Marketing Ideas For Your Coffee Subscription Business To Grow Faster

Explore Actionable Ideas To Market Your Coffee Subscription Business And Grow Faster

If you run a coffee subscription business, this article is a must-read. In it, we give you 10 actionable ideas to market your subscriptions.

Also, we’ve excluded run-of-the-mill ideas that you’ll read in every other article on the internet. 

Instead, try out these unique marketing strategies to generate better results for your coffee subscriptions.

Because when you think out of the ordinary, there’s a better chance you’ll stand out. So, let’s get started!

10 must-try marketing ideas for your coffee subscription business

1. Know your customers’ journey

This idea is nothing new—most marketers create marketing strategies based on customers’ journeys. So why are we emphasizing it for subscription businesses?

That’s because customers at different stages in their journey with your subscription have to be approached with different marketing strategies. 

A one-size-fits-all approach would be futile. For example, your marketing tactic to acquire a new subscriber has to be different from that to motivate them to upgrade their subscription plan.

What are the stages in a subscriber’s journey?

1. Research: they’re looking for coffee subscription options
2. Decision: customers are evaluating the best option from those shortlisted
3. Subscribe: customer signs up and subscribes
4. Relationship: you put in efforts to build a relationship with the subscriber by engaging them
5. Loyalty: you focus on retaining the customer and building long-term loyalty

Craft different marketing strategies for each stage. Further, personalize the strategy for better results.

2. Encourage subscription upgrades

Since you’re selling coffee, you likely have a wide range of customers, for example, customers in different age groups who like coffee, those who want to try new coffees, and those who like to stick to their favorites only. 

Therefore, your coffee subscription businesses should ideally have tiers or plans to cater to different customer segments. 

You can promote the different plans to different segments. For example, market a curated box to a fairly new subscriber who seems to like trying new coffees. Or a premium plan that makes it easy for them to try new products for free or discounted rates. 

Similarly, if a customer is about to cancel your coffee subscription, you could urge them to sign up for a lower-level plan, which reduces the financial commitment for them, but they can still enjoy the coffee.

Here are some ideas to go about this strategy:

• Offer different types of subscription plans—curated box, build-a-box, etc.
• Create subscription plans based on your customer segments 
• Introduce new subscription plans from time to time to keep the excitement going
• Automate subscription upgrades and dunning management so that you don’t lose customers

3. Referral program

90% of people are more likely to trust a recommended brand. 

When it comes to subscriptions, recommendations and referrals can work even more effectively. Why? Because people who join subscriptions do so for the long term. And hence, they’d know a brand better. And so, their referrals can be more reliable and trusted.

Here’s how to market your coffee subscriptions via a referral program:

• Run a referral campaign for your coffee subscription
• Offer rewards to the customers who refer their friends
• Make the rewards exciting and worth their effort

Here’s how DriftAway has set up its coffee subscription referral program. The referrer customer gets points, while the referred customer gets a free coffee kit so they can try the coffee for free.

4. Offer unique perks and benefits

Let’s face the truth—there’s no shortage of online coffee subscriptions. And most of them offer the same or similar benefits—for example, points on every purchase, discounts, etc. 

And so, one way to attract and retain your customers is to stand out from your competitors’ coffee subscriptions by offering unique perks and offers.

Unique perks and benefits fall into these four categories:

1. Connection: better engagement between customers and retailers, leading to stronger, long-term connections.
2. Personalization: personalize subscription plans based on customers’ preferences.
3. Community: customers can connect with other like-minded people and experience tangible benefits.
4. Exclusivity: customers can have access to exclusive benefits and feel more special.

Let’s look at what these perks could be:

• Make the subscription experience convenient
• Allow access to unique and new coffee blends
• Coffee tasting events
• Share knowledge about coffee
• Support a cause via the subscription

5. Market your value proposition

Why do customers buy your coffee subscription? 

Is it because they like the product? Or do they enjoy the discounts? Do customers renew their subscriptions year after year because they learn new things about coffee from you?

Simply put, customers subscribe because of the value they derive from your subscription. And that’s your value proposition, which you should market.

Let’s look at the different value propositions a coffee business can market:

• Guaranteed price benefits: discounts, deals, freebies, etc.
• Discover new coffee blends via surprise products, samples, etc.
• Learn more about coffee through newsletters, articles, and more
• Allows customers to try the coffee before they buy 
• Combine supporting a cause with the subscription

And here’s how you can market your coffee subscription value proposition:

• Run focused campaigns across channels
• Center all your content around the value proposition. For example, your website content

6. Combine your loyalty program with subscriptions

You might have a loyalty program for your online business. How about you combine it with subscriptions—offer more benefits to customers.

Customers earn points, store credits, etc., via loyalty programs. You can enable them to make more points via subscriptions.  

For example, say your customers make regular one-time purchases as well as have a subscription. If you offer them loyalty points on subscriptions, they’ll be able to earn more points. 

More points equal more motivation for new customers to sign up for subscriptions.

7. Build a subscriber community

Communities are the thing to engage customers. An interesting finding from a study shows brands with communities see a +1352% return on their investment within a couple of years. 

You can do many things, especially for a community of coffee lovers. For example:

• Organize offline coffee events for community members
• Combine supporting a cause with coffee sales
• Encourage community members to organize coffee events
• Give exclusive benefits to community members

How does a community help?

• You can get a better understanding of what your customers want by asking your community members
• Create more engagement via community events
• Boost word-of-mouth marketing via community members
• It helps acquire more customers at a lesser cost

Don’t have a subscription model set up yet for your coffee business? Explore Appstle Subscriptions. 

8. Organize offline events

Being an online business, you know your chances of one-on-one interaction with customers are close to none.

Unless, of course, you create opportunities. These come easy for coffee subscription businesses.

Coffee is a thing of leisure, conversations, meetings, and getting together. You can organize offline events around your coffee business. Do this:

• Organize offline events for your subscribers
• Organize location-based events where you have more customers
• Have new product introductions or launch events
• Organize coffee-tasting events in collaboration with other related businesses. Think coffee shops, cafes, influencers, food businesses, etc.

After all, one-on-one meetings help make interactions more meaningful. You can get customer feedback, ask targeted questions to customers, etc.

Here’s an example from a coffee subscription business that hosts workshops:

9. Create hyper-local experiences

Another way to market your coffee subscription business is to go hyper-local. And there are many ways to do so.

• Optimize your website for local searches. Make sure customers know where all you deliver subscriptions
• Run location-based ads for your subscriptions
• Offer different types of products via subscriptions based on seasons. For example, add gift boxes within your subscription plan around the festive seasons
• Enable different languages. For example, if you operate in a country like India, where people in different regions speak different languages, enable the language change option on your website
• Partner with influencers across industries, such as travel, food and beverage, hospitality, and environment, etc.

Also read: 10 Marketing Ideas For Your Ecommerce Subscription Model Business

10. Collaborate and partner with related businesses/ influencers

While you can only reach a limited number of potential customers alone, you can multiply that number when you join hands with other related businesses and influencers.

That brings us to collaborations, celebrity endorsements, and influencer marketing—two strategies that can work exceptionally well for coffee subscriptions.

Imagine a celebrity endorsing your coffee subscription! Or collaborating with a chain of restaurants to market your coffee!

According to Business Insider, the influencer marketing industry will be worth $15 billion in 2023. 

In short, everyone’s doing it in ways that are obvious and not so obvious. Here’s what you should do:

• Collaborate with related businesses to market your subscriptions
• Join hands with coffee and food influencers
• Rope in celebrities to endorse your subscription
• Think of new ways to collaborate

Source

Final thoughts — how to create a coffee subscription marketing plan for success

Creating a marketing plan for your coffee subscription business must align with your Shopify website. You will require all the key subscription features to support your marketing efforts.

That’s where the Appstle Subscriptions and Loyalty app comes in. One of the best Shopify subscription apps in the market, it offers comprehensive features, so you don’t have to install multiple external apps.

Moreover, it provides customization and personalization capabilities that help enhance your marketing idea execution. 

Install Appstle Subscriptions and Loyalty App on your Shopify store today!