In this article, we’ll talk about the best DTC strategy: offering a Build a Box subscription model in your store to help fuel sales.

If you already have subscriptions on your Shopify store, that’s great.

But how well is your current subscription model working?

If you only have 1000 subscribers or less, you might want to reconsider your approach.

Having a direct-to-consumer sales strategy is key to increasing your revenue.

We’ll cover how offering a Build a Box subscription option is the best DTC growth strategy you can try.

Offering a Build a Box subscription option on your site can potentially increase the average order volume.

Grow your Direct to Consumer Sales

When I ask Direct To Consumer companies if they offer subscriptions, they often reply, “Yes.”

They explain they already offer subscriptions for their products on Amazon.

I ask them, “How about on your own website, do you offer subscriptions there? “

“Oh that! No, we haven’t done that yet.”

This is the number one pitfall in growing your direct-to-consumer sales strategy.

Not offering subscriptions directly on your own site is a huge missed opportunity.

DTC Strategy #1 – Offer a Subscription Option

The #1 way to grow your DTC brand is by offering subscriptions.

Selling subscriptions is a win-win situation. You can give it a try, there’s nothing to lose.

Subscriptions help you get automatic recurring orders.

So instead of getting someone to your website once, buying a product once & never returning…

Subscriptions let your customers subscribe to the products they love, & receive automatic recurring orders on an ongoing basis.

When a shopper visits your store & purchases a subscription product, the recurring orders are forever.

Subscriptions are hugelyl beneficial for merchants looking for a way to optimize their ad spend. Think about this. By sending customers to your Subscribe & Save products, you can gain a customer for life!

With Ongoing, we offer a free plan to start out with, so you don’t pay anything unless we help you sell a subscription.

DTC Strategy #2 – The Power of Customer Data

Not only can you make more money and streamline your process, but you can also hold onto your company data.

With Amazon, your customer data is unavailable to you (besides a name and physical address).

All customer data, such as their email, is available if you have a Shopify store and use the Ongoing Subscriptions app.

If the customer opts into marketing emails, you can send them a weekly email newsletter with deals and sales announcements.

Best DTC Growth Strategy?

A Build a Box is the best way to have customers quickly see lots of different products offered on your store without having to click around your site.

Having an instant quick view of products they might like to subscribe to helps increase your store’s chances of a sale.

But it’s not just any kind of order, it’s a recurring order.

With Ongoing Subscriptions, you can offer a Build a Box page on your site that instantly works with any Shopify store and theme.

DTC Strategy #3 – Get Customers to Order More

The Ongoing Subscriptions Build a Box feature offers the ability to require an item minimum.

For example, you can say Order 2 or more of these items and then get the subscription discount.

This works well for companies who sell consumable products and customers who might be ordering one more product anyways.

Instantly customers are incentivized to subscribe to more than one product at a time.

This benefits any DTC company looking to increase their average order volume and acquire more subscription sales.

DTC Strategy #4 – Create Lifelong Customers

When someone places an order on the Ongoing Build a Box, you aren’t just getting an ordinary order, but it’s a subscription order.

A subscription order is so much more valuable than a regular one-off purchase.

It will recur again and again automatically.

And how great is it if the customer is subscribed to 2 or more products?

Not only is the order automatically renewing without you having to do anything, but it’s also a higher order value than one-time purchases.

DTC Strategy #5 – Optional Subscription Discounts

If you don’t want to offer a discounted price for subscription products, you don’t have to.

This is entirely optional.

For some companies, it doesn’t make sense to offer a subscription discount because the product price is ultimately the lowest they can go without negatively affecting margins.

With the Ongoing Build a Box feature, subscription discounts are entirely optional.

You can very well offer the delivery frequencies, for example, like delivery every month/delivery every 2 months and delivery every 3 months without any discounts.

The convenience factor is still there. More on this below!

DTC Strategy #6 – The Convenience of AutoPay

Customers will still subscribe because they want to receive your products without re-ordering them manually.

This is the perfect setup if you have a notable brand with a high repurchase rate. This also works nicely for brands with a product that their customers love and can’t get enough of.

An example of this might be some sort of plant-milk.

The customer knows they will go through a certain amount of containers per week and want to ensure their pantry is always stocked.

People expect autoPay these days, and they’ll be thankful you offer auto-delivery.

Strategy #7 – Gamify the Shopping Experience

The best type of shopping experience is a fun one.

The Ongoing Build a Box feature helps gamify the customers’ shopping experience. It’s fun to click on products and add them to your cart.

If an experience is fun, it’s more likely that the customer will use it to shop.

This can lead to a higher checkout conversion because all they have to do is click Buy Now.

They’ll skip the cart page and go directly to the checkout, where they can enter a credit card and finish up their purchase.

Strategy #8 – Build a Box for Increasing DTC Sales

Build a Box is great for letting customers explore new products they might not have seen if they didn’t visit your Build a Box page.

Maybe the customer would have left your site without purchasing anything because they didn’t see what they wanted.

But with the Build a Box feature, they can see lots of different products in a quick view.

There is also a gallery mode feature for Build a Box that allows you to showcase a couple of different photos of the product so the customer can click through them.

This is great if you want to show an ingredients list (for food products) or different angles of the product.

After all, the more information you can show your customer about the product, the more likely they will purchase it.

Strategy #9 – Offer a Subscribe & Save Discount

Ongoing is the Best Shopify Subscriptions app for offering a Build a Box model on your site.

It allows you to customize the build a box to your needs, so you can create the subscription plans you want, customize the delivery frequencies, choose the subscription discounts you want to offer, match your brand colors, + a lot more!

If you have a direct to consumer product, it’s super important to utilize the power of Ongoing Subscriptions.

By having customers order a product with an Ongoing Subscription, you can tap into the ability to automate all of your orders with a recurring schedule.

This also gives you the power of other automation such as autopay, automatic recurring orders, and a customer database of your subscribers + a subscriber portal where customers can manage their orders by using Ongoing.

Strategy #10 – Bundle & Save Quantity Discounts

If you currently use a quantity discount app, it’s time to abandon it. Why?

Because it’s great to have your customers order more than 1 item at a time, but it’s still a one-off purchase.

They’ll buy 6 at a time, but what if they never come back?

Usually, that’s the case, and you’d have to spend your hard-earned money to try and get them back to your site with advertising dollars.

So what’s the solution? The Ongoing Build a Box feature offers the ability to create quantity discounts.

You have the option to require customers to order more than one item at a time, which encourages them to spend more.

They are also happy customers because they get a discount if they buy more, and best of all, it’s not a one-time purchase but a subscription order.

This means they’re subscribed for life unless they cancel. Order after order, all automated.s