MarketingSherpa Blog

Who doesn’t love the feeling of seeing a package on their doorstep? While the mailbox is reserved for bills and sales flyers, a box on the front porch usually means a present.

The popularity of subscription boxes has allowed for millions of customers to enjoy this consumerism bliss bi-weekly, monthly or even quarterly.

Subscription boxes are the ultimate way for consumers to enjoy products. The boxes are delivered on some sort of schedule, filled with products the customer is interested in and usually have some element of surprise.

There seems to be a subscription box for every category of shopper — food, pet supplies, “nerd gear” and even apocalypse prep. The diversity of the boxes available speaks to the widespread popularity among consumers. However, not every company has the interest or ability to expand into the subscription box space. This poses a question: What can we learn from the success of subscription boxes?

To answer that question, we’ve compiled five takeaways from boxes that marketers in any industry can utilize to promote their product.

Takeaway #1. Be surprising, but don’t get crazy

Customers who subscribe to boxes have a general idea of what types of products will be mailed to them. For example, a box member knows that every month he’ll get a t-shirt, an accessory of some type and a small gadget.

However, every month there is a surprise element — the products that will actually make up the box will be a surprise upon arrival. That means our example box member doesn’t know that this month the t-shirt will have a comics theme or that the accessory will be a pair of sunglasses.

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It’s easy to say *testing the access model* is a key to making money from content on the web. Most of you know, that’s easier said than done.

After interviewing Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director of FT.com, about the website’s stellar performance of lifting paid subscriptions and registered users last year, that’s the tactic that stuck to my thoughts.

I won’t go into all the details of how FT.com achieved a 9% lift in online subscriptions. You can read about it in an upcoming case study. But I will say that a series of simple tests around access to content was a huge part of the strategy.

Here’s a takeaway that didn’t make it into the article:

-Test the presentation of pricing

I noticed from a former case study about FT.com that the site formerly presented the pricing of subscriptions as per month or per year. And the new model automatically presented pricing as per week. Example: Under “Standard Subscription” the price is $3.49 per week (52 weeks in total).

When asked if the *per week* presentation boosted subscriptions, Rob said that testing it made “a tangible difference in the kind of response that we get.”