Using Insert Swaps + Partnerships To Grow Your Subscription Box Business

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

Today we're speaking about a very underrated way of getting subscribers which can be very powerful and can get you a lot of people signed up for a relatively cheap price , and that is insert swaps . Now , if you don't know what insert swaps are , let me explain . This is more of a uk based thing now .

I definitely know there are companies in the us who do a lot of this , but it seems to be way more popular in the UK , where a lot of the bigger subscription box companies and e-com companies put a lot of time and resources into this kind of marketing . So we have done it quite a bit in BusterBox and it's been successful for us .

We've got a lot of people signed up from it and we've generated extra revenue for our company through doing it as well . So it's very straightforward Companies will get in touch with other companies who have a crossover in audience but aren't directly competing with them .

So we would never try to do this with another dog subscription box company because it would simply make no sense . We're competing with each other .

But we've partnered with a wine company and a beer company and some other companies as well , where our user base may be interested in a beer box or a wine box and their user base may be interested in a dog subscription box , but we're not directly competing with each other .

So I know some of the biggest boxes in the UK acquire the majority of their customers through this kind of marketing . That's how powerful this is , and I'm talking about companies that have way over 100,000 subscribers . So , to break it down in the simplest way possible , two companies will agree to put an insert in each other's box .

That can be very powerful because boxes obviously have a 100% open rate pretty much , and on the insert there will be a qr code . A customer can scan it . It will bring them to the other company's website and they can sign up and try their subscription box .

Email swaps are also a big thing when it comes to this and obviously they're a lot easier to do because you don't have to pay for printing or anything . A company may get in touch with you and they'll be like whatever , we've got this many people on our list . How many people do you have on your list ? Do you want to do an email swap ?

They'll prepare an email , your company will prepare an email and you'll swap . If one of the companies has a bigger list , then a arrangement will most likely be made and one of the companies may do an extra resend , or there may be some cash exchanged as well , or they may only send it to a proportion of their list .

All of those things are possible and it just depends on the deal in question . Now , this is a very powerful way to get people signed up to your box , but you have to be careful with it too .

You don't want to partner with like a million different companies and you're literally blasting your list out of it around the clock , because if you do that , you will eventually burn it out .

But if you're strategic with your partnerships , it can be a great way of getting people signed up for a relatively cheap price , and it can also be a great way of generating additional revenue for your company .

At times in the past , we have had much bigger boxes reach out to us in a different niche and they have paid us a considerable amount of money to email our list with their offer Really good money for doing this . We have over 250,000 people on our list , so it's quite desirable for these other companies .

They can get a lot of movement from our list if they send a really good offer out . And that brings me to the next point . The success of this will heavily rely on the offer . Now , if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time , you will know I'm always banging on about the offer .

With this kind of marketing , though , the offer is even more important , and that's because you only have a very short amount of time to make a impression with a potential customer and entice them to take action . If the offer isn't good enough , people just won't respond . They literally won't respond to the email or they won't respond to the insert in the box .

So this is really , really important . Now , a way to think about it is right , and it really depends on your metrics and what kind of offers convert the best , but a way to think about it is you can pretty much remove the customer acquisition cost in some cases , especially if you're doing a swap .

Okay , you can remove the customer acquisition cost , like the Facebook ad cost or the TikTok ad cost . So that gives you a bit more freedom to be a bit more aggressive with your offer to hopefully entice people to take action . Now what are the benefits of this and what are the drawbacks ? Because , like anything , there's positives and there's negatives .

Well , the main benefits are this is a way to get customers outside the traditional ad platforms and you can drastically reduce your customer acquisition cost by doing this , because you're not depending on Facebook , tiktok , google , whatever .

The other benefit is , you can potentially reach people you may have not been able to reach otherwise , so it's expanding your reach of customers . The other benefit is you can generate extra revenue for your company by doing partnerships with other subscription box companies and other e-com companies .

If you sell them , insert space in your box , or if you do a deal with them to send out a blast to your list . Now the negatives it's time consuming . That's one negative . It isn't just like turning on Facebook ads , tiktok or Google .

I know they can take time as well , but this is extra time consuming because you're going back and forth with different companies organizing things . It's not just logging into an ad platform and setting up your ads .

You're actually depending on other companies to do the work Put the inserts in the boxes at the right time , send the email blasts at the right time , track all of the sales

, all of that stuff . It's really important and it can be time consuming , but it can still be worth it . The other negative is you have to be careful . Pretty much , you have to be careful with who you partner with and you have to be careful about the amount of emails you send .

Like I said earlier in the episode , you don't want to overdo it and completely burn out your list . Now , do I think this is worth it ?

Yes , I think it can be worth it and I think , if you're in position to test it , it can be a really good thing to do , because we all know sometimes with Facebook and TikTok and Google , your customer acquisition cost is going to be what it's going to be and things are trending upwards for a lot of niches .

So if you can find a way to get outside all of that and have a reliable way of bringing in customers for a cheap cost , that can only be a good thing . Now I get a lot of questions around . How do we track this when I'm telling people about it ? Now , we obviously use Subli , and there's a few different ways you can track it .

The easiest way is a unique coupon , and another way which gives you more in-depth tracking is by duplicating your landing page and having a unique landing page with unique plans for each partnership .

That way makes it really easy to track the metrics of each partnership and see which companies bring you the most profitable customers , which is obviously really important as well . Now , I hope you enjoyed this episode . If you've been listening to this podcast for a while and you feel like you've got value from it , can I ask you a big favor ?

Could you leave me a review on Spotify , apple or wherever you listen to your podcasts ? It just helps me get the show out to more people . 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 , head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom , join the free Facebook group and post your question there .

Thanks very much . Have a great day .