Mother’s Day is around the corner! The reservations at the best local restaurant are full, the flower shops are overwhelmed with orders and you want to step your game up from last year’s Hallmark card.
Subscription boxes make a unique and thoughtful gift that doesn’t wilt after a few days. The Cratejoy team has hand-selected 5 awesome, affordable subscription boxes that any woman in your life-wife, mother, grandmother or aunt- would love.
I was just about to cancel my Hulu Plus subscription the other day – I noticed I wasn’t using it as much as I used to. I clicked the cancel subscription button and was immediately taken to a new page.
“We’re sorry to see you go, but would you consider keeping your subscription and get a free month on us?”
A whole free month!? I started thinking about why I got Hulu Plus in the first place – “You know I really do like having it, and a free month is a huge bonus.”
I kept it.
Cratejoy is an all in one subscription commerce platform that includes everything you need to start your own subscription box business online.
A few weeks ago I ordered business cards – I was in under a time-crunch so the place I usually order from couldn’t deliver in time. I chose a company with a faster turnaround time and a pretty good reputation. Having only ordered from the previous company I had pretty high expectations. They don’t just send you the business cards – they include holders, bingo cards; It’s really great packaging! The next day I received a tiny box in the mail stuffed with the 200 business cards I ordered. The box was exactly 1/4 of an inch larger than the business cards smashed together and everything was packed so tightly that there was an indent in the majority of the business cards from something that squished into it on the truck.
Not only was I disappointed but I felt robbed. I had to throw away half of the cards. Needless to say I have not ordered from them since.
If you do a quick google search on how to get customers, you’ll notice a few words that are included in most titles:
Easy
Simple
Quick
For anyone who has actually started a business you know that getting customers is not easy. It takes time, work and a whole lot of trial and error. If you’re looking for a silver bullet solution to get customers, you will not find it here – but there are a few things you can do to make the most of your time.
You’re working on your box, sending it out every month, getting new subscribers, tweaking your notification emails, figuring out the best shipping prices – basically you’re swamped. So every time someone suggests something else you should do you just roll your eyes. Don’t they understand that running a subscription box company is a whole lot of work? I get it. Hear me out – there are still some really small things that you can do that will be just a little something extra that will make your customers go from happy to ecstatic.
There are a lot of different suggestions on how to design a website – just google ‘design trends for 2014’ and you’ll see a plethora of articles that range from basic guides and tips to design jargon that no one but a web designer understands. The thing is that most of these lists focus on different things – using images, font, landing pages, navigation bars – it’s endless. So what do you do? How do you sift through all the suggestions and get down to making your site great without spending the next 2 years on it? Oh, and if you are an expert web designer just move along – there’s nothing for you to see here.
There is a common response when myself or my co-workers tell other people about Cratejoy – if the person we’re talking to has not started their own subscription box company already they respond with a “Oh I have a great box of the month idea!” Every. Time. It’s awesome. Without fail people not only see
Creating a budget for your new business is a necessary evil. If you’re anything like me, budgeting and playing around with numbers is actually a lot of fun. I love using online financial tools and seeing things change as I put numbers in and move them around. You might be rolling your eyes and wondering if you should in fact call that CPA you know down the road to do it for you – just hear me out.