Launching a subscription e-commerce company is no walk in the park. First, you work endless hours to test your target market, develop a product and create a branding strategy. Then, you set up an online storefront that is beautiful, responsive and functional. Finally, you begin your marketing, advertising and subscriber acquisition efforts.
That’s it, right? Instant Birch Box-level success?
Wrong.
We’ve already gone over the 4 things to decide before starting your own subscription box, but what are the best tools for growing and managing your new e-commerce startup? Here at Cratejoy, we rely heavily on certain tools to help us collaborate, stay organized, manage workflow and grow. Our sellers have also given us the scoop on their 10 go-to tools for managing their subscription box business.
1. MailChimp
Email marketing is a tried and tested way for engaging and informing your audience with updates, campaigns or promotions. MailChimp is an email automation tool that lets you design your email campaigns with a personalized touch. You can maintain or combine multiple lists with built-in segmenting and targeting options or set up automated responses depending on your subscribers’ web activity. To take it a step further, you can dig deep into their analytics to learn which headlines, days of the week or times work the best. Here’s a great example of how Pondip used a personalized MailChimp template for a recent subscriber email.
2. Trello
Trello can pretty much save your company from hiring a project manager. Trello allows you to list and prioritize tasks while pushing real-time updates to the entire team. It’s not just a to-do list– it can be transformed into community bulletin board, resource for collecting inspiration or anything else you might need it to be. We find it extremely useful because it provides clarity on project status and boosts productivity so our team gets sh** done!
3. Inspectlet
Inspectlet hands you the ability to watch users use your website. Ecommerce is all about optimizing user-experience for conversions, so you can see exactly where they stop and the actions they took. Inspectlet can also help you catch bugs on your site such as seeing a subscriber sign up for your mailing list but not receiving a proper notification.
4. Uservoice
Uservoice is our go-to solution for customer support and feedback. It integrates with several platforms and dashboards so that all customer support tickets or requests are tracked in a centralized spot. Uservoice’s interactive leadership board is a great way to spark a healthy level of competition among employees and provide great, timely customer service. You can also create a number of standard answers and track analytics such as response rate and customer satisfaction.
5. GatherKudos”
Instead of you telling others how awesome your subscription box is, let your subscribers do the talking! Review widgets are a great way to display positive feedback and increase new sign-ups. Here’s a cool example of how Pash Box seamlessly displays reviews on their site.
6. Zapier
Zapier’s powers are simple but valuable: integrate and connect all of the apps your company use into one place. And yes, it’s as easy as it sounds.
7. HootSuite
Social media marketing is key for growing your audience, establishing your online presence, finding new subscribers and monitoring customer feedback. HootSuite not only lets you connect all of your social media accounts on one dashboard, but also lets you display certain feeds of hashtags or trending topics you want to track. It makes engagement easier and provides great analytics if you invest beyond the free model.
8. Woobox
Woobox helps you run all of those fun promotions and contests that delight your customers and create buzz. You no longer have to hire a social media expert to run sweepstakes, hold Instagram contests, create Facebook advertisements or engage your fanbase with polls and leaderboards.
9. Grasshopper
Don’t want to use your personal phone or establish a landline? Grasshopper is the tool for you. Even though online customer service options have become extremely efficient, sometimes customers want to speak to a human on the phone. For only $12 a month you can set up virtual phone numbers with unlimited extensions so your subscribers can get the personal attention they’re looking for.
10. Uptime Robot
Let’s say your promotions, email marketing and social media efforts have led to a huge amount of traffic, but you and your team have stepped away for a lunch break or company meeting. Uptime Robot helps you monitor your website and keep it up in case of a glitch or unexpected site failure. The best part? It’s free.
What are your subscription box must-have tools?
