When you are a course creator, it’s easy to get into a rhythm of offering regular discounts on your course during the year.
But can you run promotions without discounting? And what’s the benefit?
Downsides to discounting
Offering a discount at Christmas, Summer, Black Friday, or on your birthday, seems like a quick win. You can send out a stack of emails to your list, maybe even run some Facebook ads, and you’ll definitely get some sales. And sales = money in the bank.
BUT - if your discounts become too predictable, why would anyone buy your course at the full price? If people in your audience have been on your list for a little while, they will soon pick up that if they hang around for long enough, a discount will come along. It might even start to feel a little disingenuous, if barely anyone pays the full price. It’s like one of those furniture stores with the permanent sale (which always ends on Monday…).
This was the challenge with my client. All recent promotions have offered the same discount of 40% on the membership price. In this case, access to the course was a via membership which renewed annually. Members stayed on the price they joined with - so if they joined with 40% discount, they kept this discount every year.
So, we decided to test an alternative offer.
Lifetime Membership
After discussions with the client, we decided to test a Lifetime Membership offer. This was an attractive offer to test for a number of reasons:
We could offer Lifetime to existing annual members as well as non members
It didn’t represent a discount but was still appealing to customers who planned to stay in the membership for more than 3 years
Lifetime is based on an existing product so didn’t involve creating anything new (e.g. such as a standalone, single purchase).
The strategy
We chose to promote the Lifetime Membership with a short, sharp email campaign. We decided to offer a limited number of Lifetime Memberships at an introductory “founder” price, which introduced both scarcity, urgency and exclusivity to the offer.
We also chose to offer this initially to current members, to convert their annual or monthly membership to Lifetime. Then, a further 4 emails were sent to the full list (members and non members).
The messaging
I developed a number of copy ideas and angles, focused on the benefits to customers of Lifetime membership, and using our customer avatars.
These emphasised advantages such as locking in a lifetime of access with one payment, insuring against unexpected financial hiccups down the track. The messaging also appealed to the desire to really commit to learning, and being in it for the long run. I also used real student stories of achievements through the program.
The client used these in the sales page and video.
The email campaign
I wrote sales emails to the campaign; 3 for existing members (including a presale email) and 4 to non-members, using the copy ideas I had discussed with the client.
The Metrics
Emails to existing members achieved high open rates (60% average) and high click rates (16% average).
The emails to the full list (members and non members) achieved a great average open rate of 34%, and average click rate of 1.5%.
The Results
Total number of sales from campaign: 82
Total revenue: $81,754.00
Sales to existing members: 73
Sales from new members: 9
Purchasers loved the “Lifetime” concept and described themselves as “Lifetime” members in the Membership Community.
The client was delighted with these results for a brand new offer.
Client Testimonial
“Clair has helped my business massively for the past few years with email and blog copy that truly engages our customers. Her emails for our most recent campaign saw open rates up to 59% that generated £80k+ in revenue in just 4 days!”
Thinking of testing promotions without discounting? Get in touch to discuss how we can work together.