Driving Subscription Revenue – From Gifting to Consuming

Willoughby Book Club needed to increase their subscription revenue from common seasonal gift buying to an evergreen revenue stream.
Community-building

Situation before

The Willoughby Book Club, a UK-based bookseller, felt there was untapped potential in their subscription business model, with most purchases driven by seasonality or gifting.

Achieve

What we did

We created a new concept to integrate into their subscription model, personalised consumer experiences and drove social engagement.

Scale

Results

Key findings from research into Willoughby Book Club’s potential and current customer base showed what their audience wanted. This enabled us to test and validate our book subscription concept and deliver a step-by-step plan, including building a business case, to help run their business.

Taking a trip down memory lane, where the internet never existed, TV’s were limited amongst households, and different social groups were run in-person (yes, that’s right Gen Z, people actually spoke face-to-face!). One popular social club was in fact book clubs, where people would choose a book, read it in their spare time, and come together occasionally to discuss it. Think of Reddit, just on an in-person level, with fewer memes and a greater influence on serious conversation – This was the way.

Objectively thinking, if you are a bookworm, then joining a subscription book service seems like a pretty reasonable idea – and possibly a fantastic gift. And that was the problem we were directly facing, subscription purchases driven primarily by seasonality and gifting.

So, how do you influence consumer decision-making, maintain a connection with consumers throughout their experience and positively impact all-year-round revenue?

The Willoughby Book Club needed a change

Christmas was the key time The Willoughby Book Club saw a drive in subscription purchases; a perfect gift for the buyer. Yet, on the other side of the coin, The Willoughby Book Club needed to create a greater focus on all year round

When starting our cooperation, The Willoughby Book Club needed to understand how they could influence subscription purchases to a greater extent. So this is where we started.

Brandcrafty devised a new, game-changing concept

Creating a change always starts with an idea, but never ends there. First, we created a benchmark for different ways of building a new concept, before testing it amongst The Willoughby Book Club desired and existing audience.

We devised different benchmark levels of personalisation within the service:

  1. Creating a social book club mixed with product personalisation
  2. How to create personalisation whilst integrating a social aspect, focused on the discussion
  3. Book of the month, personalisation through consumer interests and a social aspect
  4. One book of the month combined with an online social aspect.

With the digital world being an undeniable force, and for a bookworm who loves the crisp feel of the fine bleached pages between their fingertips, the suggestion of increasing the online presence of a book club felt far away from the owner’s initial thoughts.

However, with the concepts devised and your encouragement, we set out to test and validate the concepts on the Willoughby Book Club’s audience to get answers directly from the source.

And to our profound knowledge, we found a highly keen, and very engaged young audience base, who jumped at the opportunity of an online social book club – so, knowing this, what would be the best way to proceed?

The perfect crime

Through careful selection of the diverse genres Willoughby Book Club was selling, we chose the top genres and tested interest amongst their audience. The results were all pointing towards crime and fiction, my dear Watson, which left us feeling very Sherlock, and our investigation coming to a successful close.

However, even though we had our suspect of the crime and fiction genre, how to carry out the getaway (implementation) still remained a mystery to be solved.

So, we went back to our audience with new questions to seek answers to. By creating two different landing pages for each genre on the Willoughby Book Club website, we tested out the feasibility and functionality of having product personalisation matched with a social subscription.

The key areas we set out to investigate were:

  • How a customer would like to discuss books with others (which channel, when, how, frequency)
  • How they’d like to receive further information on subscribing to Willoughby Book Club

One question, however, remained internally – how do we accomplish a greater degree of personalisation while engaging as many readers as possible in the discussion?

How we solved the mystery (with many scooby snacks)

With data coming out our ears, and consumers gaining ever more interest from the investigation being carried out, we sat down to analyse the results.

And like the old English pronoun goes – “Everything can be solved with a cup of tea”, we sat down for an open chat and a cuppa, to share the results.

With the influx of rich data, we set out to build a book club around our findings and presented our business case to Willoughby Book Club, which not only delighted our customers, but enabled them to manage and monitor their business in one, easy-to-use, sheet.

Yet, our work didn’t stop here. We developed an intrinsic plan for Willoughby Book Club that included a go-to-market timetable, roles, unique functions, step-by-step plans for integration into Willoughby Book Club’s current business model, sales messaging and guidance to help with the new way of selling, and, course, the USP.

Ready to make your vision of a subscription service a reality?

With the seasonal period approaching on the horizon, if your business is heavily reliant on Christmas, maybe it’s time to think about how you can pivot into a subscription model to secure stable revenue all year round.

At Brandcrafty, we have over 20 years of experience in the subscription domain; domestically and internationally. Send us a message, and let’s get started!

Team Willoughby

Our community team rose to the challenge and wowed everyone!

If you are looking for Subscription Marketing professionals – you know what to do!

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Contact us

Contact us through the form below or give Iira a call.