Unbox the Inbox | Email Marketing for Online & Offline Businesses
Gary Redmond founded his Subscription Box business BusterBox.com in 2016 with no prior business experience (and no money).
After failing for many years, he eventually grew it to over $11 Million in total sales, learning exactly what it's like trying to grow a business on limited resources.
This led Gary to try and master the super-powerful and free (but often underappreciated) marketing channel which is email marketing.
Everything you hear on the show is proven, and Gary shares these battle-tested growth hacking strategies so you can implement them in your business right away to make more money.
If you're a beginner, you will get a grounding in the fundamentals of email marketing and how to apply it to get your business off the ground.
For more advanced folks, we'll dive deep into cool and clever hacks you can use to optimise and automate the most critical areas of your business.
This podcast is for entrepreneurs & business owners who want to learn how to use the power of email marketing to acquire, retain and upsell to their customers on autopilot.
Gary will also do his best to entertain and inspire you to create the business and the life of your dreams through your online business.
Topics covered include email marketing, e-commerce, consultant, coach, expert, entrepreneurship, automation, productivity, subscription boxes, advertising & business.
Unbox the Inbox | Email Marketing for Online & Offline Businesses
How To Guarantee Growth | Mastering Your 5 Critical Sub-Box KPIs
Unlock the secrets to skyrocketing your subscription box business! Ever wondered what you need to watch every single day to get progress? I call these your 5 critical marketing KPIs.
Join me, Gary Redmond, as we dive deep into the critical metrics that can make or break your success. We'll start by dissecting your website conversion rate, a key indicator of how effectively your site engages potential customers.
Learn how to craft irresistible offers, streamline navigation, and strategically place call-to-action buttons to convert browsers into buyers.
I'll also share why accurate tracking with tools like Google Analytics is non-negotiable—and why hiring a tech expert could be your smartest investment yet.
Ready to elevate your email marketing game? Say goodbye to your emails landing in spam and hello to higher open and click-through rates.
Discover how to verify email senders, avoid spam triggers, and keep your email lists clean. I'll guide you through creating subject lines that spark curiosity and crafting emails that compel actions. Elevate your strategy even further by running targeted ads with engaging visuals and compelling copy.
With these actionable insights, your subscription box business will not just grow—it will soar to new heights. Tune in for a masterclass in maximizing your KPIs and transforming your business trajectory.
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Welcome back to another episode of Unbox the Inbox with me, your host, gary Redmond. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your subscription business using the power of free and mostly automated email marketing, and we'll hopefully have some fun doing it too. I'm a co-founder of BusterBoxcom and also a mentor and coach helping founders like me and you create their dream life through their online business. So today we're going to talk about some of the most important KPIs that can make or break your subscription box business. Okay, and if you're serious about maximizing your growth and maximizing your revenue, then this is the episode for you. So what are these KPIs? Okay? So someone asked me about this in my Facebook group. I do mention KPIs quite a few times on the show, but I guess, just to be clear, I thought it'd be better to just do one episode on it. Guys, quite a few times on the show, but I guess, just to be clear, I thought it'd be better to just do one episode on it, because these are the key metrics that tell you how well you're performing at each step of your marketing funnel okay, from attracting potential customers to converting them into loyal subscribers. And today we're going to break them down one by one, starting with number one your website conversion rate. Okay, this is the number one most important metric, in my opinion, in your entire business, because this is essentially a metric of how well you're actually convincing people to sign up for your subscription box when they land on your website. And if everybody who signs up for your box must go to your website, isn't that the best place we should start to focus on increasing the conversions and watching and improving the KPIs. So your conversion rate is essentially a percentage of the visitors who take action on your website okay, usually making a purchase or signing up for the subscription. Okay, and it's the most critical because it directly impacts your bottom line more than any other. All the other metrics don't matter and all your other marketing doesn't matter. If your website does not convert because people must go to your website to sign up, okay. So if you're driving traffic to your site and you're writing newsletters and you're going live on social media but no one's buying, it's a big problem. And where to look is look at your website and your conversion rate, and a good target to aim for is around 2% to 3%, but the higher the better To improve your conversion rate.
Speaker 1:I've talked about this many times before, but you want to make sure that your website is obviously easy to navigate, your call to action buttons are clear and visible and your offer is compelling. The number one thing that drives conversions on our website between one day to the next is our offer. We can have a great offer on the website and get 50 people signed up in a day. The next day, if we change the offer, we can get four or five. It really is that important. If we change the offer, we can get four or five. It really is that important.
Speaker 1:Also, it's important to check back over some of the previous episodes. I would have gone through the website framework, the five sections you should have. You should have your hero image, your how it works, your what's inside, your social proof and your guarantee and, of course, your offer on top. And they're the sections you should have and make sure they're all optimized and all present on your website to make sure you're answering the questions customers have in their head before they buy. Another thing is you should ask yourself as well are you actually even accurately tracking your conversion rate?
Speaker 1:So this is where things can get a bit technical and if you're new or not techie. That can be an issue when you first start your business, but the answer to really is you want to make sure that you're using something like Google Analytics that's actually able to accurately track your conversion rate. I hate Google Analytics and I don't know how to set it up, but I know that now. The reason I don't know how to set it up and the reason why what we do now is basically, we hire a tech person and let them do it. The reason I learned this lesson is because I spent about a year trying to set up Google Analytics before going back and forward with lots of different tools and systems and stuff. Then we got a developer in and he set it up in 10 minutes. Okay, so you can literally waste so much time trying to do something or just pay someone who knows what they're doing.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's some sort of meta advice I can give you, okay, so next KPI that you want to be checking is starting from your website at the bottom of your funnel. I would then be looking at your email capture rate, okay, so one thing you should be doing in order to maximize all the traffic that comes to your website is you should be capturing as many of them as email, as many of the visitors' emails as possible so you can follow up with them. Okay, so the percentage of visitors who give you their email address before they leave your website is your email capture rate okay? And if you're not capturing any or you just have a crappy pop-up that has a really low conversion rate, you're losing out on a massive opportunity to follow up and turn those visitors into customers. Okay, good benchmark is like five to 10% for a pop-up, but actually what you should do is you should have a signup flow, and what we have is basically the email capture is built into the signup flow and that converts up to 30% of all of our website traffic to email leads, and it's a massive game changer. It makes all of our emails work better because we just have a simply like 10 times or three times more volume coming into the list than we would have if we just had a pop up. Okay, so that's what I would say is the foundation for your follow-up email marketing, so make sure you're doing it right.
Speaker 1:If you can't get a sign-up flow, look, I'm sorry, but again, some of these things just need to be invested. Okay, like, a sign-up flow usually has to be built by a developer. But if you simply can't or are not able to do that right now, at least offer an incentive with your pop-up of some sort of free gift or discount code in exchange for your email. So, whatever offer you're running, if you don't have a signup flow, you should only give the offer, on contingent, that they give you their email first. Okay, so that's the two things. So your website conversion rate, your email capture rate Okay. Then if we stick with email for now, okay, let's say you captured all these emails, okay, well, if you're not getting your emails opened, then you're not going to make any sales from your emails either. Okay.
Speaker 1:So the next crucial KPI for me is going to be your email open rate, and this is the percentage of people who open the emails that you send them. If they're not opening, they're not going to buy because your message is not even getting through. Okay, so an open rate typically 20 to 25%. Okay. Now, our open rates are around this mark. You can get them higher if you have a smaller list. We have almost 200,000 people on our list, okay, so 25% of that is pretty handy for us, okay, because when we send an email, we get 40 to 50,000 people looking at our message. Okay, but that's not going to be the case for you. You should be aiming for at least 25% anyway, but you can use it. Usually, as I said, on smaller lists you can get 40, 50% plus, but in order to boost your open rate, there's only really one way you can do that, and that's to use compelling subject lines. So too well, it's not the only way.
Speaker 1:Number one obviously try and keep your emails out of spam. To do that, you want to verify your email sender. Use your DKIM and your SPF. We don't know what that is, just Google it. It's technical, I won't be getting into it, but basically it's proving that you own the domain that you're sending emails from. Also, avoid any known spam words and only clean your list regularly and only send emails to email addresses that are actually active. And opening your emails. Okay, I've covered all these in different ways in previous episodes.
Speaker 1:You can go back and have a listen, but essentially, the other thing you can do when you're actually sending your emails is craft compelling subject lines. Okay, so open loops, ask questions and you know pattern, interrupts, different things that are going to make your email stand out in the inbox. Another great tip here is to look in your own inbox and see what subject lines capture your attention and then model those for your own emails, because a good subject line obviously is a difference between an email being opened and not opened. And also, you can do your sub headlines as well, which can sometimes follow up on the headline. If you ask a question, you can maybe ask a second question and build up more intrigue. But a great tip for subject lines is to create curiosity and open a loop and to get people to want to open it so they can close the loop. Open your email so they can close the loop. So now we know our conversion rate, we know how many emails we're capturing and then we know how many people are opening our emails. And if we're optimizing for all these metrics, we're getting eyes, we're getting conversions. Hopefully, we're capturing emails and we're getting eyes on our offers.
Speaker 1:Okay, the next thing I would say is important is your email click through rate. Okay, and this is the people who, the percentage of people who click on the emails and actually go back to your website and purchase. Okay, a high click-through rate means your email content is engaging and your call to actions are effective. Again, around 2% to 5% is a healthy benchmark here, and if you're not hitting that, you need to look at your email design, your copy again, your offer, and you're making it easy and enticing for people to click. Are you displaying the benefits of your product? Are you using high quality, high res imagery? Are you making compelling offers? Are you making it obvious what they want them to do with clear call to actions? And if not, you need to focus on increasing your email click-through rate by focusing on these elements, because your goal is to get people from their inbox back over to your website where they can make a purchase. Okay. So, again, call to actions can be key urgency, scarcity and finding ways to basically use ethical scarcity. You know, not everybody has an unlimited supply of boxes for that month, or maybe there's a deadline before you ship your next box. Okay, so you can use these things to drive clicks from your emails Okay, but again, at this point, if you're, if your website's converting and you're getting clicks and sales from your emails, you're already ahead of most people.
Speaker 1:The final thing, then, I think is most important, and number five on our list of important metrics and KPIs is your ad click-through rates. Now, you may or may not be running ads, but I am running ads and I believe if you want to get any sort of reach for your business, nowadays it's going to be pay-to-play. So, if you're not running ads and I believe if you want to get any sort of reach for your business, nowadays it's going to be pay to play. So, if you're not running ads, you can substitute this for clicks over to your website from your social media posts. I don't know how many people are really watching your social media posts, because the organic reach has been pretty much killed by meta anyway. So, if I'm done, I'm going to continue to talk about ads, because this is what's relevant for me. And if you're not running ads, by the way, if you have every other one of those four metrics in line, you should be running ads, because that means the ads that you're going to you're going to the ads are going to generate traffic, which are going to generate conversions, which are going to generate email captures, and those emails are going to be opened and clicked, which means it's now time to actually send more traffic at your website.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the KPI for I'm talking about is your ad click-through rate Okay, and this is basically a measure of how many people click on your ads compared to how many people see them. Again, this is an indicator of how well your ads are performing and how effective your targeting was. Okay If it's essentially saying okay, a hundred people saw your ad, excuse me, and your click-through rate? Again, a good benchmark is one to 2% Okay. So If two people out of every 100 are clicking over to your website and that's quite good, okay, because if it's less than that, it simply means that your ads are either not going to the right audience or the ads are just not very good.
Speaker 1:Again, the same things apply. You should experiment with ad copy. Visuals offers, different audiences maybe, but mainly I would be focusing on testing new creatives and new images and new pattern interrupts in your ad copy. Again, stop scrolling, pay attention, don't miss all these kinds of things. Like, we're really competing for attention nowadays, guys. Okay.
Speaker 1:So your ads, especially your ads, more than anywhere else, you need to make sure that you're grabbing attention. Because there's so much attention like there's so much engaging content on Facebook, Instagram, tiktok, whatever that. Actually most of your biggest problem is usually just people just scroll right past and don't pay attention. Okay, and these are the first these I've gone from the bottom up, like, in a way, your ads your ads are the top of your funnel, but I don't like to focus on that because that's, in a way, sometimes not totally as much in your control as your website is. Okay, and again, I don't want you to go and have the best ads in the world and people get to your website and it looks crap and no one buys. Okay, so test different creatives, test different offers, look at what your competitors are doing and make sure you're grabbing attention in your ad copy. Okay, so that's pretty much it Like. Believe it or not, that is like almost an entire. That is like almost an entire. That's like the way to market your business and get thousands of subscribers, broken down in terms of metrics and sales channels. Okay, so your top five KPIs number one, your website conversion rate. Number two, your email capture rate. Number three, your email open rates. Number three, your email click-through rates. And number four, your ad click-through rates. Okay, Each of these metrics is a step in your funnel and improving them will lead to more subscribers, more sales and more growth for your business. So keep an eye on these KPIs, optimize each step of the process and you'd be well on your way to scaling your subscription box business to new heights.
Speaker 1:One more thing I'm relaunching my course, subscription Box Email Secrets, on the 26th of September 2024. If you want to go, if you want to join, get help from me, including six weeks of live training coming up into Q4, then I highly recommend you go to subscriptionboxemailsecretscom forward slash new and that's where you can join the course. And it's closing on the 2nd of October. As far as the Sunday week, okay. So if you need help, you want to get some help from me. You're enjoying these podcast episodes. I'm enjoying creating them for you. You can join Subscription Box Email Secrets for a limited time. I am also going to be working with you in a six-week group coaching cohort as a free bonus, okay. So if anybody has any other questions or if you have another question or another topic you'd like me to cover, feel free to post it in the group. This was a question posted in my Facebook group, subscription Box Success, so I hope this was helpful for the person who asked and anyone else listening. See you next week.
