Subscription Box Answers

Using Insert Swaps + Partnerships To Grow Your Subscription Box Business

• Liam Brennan

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In this episode of Subscription Box Answers, I discuss a few underrated, old-school strategies to grow your business: partnership marketing and insert swaps. When done correctly, these tactics can significantly lower your customer acquisition costs (CAC) and generate additional revenue for your company—all while reaching customers you might not have been able to reach otherwise.

Speaker 1:

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 questions, you ask the questions, 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. As always, I hope you're having a really good day. Today we're back talking about marketing. I've been told by so many people that listen to this podcast their favorite episodes are marketing related and different ways to get customers. So let's jump into it. Today we're speaking about a very underrated way of getting subscribers which can be very powerful and can get you a lot of people signed up for a relatively cheap price, and that is insert swaps. Now, if you don't know what insert swaps are, let me explain. This is more of a uk based thing now.

Speaker 2:

I definitely know there are companies in the us who do a lot of this, but it seems to be way more popular in the UK, where a lot of the bigger subscription box companies and e-com companies put a lot of time and resources into this kind of marketing. So we have done it quite a bit in BusterBox and it's been successful for us. We've got a lot of people signed up from it and we've generated extra revenue for our company through doing it as well. So it's very straightforward Companies will get in touch with other companies who have a crossover in audience but aren't directly competing with them. So we would never try to do this with another dog subscription box company because it would simply make no sense. We're competing with each other. But we've partnered with a wine company and a beer company and some other companies as well, where our user base may be interested in a beer box or a wine box and their user base may be interested in a dog subscription box, but we're not directly competing with each other. So I know some of the biggest boxes in the UK acquire the majority of their customers through this kind of marketing. That's how powerful this is, and I'm talking about companies that have way over 100,000 subscribers. So, to break it down in the simplest way possible, two companies will agree to put an insert in each other's box. That can be very powerful because boxes obviously have a 100% open rate pretty much, and on the insert there will be a qr code. A customer can scan it. It will bring them to the other company's website and they can sign up and try their subscription box.

Speaker 2:

Email swaps are also a big thing when it comes to this and obviously they're a lot easier to do because you don't have to pay for printing or anything. A company may get in touch with you and they'll be like whatever, we've got this many people on our list. How many people do you have on your list? Do you want to do an email swap? They'll prepare an email, your company will prepare an email and you'll swap. If one of the companies has a bigger list, then a arrangement will most likely be made and one of the companies may do an extra resend, or there may be some cash exchanged as well, or they may only send it to a proportion of their list. All of those things are possible and it just depends on the deal in question.

Speaker 2:

Now, this is a very powerful way to get people signed up to your box, but you have to be careful with it too. You don't want to partner with like a million different companies and you're literally blasting your list out of it around the clock, because if you do that, you will eventually burn it out. But if you're strategic with your partnerships, it can be a great way of getting people signed up for a relatively cheap price, and it can also be a great way of generating additional revenue for your company. At times in the past, we have had much bigger boxes reach out to us in a different niche and they have paid us a considerable amount of money to email our list with their offer Really good money for doing this. We have over 250,000 people on our list, so it's quite desirable for these other companies. They can get a lot of movement from our list if they send a really good offer out.

Speaker 2:

And that brings me to the next point. The success of this will heavily rely on the offer. Now, if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you will know I'm always banging on about the offer. With this kind of marketing, though, the offer is even more important, and that's because you only have a very short amount of time to make a impression with a potential customer and entice them to take action. If the offer isn't good enough, people just won't respond. They literally won't respond to the email or they won't respond to the insert in the box. So this is really, really important. Now, a way to think about it is right, and it really depends on your metrics and what kind of offers convert the best, but a way to think about it is you can pretty much remove the customer acquisition cost in some cases, especially if you're doing a swap. Okay, you can remove the customer acquisition cost, like the Facebook ad cost or the TikTok ad cost. So that gives you a bit more freedom to be a bit more aggressive with your offer to hopefully entice people to take action.

Speaker 2:

Now what are the benefits of this and what are the drawbacks? Because, like anything, there's positives and there's negatives. Well, the main benefits are this is a way to get customers outside the traditional ad platforms and you can drastically reduce your customer acquisition cost by doing this, because you're not depending on Facebook, tiktok, google, whatever. The other benefit is, you can potentially reach people you may have not been able to reach otherwise, so it's expanding your reach of customers. The other benefit is you can generate extra revenue for your company by doing partnerships with other subscription box companies and other e-com companies. If you sell them, insert space in your box, or if you do a deal with them to send out a blast to your list.

Speaker 2:

Now the negatives it's time consuming. That's one negative. It isn't just like turning on Facebook ads, tiktok or Google. I know they can take time as well, but this is extra time consuming because you're going back and forth with different companies organizing things. It's not just logging into an ad platform and setting up your ads. You're actually depending on other companies to do the work Put the inserts in the boxes at the right time, send the email blasts at the right time, track all of the sales, all of that stuff. It's really important and it can be time consuming, but it can still be worth it.

Speaker 2:

The other negative is you have to be careful. Pretty much, you have to be careful with who you partner with and you have to be careful about the amount of emails you send. Like I said earlier in the episode, you don't want to overdo it and completely burn out your list. Now, do I think this is worth it? Yes, I think it can be worth it and I think, if you're in position to test it, it can be a really good thing to do, because we all know sometimes with Facebook and TikTok and Google, your customer acquisition cost is going to be what it's going to be and things are trending upwards for a lot of niches. So if you can find a way to get outside all of that and have a reliable way of bringing in customers for a cheap cost, that can only be a good thing.

Speaker 2:

Now I get a lot of questions around. How do we track this when I'm telling people about it? Now, we obviously use Subli, and there's a few different ways you can track it. The easiest way is a unique coupon, and another way which gives you more in-depth tracking is by duplicating your landing page and having a unique landing page with unique plans for each partnership. That way makes it really easy to track the metrics of each partnership and see which companies bring you the most profitable customers, which is obviously really important as well.

Speaker 2:

Now, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while and you feel like you've got value from it, can I ask you a big favor? Could you leave me a review on Spotify, apple or wherever you listen to your podcasts? It just helps me get the show out to more people. We'll be back next week at the exact same time and, as always, if you have a question you want answered on the show, head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom, join the free Facebook group and post your question there. Thanks very much. Have a great day.