In this episode, I delve into why Subbly remains our platform of choice for our subscription box business.
With an influx of newcomers to the industry in recent months, many have been curious about the best platform to support their business.
While there are many good platforms out there, I'll share the reasons we continue to choose Subbly and why I believe it has everything you need to build a successful subscription box business.
If you have a question you want answered on the show, make sure you head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com join the free Facebook group and post your question there.
In this episode, I delve into why Subbly remains our platform of choice for our subscription box business.
With an influx of newcomers to the industry in recent months, many have been curious about the best platform to support their business.
While there are many good platforms out there, I'll share the reasons we continue to choose Subbly and why I believe it has everything you need to build a successful subscription box business.
If you have a question you want answered on the show, make sure you head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com join the free Facebook group and post your question there.
Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the question, you ask the questions, liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to a brand new episode of Subscription Box Answers. Hope you're having a really good day. On today's episode, we are chatting about subscription box platforms. Over the last few weeks, there's a lot of new people who are interested in setting up their own subscription box business. They've either grabbed a copy of my book, they've discovered this podcast or they've joined the subscription box resources Facebook group and, yeah, they want to set up their own subscription box business in 2024, which is absolutely amazing. That's great that there are some new people coming into the industry.
Speaker 2:A common question I'm getting is around subscription box platforms. What platform do I actually recommend? Now, I can only share what's relevant to us in both their box and what I've actually experienced. So the platform we use is Sobly, and we have used Sobly since we actually originally launched our business back towards the end of 2015, early 2016. And I'll tell you a story about why we picked Sobly and why we continue to use Sobly.
Speaker 2:So back in 2015 slash 16, the subscription box industry was very different to how it is nowadays. There wasn't near as many options when it came to platforms or tools, and it was actually more difficult to get a subscription box business up off the ground. There wasn't much information out there around the business model either. Nowadays, there's so much information out there that you can actually learn from. So we reached out to Sobly and another platform, and the reason we went with Sobly was they actually responded a lot quicker and they were way more helpful with their responses. The other platform was pretty slow and it seemed like the responses were pulled off a template or something and they weren't really answering our questions. So we went with Sobly, and Sobly was only actually getting started as well. They weren't the platform that they are today, but they were very responsive to feature requests and they basically told us where the platform would be going and what they were looking to achieve. So we went with Sobly and that was it.
Speaker 2:Now, fast forward, many years later, we have actually grown with Sobly and it's been amazing to see all the new features and stuff that they've actually added to the platform over time. Now we've sold millions of dollars of subscription boxes through Sobly and I personally think it has everything you need to build a really successful subscription box business. Now nowadays there's plenty of other really good platforms out there and I'm sure they do a great job as well, but I can only share what I know. The only platform we've ever used it's Sobly. We've never changed because it has everything we need to actually continue to scale the business. Now there's three things which are non-negotiable for us when it comes to a platform, and thankfully Sobly meets all of those needs, and I'm going to share what they actually are, because not all platforms do these. Some platforms don't do any of them, so let me share them.
Speaker 2:Number one commitment terms. Very early on, sobly added the commitment terms feature. We actually reached out to them, we discussed it and the commitment terms feature was added. In my opinion, that's absolutely vital if you want to grow a highly successful subscription box business. Some of the other platforms out there don't support commitment terms. If you can't do commitment terms, I think you're putting yourself at a massive disadvantage. Now, if you don't know what commitment terms are, let me explain briefly. Commitment terms give you the ability to sell a six month or a 12 month subscription, but the customer does not have to pay upfront for it. They can pay over a set number of months, which lowers the barriers of entry for the customer, so you can drive a lot more volume. It's absolutely essential for the kind of marketing that we do in Busterbox with different offers on the intro box. So if we never had commitment terms, simply our business would not work. Now I have come across so many different subscription box businesses over the last few years who were struggling to scale up using prepay and then they switched to commitment terms and the business exploded. That's how important commitment terms are. Like if you go and you get a phone, a cell phone, a new cell phone from your network provider, they will rarely charge you upfront for the phone. They will give you a monthly bill but you'll be committed for a period of time. That's the exact same concept with commitment terms and simply allows you to do that.
Speaker 2:Number two trial period. The trial period is absolutely vital. The trial period allows you to set a low amount for the first box. So, say, if you're running like a free post shipping offer, you can do this with the trial period. You can set the trial period to like five pounds, which will technically be the shipping charge, and then you can shorten the second payment date. So instead of a customer signing up and then you don't charge them for another month, you can set it that a customer signs up with a free box, 14 days later you charge them the full price for the first renewal and then they move into a monthly cycle. This is absolutely critical because it helps shorten your payback period and improve the cash flow in your business and also identify if a certain group of new customers, a certain cohort, are actually going to be high quality. You don't want to be sitting around for a month trying to figure out if the new batch of customers that you acquired from a certain marketing channel are actually going to be good quality or not. You can shorten that period using the trial period feature. Again, we reached out to somebody about this. We came up with a solution that suited about parties and then the trial period feature was added to the platform.
Speaker 2:And the final thing, which is completely non-negouchable for us, is having the ability to look into our subscription metrics and, thankfully, chart Maugal plugs into Subly. This is really important for us. When we're running different offers, when we're looking to test different marketing channels, when we're looking to see what direction the company is actually moving in, we have to have a full overview of our subscription metrics. I'll give you an idea of the type of things we're checking. So, say, if we test a new offer. We will change the name on the plan of the new offer in Subly. So we'll create a new plan and we'll change the name of the plan and we'll put a code at the end of it so we'll know what the offer actually is. We'll run it for a while. Then we'll load up Charith Mogul and we'll filter by that plan and we'll be able to see what the churn is on that new offer. We'll be able to check what the lifetime value is on that new offer. We'll be able to see how profitable that offer will be over a period of time. We'll be able to check the subscription cohorts of that offer to basically see how long people are sticking around for what's the churn between 1.0 and 1.1, what's the churn between 1.1 and 1.2, and then put a plan in place to improve those metrics. So it's absolutely vital for us to be able to see our metrics and suddenly make that really easy by plugging in to Charith Mogul.
Speaker 2:Some platforms do not make this easy. They do not plug in to any decent metric software and it's really difficult to understand what's actually going on in the business. A good while ago I was working with it was actually another dog subscription box. I was giving some advice to them and they were on a platform that did not plug in to any metric software and they had to manually track all of their metrics on spreadsheets, and it was just a complete mess. They were doing the maths to find out the churn, the lifetime value. It was just impossible. Over time we basically couldn't get any information out of the business, so we couldn't even identify where the problems were.
Speaker 2:Now. This makes running the business very difficult, but it also makes raising money for the business really difficult. Say, if you got to a position where you wanted to raise some money through private investors, they will want to know all of these metrics in detail and they'll want to know that you know what these metrics are and you actually understand your business. And if you turn around to them and you say, look, I can't give you any of these metrics because I can't get any of them, so I've a kind of half idea of certain things but I don't know the full picture because my platform just doesn't allow me to get any of this information out of it, well, that's not going to get you anywhere. You will not be able to raise any money now. You may never want to raise any money, and that's completely fine. But if you get to a position where you want to sell the business, the exact same thing is going to come up. The potential buyer will say, okay, can you give me your term? Can I see your cohorts? Can I see your lifetime value, your average revenue per user, can you give me access to all of this information? And if you turn around and you go, look, I can't give you any of it because I don't have access to any of it myself, well then it's going to be very difficult to sell your company or even get a good valuation. That's how important it is to actually see your subscription metrics. They help you run your company, they help you raise money for your company. They help you make decisions. They help you understand if your marketing is going in the right direction and when you get to the point or if you ever get to the point where you want to sell it, they will help you sell it too. So that's why it's completely non-negoutable for us when it comes to our subscription platform and thankfully, as I said, it plugs into ChartMulgal.
Speaker 2:Now, some other things about somebody that I like is good customer service. They get back to you really, really quickly. If there is an issue, they will get back and they'll resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We have used some software in the past not a subscription box platform, but software where we ran into some issues and it was just a complete nightmare. You couldn't get a response. The responses you were getting were from templates. It was just a complete mess and that completely put me off that software. Thankfully, subly is not like that at all. They have very good customer service. It's also very easy to get set up on Subly to make the process really, really simple.
Speaker 2:And the final thing which I really like about Subly is the fact they have funnels built into the system so you can roam PulsePurchase offers which allow you to drive up your average order value so you make more money from new customers when they sign up. But they also give you the opportunity to sell additional subscriptions through the PulsePurchase feature, which is all built in natively to the platform, and we use that feature every day and it's allowed us to get a lot of our customers on multiple subscriptions, which drives up monthly recurring revenue really, really quickly. Think about it this way If one out of every five of your customers sign up for two subscriptions. Over time that will compound and you will end up growing your monthly recurring revenue significantly without any additional marketing cost. Subly allow you to do that in the back end of your checkout Really really good.
Speaker 2:Now, like I said, I'm sure there's other great platforms out there, but I can only share my experience. We've used Subly since the start of BusterBox. We've scaled with them. We've generated a lot of revenue through the platform. So, yes, I highly recommend the platform. If you're only getting started, definitely check them out. I think they have everything you need to grow a successful subscription box business. I hope that helps. If you have any other questions at all, as always, head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom. Join the free Facebook group and post your questions there. Thanks very much. We'll be back next week at the exact same time. Have a good day. Bye, bye.