

So forever shout out gift baskets , because I know how powerful they actually are , especially if you're only getting up and running and you're looking for ways of increasing revenue so you can have a good Christmas Now , as far as pricing these gift baskets .

You want to make them as expensive as possible , because if they're expensive , that means you don't need to sell a lot of them for them to have a big impact on your revenue For us . I'll give you an example we're charging 20 to 30 euro per month for our normal box , but some of our gift baskets will sell for close to 200 .

So that's a pretty big jump , and people do buy them . So , yeah , I definitely recommend testing this in your own business . I have a very good feeling that you will be blown away with the results . We also go heavy on ad to box around this time of year and we increase the frequency of our emails .

Now , our customers love ad to box because they can get great deals on different products and they don't have to pay any additional shipping cost . If you are not doing ad to box in your business , you are leaving a lot of money on the table , and especially around this time of year , because people will add things to their box .

So you should be looking for complimentary products that your subscriber banks will be interested in , which have a high margin and fit in your box , and look if they don't fit in your box , who cares ? Just send out a bigger box with all of the additional stuff they ordered .

If you do this , the numbers in your business will work so much better in your favour and you'll have a much more profitable company where you're not really too concerned with your customer acquisition cost . The next point make the most of the assets you have . You can supplement the higher cap by simply making the most of assets that you already have .

Those assets could be email addresses , phone numbers for SMS blasts , messenger subscribers or even addresses for direct mail campaigns . If you've been running your business for a while , it's likely you've built up a massive database of customer data and you show that seriously leaning into that around Q4 and put a lot of effort into reactivation campaigns .

If these customers have bought from you or subscribed to you before , they are the perfect people you should be targeting and they're more likely to come back around during Q4 or by GIFs , pretty much . For us . We're obviously in the dog market and what is the perfect present for a dog Around Christmas ?

Especially if you're familiar with Busterbox already , it's pretty obvious it's a Busterbox Subscription . Now we just can't count on these people coming back without reminding them about us . People are busy . They don't really Care about what you're doing or , to some degree , your company . They obviously do care , but you're not top of mind and they won't remember you .

But if you put your company in front of them around Q4 and it's a good offer and they had a positive experience with you in the past , it's highly likely they'll come back . We will do a lot of this around Q4 and it will work really well for us and it's also a cheaper cac . We don't need to pay to reach these people would call traffic campaigns .

We have their information on our database already . So , yeah , it's Pretty cheap to get them to subscribe again . So we highly recommend coming up with a special reactivation offer and then target all Of these people via all of those channels that we just mentioned . You'll be pleasantly surprised by how effective that actually is .

The next point Retargeting campaigns will save you money . Sounds obvious , but people still aren't putting the time and and energy and money into setting up retargeting campaigns correctly . And look ever since the iOS updates , retargeting campaigns haven't been anywhere near as effective and as before .

But there is a way around this and this will drastically Improve performance and I highly recommend doing a lot of this in Q4 . You need to fill your retargeting audiences with people who have taken action on any meta platform eg . Engaged with your cold ads , engaged with your content , watch your videos , visited your IG or Facebook page any of this stuff .

These people have expressed a level of interest in your subscription box and Anything that happens on the platform can still be tracked fully . So you show that . Make a big campaign and dump all of those audiences into it , along with anybody who visited your website in the last 30 days without purchasing .

This is a way , more effective way , of running retargeting campaigns . These days , it's very expensive to reach new prospects around this time of year , but it's much cheaper to retarget existing consumers .

So you should do this and you should look to increase the retargeting budget as well , especially if you've been running for a decent amount of time and you have lots of potential customers in those audiences . Next point holiday offers . This may sound obvious , but it shocks me the number of companies that don't even bother running any kind of holiday offer .

We have found our conversions Dramatically increase when we come up with a Christmas themed offer . Change our website to Christmas themed branding and ensure all of our ad creatives are Christmas themed .

I'll give you an example Last year we rang an offer where if somebody signed up for six or twelve months , we will give them a free Christmas outfit for their dog with the first box . This offer blew up and we ended up getting a lot of people signed up .

Now we also changed our website to make it more Christmas themed and all of our ads had pictures Of dogs and Santa hats . I noticed this drastically improves our click tree rate and overall conversion rate . The moral of the story is Things like this make a difference and you need to do the exact same in your business .

Don't be lazy and leave everything the same , because if you do , you're a hundred percent , leaving money on the table 100% . It doesn't take much to a hierographic designer to make slight changes to your website and to come up with some Christmas creative for your ad campaigns . Do it , because it really will make a big difference .

Now this moves nicely into my next point preparation . Preparation is key to not leave all of this stuff to the last minute . As soon as Halloween is finished , you should be focusing your marketing message towards Christmas . That 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 . The exact same goes for influencer marketing or hiring creators from the TikTok Creator Marketplace . Get ahead of it , don't leave it to the last minute .

Write out your campaign briefs , hire these people and have all your videos and ads ready to go from the first of November . A big mistake a lot of subscription box owners make is they don't bother doing this ahead of time . They wait until they're deep into November before getting any of this ready .

This isn't a good idea , as you'll end up missing out on a lot of sales . Get prepared now and you'll be glad once the Christmas rush hits . I hope you found this podcast episode helpful . I will be dropping more Q4 and Black Friday content on the run up to Q4 and throughout it , but just for now , get prepared , be ready .

Q4 is coming and you should put some plans in place to make the most of it . I want you to do really well this Q4 and I want you to see significant growth in your business , and the best place to start with that is preparation , getting ready and having everything in place . So we'll be back next week at the exact same time .

If you got value from this episode , can you do me a big favour and can you give me a review on Spotify or Apple or wherever you're listening to this , because it really helps the algorithm get this podcast out to more people . I'd really appreciate it .

If you have a question you want answered on the show , as always , head over to SubscriptionBoxResourcescom and post it there . Have a great day and see you next week .