If you want to launch a subscription service like a membership, club or subscription box, there’s a few things you can do to increase your conversions and get more people to sign up for your subscription.
First of all, here’s the anatomy of a great subscription offer:
1) Free trial
2) A bunch of free bonuses
The secret to great subscription services is hacking two of our biggest human “weaknesses” and taking advantage of them. Those two weaknesses are called instant gratification and procrastination.
Offering a free trial, for example for 30 days, fuels people’s procrastination. They love to procrastinate on payments.
For the same reason people love to use debt.
They want to own the thing right away, but procrastinate their end of the bargain: The payment. That’s how many people end up being in debt, but it’s just part of human nature because we’re all chronic procrastinators. If we can put off something, especially spending money, that’s usually exactly what we want and what we do.
At the same time it’s our human nature to crave instant gratification. We don’t like to wait for something good, we’d rather have it right away. We just love that release of dopamine and serotonin that’s associated with instant gratification. And it’s hard to resist it.
As I said, the anatomy of a great subscription service is to combine instant gratification in the form of free bonuses with procrastination in the form of a delayed payment. They work together like magic.
So practically, the best thing to do is offer a 14-day trial or a 30-day trial and give away 3-5 free bonuses that you can access right away.
Magazines have used this strategy for decades successfully.
I also recommend not making your subscription service available all the time. Use Jeff Walker’s product launch model and open the cart once every month or a few times per year. This will give your subscription an exclusive touch and will increase your signup rate.
I have launched and promoted many subscription services in my own business and in my clients’ businesses. We’ve split-tested evergreen subscription models and subscriptions where the cart opens for a few days ever month and then remains closed for the rest of the period.
Latter converted significantly better in most cases. Having a deadline and creating real urgency and scarcity just works in marketing.
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