Subscriptions are hot. Whether you’re speaking about subscription boxes or monthly subscription content services, people are subscribing at record numbers to get the things and content that is most valuable to them.
We are fast becoming a subscription economy with businesses of all sizes turning to them for a new source of revenue and customers. 2020 just might be the year you consider this growth opportunity in your business.
Here are a few ways you can do that:
Subscription Courses
If your ideal audience is looking for answers and you have solutions, you may be able to create a subscription course or paid content distribution subscription. With subscription courses or paid content distribution, subscribers pay you for your course or access to your content. Your content and coursework can be videos, emails, a private community, or e-books, as well as any combination of these.
With paid content, you charge subscribers. You can do so weekly, monthly, or yearly. Common examples of these types of subscription courses include MasterClass, which features courses taught by celebrities like Gordon Ramsay teaching cooking or Annie Leibovitz teaching photography. MasterClass offers self-paced, non-degreed, online classes with the “masters” in a variety of creative industries.
The company sells gift certificates as well as individual class pricing or all-access pricing. Many of the classes also come with an invitation to a private online community to help connect people who are taking the class.
Another example of these types of subscription courses are exercise classes like Beachbody. Beachbody offers a subscription service for online, at-home workouts. You pay a flat fee to access the content and you can take as many classes as you want during that paid time period.
Private Online Community
Some content as a service providers lock the content behind a private online community. While the most common of these is using Facebook, that can be risky because you don’t actually own the content. Facebook could conceivably lock you out at any moment. That’s why some businesses use their own branded private online community that is independent from other forms of social media.
However, the one disadvantage behind a private online community is that you have to become part of your subscriber’s internet habit. If your online community or private group is on Facebook, there’s a good likelihood your audience is already on that platform and visiting frequently. They will be kept in the loop on all updates in the group if they choose to be.
With a private online community on the other hand, they would have to log on to your system specifically to check out the community. They’re not already there daily. Creating that habit is the biggest challenge in your own site.
Subscription Boxes
Subscription boxes are very popular for several reasons. They’re often affordable, customizable, and they provide that element of surprise that is so beguiling and addictive. Subscribers wonder, what will I get?
There are all sorts of subscription box themes from beauty to fitness, Harry Potter to science related ones. There are boxes for different age groups and budgets.
Subscription boxes are often promoted by celebrities or people well-known on social media. Many of them record opening their boxes every month and post the videos on YouTube. These types of videos get hundreds of thousands of hits.
Many subscription box services offer discount codes to people who subscribe so they can share them with their friends and family. These boxes rely heavily on word of mouth marketing.
Fabfitfun is a popular subscription service. Their boxes cost $49.99 but there are many people out there offering discount codes on the first box through an affiliate link. The boxes contain 8 to 10 full-size products and the company claims the products retail for over $200. Boxes are delivered seasonally but there are annual delivery package options available.
If you are a business that is considering this type of subscription service, you could create your own box or you could try to get your product or service featured in an existing one. If you opt for the latter, look for one that appeals to your ideal demographic before you approach the box business.
Auto Shipments
While there is some overlap between subscription boxes and auto shipments, they’re not exactly the same. Every subscription box is an auto shipment but not every auto shipment is a subscription box.
An auto shipment allows your customer to select the amount of time it will take them to use the product and when they’d like more delivered. The product will then be shipped to the recipient’s door automatically without having to order it. Amazon uses this in their subscribe and save feature. So do many high-end direct sales beauty products like Rodan & Fields.
This is an effective tactic for selling more products if your product wears out or gets used up. When you remove the friction of buying, which you do by automatically sending the product out and charging a credit card on file people often spend more because they don’t think about it. Often customers appreciate the ease of having their favorite products arrive when they’re needed without having to go to the store or place an order.
Auto shipments generally allow recipients to control the delivery frequency. You should also make allowances for people to cancel at anytime prior to the auto-ship date.
Personalized Subscription Boxes
A personalized subscription box is a subscription box that is selected just for the recipient. We’re giving it its own category in this article because of the individualize process. Most of these types of subscription boxes begin with an in-depth assessment of what the recipient’s preferences. Some of the boxes allow the recipient to select the content while others assign a recipient a personal concierge to make selections for them.
A good example of this type of subscription box is Stitch Fix. Stitch Fix provides personalized outfits by mail. When choosing to use this service, customers first fill out a questionnaire that assesses types of clothes and accessories they like as well as things like body shape and measurements. The recipient also selects a budget.
Outfits arrive in the selected time frame frequency and the customer has the opportunity to try the items on in the privacy of their home. They can then return anything they don’t like along with notes as to why it didn’t work for them. The longer you stay with Stitch Fix the better idea the company has as to what you like and don’t like.
Blue Apron is a personalized food subscription service where they provide customers with weekly meals that they select from a number of options. The service also begins with a questionnaire to understand preferences and then shows meals it believes the recipient will like. The customer can choose the frequency, the number of meals per week, and the day of the week it’s delivered.
Common Aspects of Subscriptions
If you’re considering incorporating some sort of subscription revenue for your business in 2020, you want to keep a few things in mind. Design a program that uses the following common components of successful subscription services:
- Auto-renewal. Most subscription services require a credit card or payment platform (such as PayPal) in order to automatically process the payment every month.
- Free trial or discount code. While the length of the free trial varies from company to company, allowing people to try out your content service is a way to convince them that there’s value in it. If your subscription is a product and not a service, it’s common to offer a discount code on the first box. That way people can try it out without paying full price.
- Discounts for paying ahead of time. These services often provide discounts for bulk or prepayment such as annual plans being less expensive than paying monthly.
- No refunds for unused time. The plans rarely offer refunds for unused time. For instance, if a person pays monthly for access to content and they cancel mid-month, the company won’t refund them for two weeks of unused service. Instead, they make the cancellation date effective on the end of the month. You then have two more weeks to enjoy the service.
- Cancel at anytime/no contracts. Most of these services allow subscribers to cancel anytime or place their membership on hold. There is generally not an early termination fee or any sort of contract. As mentioned above, there aren’t refunds. But as long as you cancel before the next billing cycle there aren’t any penalties.
- Autoships. Most subscription boxes of products and individual products auto-ship on the date designated. Auto-ship rules may vary from company to company. Many of them will not take returns unless you can show proof that you canceled or skipped the order before the auto-ship deadline.
Is content as a service or subscription box right for your business? Possibly. You need to assess your audience’s needs. Ask yourself:
- Do you have knowledge or access to knowledge that you could create something sustainable to benefit your audience?
- Does the knowledge fit nicely into a course, private online group, or content library?
- Could you charge access for it?
- Do you have a product that gets used up/needs to be replaced periodically?
- Is your product one that people will be drawn to buy if they try it?
If the answer is yes any of these questions you may want to consider this really hot trend.
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