Making a big change in our stationery subscription model: Why it was necessary and what I learned! (Inside The Journal Vol 04)

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About our subscription:

Before I go ahead and share our SWOT analysis I will briefly recap our current offering.

Our monthly subscription includes stencils, stickers, and other stationery items, to decorate your journal. Prices include UK delivery and are posted inside a letterbox friendly box.

The subscription was originally conceived as a smaller sister product to our quarterly box that is called “The Big One”, we therefore gave it the name “The Mini One”. However over the years it had been running we had added and made changes and it had eventually developed into three monthly options:

Daisy Says – A font stencil and quote sticker sheet for people who like lettering. (£9.00 per month)

Mini One – Stencils, sticker sheets, washi tape and bonus accessory to decorate your journal. (£18.00 per month).

Monthly Combo – Both the Daisy Says and Mini One subscription combined with a 15% saving (£22.50 per month).

At the time we did the analysis we had just 5 Daisy Says subscribers, 75% of our subscribers were signed up to the Monthly Combo.

It’s time to do some honest analysis…

SWOT Analysis

If you are new to SWOT analysis, its all about looking at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. I’ll give you a brief run down below!

Our strengths:

• Our average subscription length is 12m+, retention rate is 70% at 6 months and 55% at 12 months, putting us in the top quartile according to all the KPI (Key Performance Indicators) and benchmarks I have found online, which ranged from 11-50% for average 12 month retention.
• Everything within our box is designed in-house by our team, no AI or clipart is utilised, making it a unique product.
• Each tier of our subscription offers a saving to our customers versus the RRP of the equivalent products in store.
• Our Mini One stencils and stickers can be stored within our ‘Mini One’ storage folder (available to purchase separately).

Our weaknesses:

• The purpose of the box is confused – What is it used for and how does it differ to our quarterly box?
• The tiers are confusing – why do they all have different names, how does the customer know which tier to subscribe to?
• The branding of the box is confused – How do Daisy Says, The Mini One, and the Monthly Combo sit together. What is the subscription called?!
• The co-ordinating Daisy Says font stencil/quote sticker cannot be stored alongside the Mini One items.

Opportunities:

• Our current customer base are very engaged, we have a fab online community. How can we utilise this?
• Create a single monthly subscription brand that is easy to understand. One name, with tiers of content.
• Define what the product is and how it differs to the quarterly box – Theme led (monthly subscription) vs Concept led (quarterly subscription).
• Professional photography/more reels and user generated content to show that we offer a unique product and excellent value.
• Change sizing so that we can utilise a single storage solution for all items. Encourage “collectability”.

Threats:

• Lose current subscribers who do not like changes made/do not understand the changes.
• Create resentment for changing the offering.
• Time and cost to implement the changes – will need to reduce focus on other projects.

The Plan:

There are 4 elements to our new subscription model

BRANDING: We are simplifying the branding of our monthly offering to a single name that represents exactly what the box offers – Themebox! A subscription to help you theme-ify your monthly journal or planner set-up.

CONTENTS: Our stencils and stickers will be resized to A5, offering more scope for usage and a simple storage solution for the contents of the box. We will still have 3 tiers, to give options to multiple budgets, but these will all be tiers of a single product so it is easier to promote and understand.

STORAGE: We know that our customers like to have storage solutions for their products, therefore we have carefully designed a new storage binder that will hold the dashboard, stencils, and sticker sheets. We hope this will also promote the “collectability” of the product, to create a file of themes to draw upon when creating journal spreads.

PACKAGING: Packaging will form an important part of the “share-ability” of the subscription for unboxing videos, etc. We want something eye catching, with minimal waste. This has definitely been a journey (watch out for an upcoming blog on our packaging nightmare) but we hope to have this resolved by the end of 2024.

Promotion:

Once the foundations to our monthly subscription have been built, the most vital step will be reaching potential new customers. We have a few different approaches to this:

Professional photography: This has previously been a low priority for our subscriptions, as the box has often sold out by the time the photography is complete each month. However, we know that this is important for demonstrating content to perspective customers.

Paid Ads: Once we have the professional imagery, we will be adding paid ads to our promotion model.

Video Content: More focus on in-house video content for our subscription products, for both demo and unboxing. Reels and TikToks have been hugely popular for shop products

UGC: Increasing our user generated content, and promoting the subscription, through the selection of brand ambassadors.

Newsletter: Using our email newsletter to ensure subscribers are getting the most out of their subscription, and making our new customers aware of the options available.

Website: Once we have professional photography in place we will also be overhauling our monthly subscription page for new subscribers, to give clear examples of what they can expect when they subscribe.

The Goal:

The contents of the subscription box are offered at a huge saving compared to RRP. The reason any company is able to do this, is because products are ordered and packed in bulk. The exact number of products can be ordered for the boxes available, meaning minimal waste.

For the time invested on our subscription boxes every month, on design, manufacture, packing and promotion, to be worth spending, we have to grow our current numbers.

We have a lofty goal for our monthly subscription project – 30% growth in subscriber numbers by end of 2024 – While this may seem a lot, our numbers currently are not huge, and I believe we have the scope for this growth using the steps above.

With the majority of the steps complete, and our first ‘Themebox’ dispatching in less than a week, I am so confident that we have taken an already good product, and made it BLOODY GREAT. Now, is the time to double down on the promotion element of the plan and make people aware of the amazing product we have!

Want to know more about our new subscriptions? Head to our Themebox page here!

I’d love to know what you think of the analysis we did and the plan we have created – pop us a comment below!

Until next time..
Big Love
Jo xx (aka @oopsadaisyuk)

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