How Adding a Subscription Service Can Grow Your Beauty Business
There’s no denying the power of subscription services when it comes to growing your beauty business.
Not only does it offer customers a more convenient and affordable way to purchase the products they need, but it also gives you the opportunity to build relationships with your customers, create loyalty, and gradually increase your number of subscribers through brand awareness.
A subscription service is a great way to get your beauty business off the ground, while also ensuring its long-term success.
Want to know more? In this blog, we discuss how adding a subscription service can help grow your beauty business.
What is a Beauty Subscription Service?
A beauty subscription can work in a few ways. If you already have a brand with your own beauty products, adding a subscription service can be a cost-effective way for customers to buy your products on a repetitive basis while saving money. For you, this helps you secure a regular income.
Alternatively, a beauty subscription box delivers an assortment of products straight to your subscribers’ doors, either from your own brand or a selection of multiple brands.
You can provide flexible options such as a range of pricing and payment options (a subscription management platform will enable you to fully customize your offering), personalized products, and more.
With a subscription model, customers save money compared to buying beauty products individually, and they get to try new products they may not have considered before — encouraging them to buy into your brand further.
How Popular Are Beauty Subscription Services?
Beauty subscription boxes became incredibly popular from around 2010 onwards, with a few key contenders establishing themselves in the beauty space.
During this time, beauty YouTubers played a big role in growing beauty subscriptions through unboxing videos while today, platforms like TikTok have relaunched people’s love for beauty subscription boxes.
However, you do need to stand out if you want to grow your beauty business with a subscription. What’s unique about your business? How can you channel this into a subscription service that people want? Find a gap in the market and you’re off!
Of course, good branding is also a key factor in growing your beauty subscription. If you’re going down the subscribe and save option (much like Amazon’s model) then make sure you advertise this so your ideal audience and existing customers are in the loop.
How Can a Subscription Service Grow Your Business?
Boosts Product Purchase Frequency
Customers are more likely to decide to repurchase with a subscription service than they would if they were buying individual items.
By increasing the number of product sales and managing product inventories more efficiently, you could potentially boost your profit margin — which is a huge step towards achieving ongoing growth.
Increases Customer Retention
Subscription services are great at encouraging repeat purchases, which means you can forge deeper, longer-term relationships with your customers.
A subscriber is more likely to stick with your brand than shop around and potentially default to a competitor. Loyalty is key in retail, and a subscription is one of the most effective ways to encourage this.
Drives More Recurring Revenue
One of the major advantages of a subscription model is that it can help your business to generate more recurring revenue, increasing the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer to your brand over the long term. The upshot of this is it allows you to more accurately budget and forecast, since your revenue stream is more consistent and predictable.
Provides Opportunities for Upselling
With a long-term subscriber, you’ll have a whole host of information about their shopping habits, preferences and interests. Armed with this information, you can create personalized opportunities to upsell products and services.
Perhaps you can suggest an add-on product or bundle that will benefit them and help you generate extra revenue — this is also another great way of introducing new products!
Do Subscription Services Work Best for New or Existing Businesses?
A major factor in how well a subscription service works is trust. Although you can definitely grow your new beauty business with the introduction of subscriptions, if you already have a customer base who have confidence in your products, then it’ll be much easier to get going.
For those launching a new subscription beauty box, you’ll need a very good marketing strategy. With consistency, you’ll earn trust and increase brand awareness to gradually increase your subscriber base, and with the right tactics you can easily get your new business into a great position.
Types of Subscription Services
Beauty Box Service
A subscription box service involves an assortment of beauty products (either pre-selected or a collection of different products each month) being sent to your subscribers on a regular basis, usually for a fixed monthly fee. Most subscriptions of this type will surprise their customers with something completely new each month!
Subscribe and Save
This option involves automating the process of a customer reordering a particular product (or set of products) each month — or whichever period they decide — and enabling them to save money in doing so.
The ultimate aim here is convenience: it removes the manual burden of a customer repeat-ordering the same product over and over, and instead means they’ll automatically receive their next order at a predetermined interval.
Both subscription types can work very well, so think carefully about what you’re trying to achieve.
For example, if you’re looking to increase purchases of your own beauty product range then the subscribe and save option is probably going to work best, while if your aim is to introduce new products to customers, you might go down the subscription box route.
How to Set Up a Subscription Service
There are a few important parts of your subscription service that you need to consider. From choosing your products to setting the right prices, every part of your service will affect your customer, so it needs careful planning and consideration.
Here are some of the factors you need to consider when setting up your subscription service:
Products
If you already have an inventory of stock, great. Before you branch out, you may want to start with a small selection of beauty items, such as your most popular products. If you’d like to include a mix of brands then you’ll need to do a little more research on where to source these items and which brands suit your target buyer.
Pricing
You can choose from a variety of subscription service models, from single-item subscriptions to monthly boxes. Either way, your pricing should be beneficial to the customer when compared to making a one-off purchase. For added convenience and flexibility, you may want to offer a range of customizable pricing options.
Shipping
Depending on the type of product you sell, you can ship products through the postal service or through a third-party shipping company.
You might want to invest in custom packaging (especially if you’re going down the beauty box route), as good packaging can immediately convey the quality of your brand, drive repeat sales, and improve the overall customer experience.
Subscription Options
What type of subscription options are you going to offer? Can customers skip a month, or upgrade to a different subscription package to get a better deal?
Offering flexibility is a good idea, but it’s best to keep it simple to start with — particularly if you’re completely new to the subscription model. Once you’ve nailed the process, you can start adding more flexible options.
Payment Methods
To keep your conversion rates high, it’s best to offer a number of different payment methods so your customers can choose one which suits them.
Nowadays, there are options like Apple Pay, PayPal, and Klarna, which allows customers to spread their payments. Using a subscription management platform will enable you to integrate multiple payment providers.
What are you waiting for? Adding a subscription service to your beauty business could be just what you need to maximize your growth, increase customer loyalty, and attract new subscribers.