Chances are that you’re using a subscription box service—it could be a weekly meal plan, a monthly set of razors, or practically anything in between. That should come as no surprise, considering that the entire subscription box industry grew by a whopping 890% from April 2014 to April 2018. Subscription boxes are booming, and for good reason—it’s like receiving a personalized gift every month, and people love it.
The secret to running a thriving subscription box service isn’t just the product inside—it’s also how you present it. Finding the right packaging design services for your specific products is crucial to how they are received. This can be for many reasons—your products are fragile and need to be well protected, or your product is uniquely shaped and you don’t want to default to using a large, clunky box. For whatever reason, customized packaging for your subscription members is really the only way to go.
The right packaging strategy looks different for every subscription box business out there, but there are useful guidelines for everyone starting this journey. In this blog, we’ll look at four of our favorite packaging strategies that have been successful in the subscription box industry.
Match Your Packaging to Your Product
One of our favorite packaging pieces in the subscription industry comes from Once Upon a Book Club. It’s a book club subscription service with packaging that looks like—you guessed it—a book. Perfect, right? It’s cute and inviting, hinting at the real thing inside.
This same strategy can be used for other types of businesses, too. A subscription box company for eyewear could base its design on the shape of a pair of glasses and even change the design on the packaging quarterly (or monthly) to follow certain styles and trends. While your members know what they signed up for, using a product-inspired design is a great way to solidify your brand and present your product in a unique and inviting way. Explore our range of branded packaging solutions for small businesses to elevate your eyewear subscription box experience.
Make the Packaging Timeless
Changing your packaging, especially the shape and functionality, is a heavy lift. It can’t be done overnight, or even within a week. Sometimes, it’s best to build packaging that is not only beautiful and attractive to your audience but also timeless. It’s inevitable that styles will change, and different things will trend throughout the years or even months. While this can be daunting to a creative specialist who’s building packaging, the easy solution is to create packaging that will survive any trend.
The Rachel Zoe Box of Beauty does a fantastic job of creating timeless packaging. The sleek black box greets you with “Hello Gorgeous” and presents their products beautifully and simply. Timeless packaging doesn’t have to be bland—in some cases, it’s more important to avoid current trends or styles that may fade over time.
Utilize Size to Your Advantage
Bigger isn’t always better for subscription box packaging. Sometimes, using a smaller box that is just big enough for all your products can create an appearance of abundance when subscribers open it. A subscription box with a few small items in a large package—even if the cost of the products inside is appropriate, can be deceptively underwhelming.
We built packaging for Roman Health, a great example of using the correct pharmaceutical packaging design size for the product. Instead of putting the individual packaged product loosely in a bag, we built this small yet stylistic box which both showcases the product well and improves the overall delivery. Using size to your advantage when building subscription boxes is a great way to influence how subscribers feel when they open the box, regardless of the products inside.
Promote Social Media Through Packaging
Generating a large social media following that shares and interacts with your content is a great way to build a solid subscriber base. One of the best ways to do that consistently encourages social media posts from your current subscribers. While too much solicitation can turn people off, simply throwing in a hashtag and encouraging subscribers to share their newest products can result in great traffic for your brand.
Look no further than LootCrate for a great example of this—their #LootCrate hashtag encourages subscribers to take pictures of their products, share them, and, of course, to enjoy all the goodies inside. While this example is simple and passive, the messaging still works. Any amount of sharing and tagging is beneficial to a subscription box business because it helps to generate more subscriptions and to grow their following.
Looking to build a packaging strategy for your subscription box business? ZenPack is your end-to-end packaging expert, taking care of strategy, design, creation, and implementation. Contact us today to speak with one of our experts and start the journey of giving your subscribers the full subscription experience.
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