Unbox the Inbox | Email Marketing for Online & Offline Businesses

The Golden Rules of Launching a Pre-Sale for Subscription Boxes

• Gary Redmond • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Ever wonder how to launch a successful pre-sale for a subscription box? 

This episode is guaranteed to be your one-stop guide.

I share my personal journey and the lessons learned from my experience in the world of subscription boxes. I talk about the importance of building an audience and leveraging social media and email lists to do so, and discuss the art of crafting a lead capture page that reels in subscribers.

Even if your pre-sale doesn't pan out as expected, don't fret! I'll teach you why it's not the end of the world and how to bounce back.

In this jam-packed episode, I'm also breaking down the crucial steps for a triumphant pre-sale launch.

Here's a sneak peek: offering customers an exclusive or premium experience is key, and building anticipation through regular emails and social media posts can work wonders. 

I'll also discuss setting clear expectations about when customers will receive their orders and the importance of being receptive to feedback.

Plus, I'll be sharing how to prepare for the challenges that come with pre-launching and providing actionable tips for success.

So, whether you're planning to launch your first subscription box or you're a seasoned entrepreneur looking to improve your strategy, this episode is a must-listen.

As always, if you're left with any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me through my Facebook group or my website.

  • Please suggest any topic you would like me to cover by visiting unboxtheinbox.com
  • Join my newsletter at garyredmond.com/newsletter


Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Unboxed the inbox subscription, business, email marketing with me, gary Redmond. And now, before we dive in, if you wouldn't mind just going ahead and leaving me a five star review on your chosen podcast platform, I would be very grateful. Also follow the podcast so you don't miss another episode. So, without further ado, and I'd like to talk about something that came up in my network, on my feed this week, someone asked a question about how to pre-sell your subscription box before it launches. Okay, now, the way I'm going to start with this podcast, it's pretty much I'm gonna lay it out like if I was giving an information to someone who just asked me that specific question. Okay, so I can't talk too much from successful experience with this, because our pre-launch was not super successful, but the good news is I've got obviously some some tips and tricks that I've learned over the years in order to have a more successful launch. But at the end of this, I'll also explain to you why you should not get discouraged if your launch, or your pre-sale before your launch Does not go as well as you hoped. Okay, so, first of all, diving in here the first thing, the most important thing you need to do when you're pre-selling or pre-launching your subscription box Is to actually build some way of building an audience. Okay, because, by definition, launching something, you're gonna need to actually Launch it. To like, you're just gonna launch it onto Facebook, or if you just start your social media pages the day before you launch, you're not gonna have any followers, you're not gonna have any emails, you're not gonna have anybody you can actually really reach in order to actually put out the message that your business has launched. Okay, so the number one thing you're obviously going to need is to be building your audience, and the way you do that is Social media accounts. So you're gonna create your social media accounts and try and grow them at least to a few hundred in the in the very beginning of your business, when you just kind of have the idea and you're and you're coming up with the, with the product itself.

Speaker 1:

You're also gonna want to build an email list. Okay, and an email list can be built. You can use free platforms such as MailChimp, whatever it is, and basically what these Software is allow you to do is to capture and store email addresses and send emails to these people and communicate with them. Okay, the reason why email and social are both important is social is where you're going to be able to grow your, your top of phone, and you're gonna be able to grow and find new followers. You're gonna be able to put out content, follow and unfollow other accounts and be able to grow your following that way, and that's gonna be great for Finding new people who are gonna follow your page and see your content. Okay, but the email is actually it is probably more important, because email is where is actually a traffic channel that you own. So the email is that you build up. You're gonna be able to communicate with these people over and over again in a much more personal Way and they're also much more likely to convert. If you can convince them to give you their email, their email and join your email list, that means they obviously have a higher level of commitment than someone who just followed your, your social pages. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So, having said all that, when you're pre-launching your subscription box and you want to actually pre-sell your subscription box before it launches, there's a few key things we're gonna need, okay, so we've talked about Setting up your, your email software. Signing up to something like MailChimp active campaign is what we use. However, it doesn't have a free or a very good free plan I don't think it has a free plan and and you also need to create your social accounts Facebook, instagram, tick tock, whatever. Okay, the next thing, you and the kind of the first thing in terms of pre-selling is going to be actually creating a lead capture page. Okay, so you've got your social channels, you've got your, your MailChimp, but what we want to do now is you want to create a way for people who follow your social accounts, who see your posts. You're going to put up a post and say join my pre-launch email list. I've got a new product coming soon. Click here, click the link in my bio, to join the email list.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and when people click that link, we're going to need to have somewhere for them to actually go and give you their email, and that's called a lead capture page. Okay, now you can use something like MailChimp. You could use any sort of if you just Google lead capture or lead page software. They're pretty simple the pages. In terms of that, the only thing that they have that the customer can give you is their email. Okay, but there are some key things that you want to have on there in order to actually convince someone to give you their email, the first thing is going to be imagery. Okay, so very similar to when you actually have your business launched, but without skipping an ahead, you we need to have high quality imagery of your mockup box.

Speaker 1:

Okay, if you just have give me your email for a vague product launch or subscription box coming sometime in the future, it's going to be hard for someone to actually have enough information and context to actually want to give you their email. So, at the minimum, your website, your lead capture page, you'd have a mockup of your box. Explain what the box is without going too crazy in terms of words. For example, it's going to be a box of candles for people who want to get soy only candles, or sustainable candles, or a dog toys created from recycled material Okay. Or it's for any type of subscription box? Okay, you want to explain what it's, what it's going to be and who it's for. And the next thing you also want to have, if possible, if you can come up with some benefits Okay.

Speaker 1:

So a subscription box for dog owners who don't have time to care for their dog, we'll take it. We'll deliver the best products to your door for your dog Just a little. We don't need to go crazy here like three or four bullet points with some nice high quality imagery and an email capture field where someone can actually enter their email. Okay, you want to also have a call to action that explains the call to action ask them to sign up to the email list. Okay, so you also.

Speaker 1:

Another thing you want to have is going to be a launch date. So it's clear that you're not going to. You want to at least have a range that it's going to be launching within the next three months or, if you can actually give a date, even better, cause what we're going to be doing is we're going to be posting on socials, driving people to this lead capture page, and we want people to be able to join the lead capture page having seen a picture of our mock-up box, some benefits of, of who it's for and why it's going to be valuable for them, and also an idea of when it's going to launch. Okay, the reason is, you're going to attract the people who are actually interested and you're going to repel the people who are not. Okay, so if I go over to a website, somehow see your content on socials and they go over and it's a subscription box for middle-aged women. It's not going to be suitable for me and that's good for you, because you're not going to build up your email list full of people who are not actually that interested, okay. So when you've done that, you've got your page created and the page gives context and information. The next thing you want to do is actually start to generate traffic and leads to this page. Okay. So obviously, if you mention you're going to have your social media pages, you're going to be posting content.

Speaker 1:

You may or may not want to do a giveaway. Giveaways can be good in the beginning to get to grow your socials and get some momentum, because really it's going to be a slow slog. If you're just growing your socials kind of the old-fashioned way, which is follow and follow, comment, all that sort of stuff, a giveaway can help accelerate. Now, one caveat to giveaways sometimes you can end up filling your list full of people who only want to get a freebie, but it is a good way to kind of get some momentum going, grow your socials, grow your email list and kind of get things going, but you probably don't want to rely on that as the only strategy. Okay, there's other things you can do, like going to Facebook groups, asking questions, contributing in the community, and then mentioning maybe, if it's either, don't go and spam your link, your landing page link, into Facebook groups. You're going to get yourself kicked out. But if the context is you're in a Facebook group for people with arthritis and your box is going to be about helping people who have arthritis, if you're actually a good member of that community whether you're answering questions for people, creating detailed posts you might even get in contact with the owner of the group and if you've been actually delivering value to that group or to that forum, they might not mind you actually posting a link to your subscription box, which is upcoming. Okay, so it's all about delivering value in all of these areas before just spamming things, because you'll just get yourself kicked out.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so that's how we generate leads, socials, giveaways and posting in groups of where your ideal customers are hanging out online. Okay, so we do that. That sounds like something that, in a way, is really quick, but also it should take you some time. You should spend some time actually building up your email list. The more you can have, the better. There's no set number. Okay, like I can say you should have at least a hundred, or you should have at least a thousand, but you probably just want to go with them. As much kind of traction and leads you can get in the time it takes you to get your box up and running and ready Okay.

Speaker 1:

Obviously, if you only have a hundred email subscribers, you shouldn't expect to convert 50 people. Okay, 50 people are not just sitting around waiting for your box to launch. There's different things going on in their life and if you do great, it could be wrong, but generally with all of online marketing, it's a numbers game. For example, your conversion rate being 2% on your website is a great number, but it means 98 people out of a hundred don't buy anything. Okay, so that's just kind of the way online marketing works. It's a numbers game. So we're doing that. We're growing our social channels, we're growing our email list, we're building up anticipation, and the next thing you want to do is when we actually want to turn our pre-launch into a pre-sell. We want to actually add a cart functionality to our landing page so that we can take payments Okay, so we can do that. When we're starting to switch from, you know, lead generation to actually pre-selling Okay, you also might want to add to your landing page and the landing page could be the basis that this should turn into your website once you actually launch.

Speaker 1:

So like if you look at a subscription box website now you didn't look at BusterBoxcom your website, your landing page, should be in the process of looking like a website. It should have imagery, it should have details, it should have all these things, even if you're not taking payments or you're just in pre-sale. You want to give as much information that your pre-stale page will almost be like your website or it should be an early version of your website. So we've added a cart functionality. Now we also might want to add some information about the actual pre-launch offer and pre-launch process, because when you're trying to ask people to give you money for a product that has not launched yet, you obviously need to build up some anticipation, build up some value into the. Why should I give you some money now, before the product is even launched? Like I may not be able to even get it for one or two months. So we want to think about a pre-launch offer.

Speaker 1:

So what can you build into your pre-launch offer? To either give more value, more exclusivity or more access, whatever it is. How can we actually make the pre-launch customers VIPs and actually offer generation, and there's so much stuff that we're covering here and if you're a beginner, a lot of this stuff you're not going to be too familiar with and it's, you know, things that will kind of serve you a lot longer in the longer term. So, as I said, don't get too discouraged if you don't get it right in the first time, because creating offers and actually making things really, really valuable is not a simple thing to do. I certainly wasn't good at it in the first year or two or three of the business, but obviously it's in a podcast episode. I'm here to try and give you the ideas of what you can do.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so how can we give high quality access or exclusivity, like you could do, and the first 50 people who buy will be able to get an exclusive Zoom call with the founder and give me feedback on the product, okay. Or you'll be able to get a free gift Okay, that's only available for the first 10 people, Okay, and like a lot of this. Obviously, some of it is giving away time, some of it is giving away product, but the more valuable and the more excited you can get your customers about your pre-launch, the better. It's obviously going to go. So so many people make the mistake of oh, you get access to my cool product early, okay, that's cool, but that's not really necessarily going to get me to jump off my armchair and sign up for this, okay. So what we also want to do then is when we come across or we land on a pre-launch offer, as I said, you can give extra product. You could possibly give a discount. You could give a lifetime discount only for customers, okay, or for VIP customers. You can give access to you a private Facebook group with the founder limited, like you want to make sure all of these are limited and that they're only available for a certain number of early, pre-launch customers or pre-sale customers. Okay, because that scarcity is going to drive action. Okay, if people know that it's only going to be 10 people who are going to get access to a certain thing, and also you can, you can do tiers, okay, like the first 10 people will get access to absolutely everything and then the next 20 people will get access to a little bit less.

Speaker 1:

So you're really driving the urgency to get those first few orders in, okay, the next thing and kind of what's going on in the background here, while you're kind of doing these things and while you're getting your box ready for launch, is you want to be sending regular emails, posting on social media and building anticipation? Like, when you come up with your pre-launch offer, you should email about it. Okay, when you've added the card functionality to your website, you should email about it and post on social media. Okay, communicate with your audience and show them behind the scenes content. If you've got a new box mock-up, if you've just taken pictures, like if you can actually get feedback from people before you do your pre-launch or before you do your actual launch, it's going to be really, really valuable. So if you're showing off the behind the scenes content in your emails and your socials and ask people for their feedback, it's also going to build anticipation with them and get them invested in your product launch. Okay, so we've been doing all that over the last few weeks and months.

Speaker 1:

You also want to now make sure that you're clear and your offer is lined up and your website is clear and your imagery and your box mock-ups are all ready and everything's ready to go. You also want to be clear in your emails about the fulfillment of your pre-launch offer. When are people going to get the box, when are people going to get these bonuses you talked about? And then when, as it gets closer to your pre-sale, what I always find works well, especially like we talked about scarcity, urgency, exclusivity they're all really good, but what's also good is to build up anticipation. Okay, so you don't want to make the mistake of just on Monday morning, you're sending an email about your new box pictures and your mock-ups you're doing, and then on Friday you're sending an email about the launch.

Speaker 1:

Okay, people, if you want to actually drive up that urgency and drive up that scarcity, you want to be emailing at least pre-sale emails. What that means is, before you actually open the pre-sale, you want to be communicating via mainly via email, but also via your socials about the launch. So you want to be building up anticipation. So talking about how excited you are, okay. Or how many people are on the wait list? Okay, or on the on the email list, like there's a hundred and fifty people on the email list and only ten people are going to get access to this exclusive offer, that's building up scarcity, okay, you also want to build up, as I said, the urgency. So this is gonna this, this pre-order is gonna go live on on Friday morning and it's going to close perhaps on Tuesday night. Okay, all these things. It sounds so, so icky and marketing, but it really this is what gets people to actually take action. Okay, so many people sit on the fence until you know twenty three hours and fifty nine minutes before the actually take action.

Speaker 1:

So it's really important and if you get all these things correct, okay, if you build up your, your social page, you build your email list, you come up with an unbelievable offer. You create a nice landing page with card functionality, you build up the anticipation through these emails and build up the scarcity and make your offer unbelievable. It actually will work. Okay, and it's not enough sounds. There's so much stuff in there, but this is. This is the kind of things you need to do in order to have a successful presale, okay, and also, as I said, be clear. You don't want to start getting charged backs and disputes from people just after you've done your presale. So be clear with people when it's going to actually the product is going to ship. And also make sure that you're listening to feedback from your customers, either between when you take their orders and actually ship the box, or, obviously, after you ship the initial boxes, okay, so to kind of go over that again and I recovered a lot of stuff lead capture page, social media and an email provider.

Speaker 1:

You want to come up with your launch date and a pre launch offer. You want to be driving and your leads to from your social media pages onto your On to your lead capture page and then send emails to build up anticipation. You also want to add the card functionality when you're about to transition to your presale. You want to come up with an unbelievable offer. It's going to get people actually excited to to give you their money before they even received the product. You're going to show them the behind the scenes content. You're going to send them emails building up urgency and scarcity and you're going to launch. Okay, you're going to do your presale. You can make it limited. You can make it limited in number or limited in time, or both, and hopefully it all goes well.

Speaker 1:

But the final point I want to talk about in this is do not get discouraged. Okay, what I've talked about here. I'm doing this almost eight years, okay, and I did not know any of this in the beginning, okay, so, if you don't get discouraged, there's a story about when we launched. We thought we were going to launch to 300 subscribers. Okay, we've done this. We got our social media pages up. We didn't come up with a really good offer, we didn't come up with a really good landing page. It didn't have a picture of our box, and so we made a lot of mistakes. That's the mistakes that I'm telling you not to make today. But we draw, would say, maybe three 400 emails to an email list and we literally taught that. You know, we've got 100 emails, we're going to sell 100 boxes at a minimum, and turns out it doesn't work that way.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so what I've told you today, we didn't do. We didn't do much of a pre launch offer. We didn't do and like much anticipation or building up urgency and scarcity, we just said the box is out now. But we're going to do a full list of what we've done today. We just said the box is out now by it and, unsurprisingly, nobody did.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so the reason I'm telling you this story is that we were trying to get the 300 in the first month, as I said, but we ended up launching and getting 12. Okay, now. That might be great for some people and it is a good launch, depending on where you're coming from. But when you've set the target in your head of 300 and you get 12, it's obviously a lot lower than what we anticipated, okay. But what's the point? Do not get discouraged. It just happens to you because now we have almost 10,000 subscribers, okay.

Speaker 1:

So if it doesn't happen for you right away doesn't mean it's time to give up on your business. It doesn't mean that people don't want your product. It doesn't mean that you're not able to do. It doesn't mean your business won't be successful. It just means your pre-launch didn't go as well as you want, and this is extremely common. I actually know very few people who have oversold or have done a pre-launch better than they expected. Okay, and it certainly wasn't us. So that is essentially how I would advise someone to pre-sell their subscription box. And thank you for listening to this episode of Unbox the inbox with me. If you have any questions on this or would like any more feedback, please let me know on my Facebook group subscription box email marketing or you can check out Unbox the inboxcom. That will also bring you there. So thanks again, guys. I'll chat to you next week.

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Gary Redmond

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