What is The Subscription Box model?
Many of you must be thinking that what actually The Subscription Box is?
In simple words The Subscription Box Model is whenever a customer signup to receive a service or product on monthly basis and then pay every month to continue receiving the service/product each month. In the past years it’s gain a huge success. Netflix is one of them and its huge success clearly shows that how rapidly it’s been evolved.
Subscription Ecommerce
Websites that provides Subscription Boxes service, charges their customer a specific amount each month in return of the continuous replenishment/ curation of or access to, a service or product.
These websites are known as Subscription Commerce and they provides their service or product on a recurrent basis to those customers who are willing to continue receiving their product/service and are happy to pay a specific amount of fee for that service/product.
Economy of Online Subscription Industry in Number!
Visit Subscription Box websites have skyrocketed from just over 700,000 in 2013 to 21.4 million till now which is a 3000% increase.
According to research, 15% of online shoppers have registered their selves for multiple Subscription Services.
As for now, the 60% of Subscription Box customers are women.
Type of Subscription Services
To get familiar with Subscription Services you need to understand their types, to make it easier for you we have explained each of them below:
Curation
Curation based Subscription Services provides their customers a custom hand-picked selection according to the taste and interests of their customers. As for now 55% of Subscription Services are curation-based.
Replenishment
These Subscription Service providers supply their customer’s daily used items on recurring basis including razors, wipes, laundry detergents, diapers, nappies & a lot more.
Access
Here customer pays a specific amount of fee every month to gain access to exclusive and member only perks.
Pros of the Subscription Box Model
Subscription box model is pretty cost effective in terms of customer acquisition as you only have to acquire a customer once and they keep coming back as long as you keep them happy with your products or services. There will only be a one-time cost to make them your loyal customer and retaining them will save you 7 times more on marketing budget.
The Subscription Box Model allows you to have an estimate o almost exact amount of revenue that you’ll generate by providing your service or product to your customers.
With the Subscription Box Model, customer also enjoy a hassle-free service or product as they only need to go through the checkout process once and the rest of transactions will be done automatically as long as customer is happy with it.
You can also the revenue of your project by using the below mentioned equation:
(Total subscribers – cancellations) x Cost of subscriptions.
With the Subscription Box Model, it gets really easy to have an estimated amount of order you will need to complete and ship for a certain period and this way you’ll be able to reduce wastage as well as stock planning will get really easy and quick for you.
Poor stock management can be a cause of failure, because you don’t have an accurate real-time information about how much you have left in stock. Also, it can make the prediction of product sale and wastage really hard which can get quite expensive in the end.
However the Subscription Box Model allows you to have real-time information about the subscribers you have for your each subscription period, the amount of stock you’ll need. It also helps you to have an estimate about the shipping charges and the required staff.
The real-time information will help you to cut down the wastage and will be very cost effective because you’ll be purchasing the required stock only instead of the extras that will never sell!
Challenges You’ll Face in This Model
To produce branded packaging you need to invest a lot of your time and money, which you probably decrease your margins.
To keep your customer satisfied with your service or product, you need to keep updating your service or product from time to time.
However, none of your customer is technically entering a contract but the signup process of a subscription box might make them feel like they are and that can be a huge turning point for them.
It’s more likely that you will face a large number of un-subscribers because customers cancel their subscription within in a minute if they don’t get a superior experience.
As the number of Subscription Box websites visits has increased, the competition from the large number of entrants has also increased.
Getting Started with a Subscription Service
Make sure to deliver a personalized experience to improve value, let your subscriber to customize their subscription box according to their desire where possible.
Try to keep the collection fresh but don’t forget to use offer the fan favorites and replenishment sales
Get familiar with your audience, who they are? What they want? You can start with a single niche but keep in mind the more niche the better you’ll grow.
To reduce the churn percentage, make sure to set-up a recurring billing and let your customer enjoy a hassle-free service or product.
In this digital time, allow your customers to leave a review about your business on your social media handles to acquire more customers.