This month I am launching a new product for my greeting card company, Survival By Design Cards. The Sassy Subscription is offered in 6- and 12-month options and offers a way for customers to have unique and clever greeting cards delivered to their mailboxes each month. For me, the product designer/seller/marketer, setting up this new offering required some strategic planning.
I have the inventory so no further effort is required on that front.
Next, I needed to figure out a plan for production as well as promotion. Two heads are often better than one so I enlisted the help of my colleague Carla Scheri of Kick It Up Consulting to help keep me focused, on track, and on schedule for a pre-winter holiday launch. As the greeting card business is my side hustle, I find it really hard to devote time to it when I have awesome and amazing clients for whom I'd rather be spending my time. Thankfully, scheduling meetings with Carla ensures that I work on my greeting card biz so that I can launch new products like this one.
I shared with Carla that I have been wanting to do a subscription service for a while now. Today, you can have basically anything delivered to your mailbox on a monthly basis, from vegan snacks to new cosmetics to clothing to greeting cards (I'm not linking to a competitor, that's just silly). ;) So why not MY greeting cards? Carla did some research for me and also devised a plan for selecting the best cards for each month so there would be a nice mix of upcoming holiday and everyday cards.
Once we had the cards divided out by month, we had to do some work on my online shop so that the Sassy Subscriptions could be sold and shipped correctly.
For my part, I had fun deciding which mailing envelopes I wanted to use.
And how I wanted to bundle the cards.
I checked in with a few friends as an informal focus group to see what they thought of the subscription idea and my approach. They said, "I love this idea!!! It’s perfect!! Good prices. :) I’d likely subscribe!!" and "Love it! I think it's a great deal. ($2.60 a card!) And it's great that it ships right to your house. I would definitely consider doing the 6-month deal." I also heard, "I hate to admit this, but I don't use cards enough for me to consider this sort of thing so it's hard for me to imagine what the interest level would be. But, if someone is like you and sends or writes cards a lot then it seems like they might be happy to do it." — I consider all this feedback to be valuable and I highly recommend getting outside input before making any major decisions....both personal and professional. ;)
Next it was time to promote the Sassy Subscriptions! Armed with a marketing plan developed by Kick It Up Consulting (yes, I can write my own marketing plans and I do create them for my clients but sometimes it is a much better use of your time to outsource the things that you either (a) don't want to do (b) don't have time to do (c) would much rather have someone else do so you can work on projects for your actual clients who have creative projects to be done on time, too.), I designed a fun graphic for Facebook and Twitter and posted it with a link to a Constant Contact that I also designed and sent.
While it would be easier to just sit back have the Sassy Subscriptions sell themselves, I will have to continue to promote the Sassy Subscriptions throughout the rest of year in order to maximize this gift-giving time of year. That means more social media posts, more digital promotion, and then actually assembling, boxing, and mailing out the subscriptions to customers. Being an entrepreneur means developing new ideas, meeting the ever-changing needs of consumers, and using all your best resources to make/sell/promote new products.
If you have a product you are trying to launch, BE IN TOUCH. My colleagues and I can help!