The subscription box segment was an early winner in subscription commerce. Whether based on a carefully curated selection of goods or the regular receipt of necessary consumables, subscription boxes have become an enduring success story.

But what you put inside your box is only one piece of the puzzle. To help your business succeed, you need a subscription management platform with features that support subscription boxes.

For example, a hybrid checkout refers to the ability to include both recurring items and one-time items in the same purchase transaction. This gives you the ability to upsell one-time items at checkout along with your subscription box. A monthly candy delivery service might sell candy bowls, or a cat food box might also sell cat toys. Having the option to sell one-time items can increase your sales. Read more about this and other types of new billing models in our blog.  

A platform that supports multiple shipping addresses per account can increase sales by allowing subscribers to purchase multiple boxes sent to different addresses. Perhaps someone wants to purchase a box for themselves and send additional ones as gifts to friends or family. Allowing for multiple addresses makes it easy for the subscriber to do this within a single account.  

An option that helps to increase subscriber acquisition is to offer gift subscriptions—both gift plans and gift cards—that let your biggest fans share their love of your subscription box with others. Gift cards are particularly suited for businesses with more than one box option, letting the recipient choose which subscription box they’d like when they redeem their gift. Recurly offers both gift plans and gift cards to boost subscriber acquisition. Read more in our blog or visit this page.

Another aspect of the checkout process that can benefit subscription box businesses is called authorize and capture. This feature lets you authorize the card when you collect a subscriber’s payment information and then capture the funds when you ship the box. This lets you confirm that you have sufficient inventory to fulfill the order before you actually charge the subscriber’s card.

One way to mitigate voluntary churn is to allow subscribers to pause their subscription. They may love their box but for some reason need to take a break from receiving it. Allowing subscribers to pause their subscription gives them an option besides cancelling. And of course, retaining current subscribers is far less expensive for you than gaining new subscribers, or in this case winning back those who have cancelled. You also can retain the subscribers’ history and payment information so you don’t have to spend resources on recreating their account if they do return. Read more about this feature in our blog.

Subscription box businesses, like all other subscription businesses, are concerned with churn, both voluntary and involuntary. Recurly Research examined churn rates by industry and found that Box of the Month businesses experience a higher voluntary churn rate compared to most other segments. The need to minimize subscriber churn makes features like the ability to pause subscriptions and offer coupons or discounts that much more critical.

Subscription box companies like Loot Crate, BarkBox, Rocksbox, and many other popular subscription boxes rely on Recurly to power their subscription commerce success. Want to learn more about how we can support your subscription box business? Talk to a Recurly expert at (844) 732-8759 or sign up for a demo below.

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