{"id":1177,"date":"2019-12-20T07:07:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T07:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/project.co\/?p=1177"},"modified":"2024-06-12T13:00:45","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T13:00:45","slug":"black-friday-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/project.co\/black-friday-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Black Friday deal TANKED!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Well…I did say we would share our failures as well as our successes! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article, I\u2019ll tell you the sorry story of how our Black Friday deal fell flat on its face<\/strong>…and share some of the lessons we learned along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why run a Black Friday deal?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So, unless you were enjoying a November vacation to a distant planet, you probably noticed the annual bonanza of post-Thanksgiving deals and discounts known as Black Friday.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally, dating back to the 1950s, Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving – simply represented the start of the holiday shopping season. Businesses found it culturally problematic to run Christmas promotions before Thanksgiving was over, which meant that Black Friday was like a starter gun for the festive shopping period. The day reportedly took its name from the traffic and crowds it created in towns and cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, though, Black Friday is way<\/em><\/strong> more than that.<\/strong> The day itself has become almost a cultural event, with deals and discounts across every imaginable niche, from retail, to travel and leisure and – yes – even SaaS! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, a record <\/strong>$7.4 billion<\/strong><\/a> was spent online on Black Friday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately – spoiler alert<\/em> – not a single penny of that came our way! That\u2019s right: a big fat zero. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c0\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s look at why\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did we want to achieve?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We came into this on the back of a very successful AppSumo deal which you can read about here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 4,000<\/strong> people took up this deal, making up 99% of our overall signups for Project.co. But – crucially – only around 1,500<\/strong> of those were paying customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking into account the time of year – and looking at opportunities to grow our revenue – we thought there\u2019d be an opportunity to target the other 2,500<\/strong> with a special Black Friday <\/em>deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deal…<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So we had a think about the best deal we could offer, taking into account what we knew about the audience and their goals. We knew they were mostly smaller businesses, who were at least interested <\/em>in the lifetime offer we\u2019d promoted through AppSumo. We also wanted the deal to align with our normal, \u2018per-user\u2019 pricing model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on all this, we decided to create an offer of 2 free users for life <\/strong>if they signed up to an annual plan. (This would be in addition to the 2 free months people get on the annual plan anyway.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What this meant, in practice, was that people could get a 3 user account and pay for just 1 user. If they wanted a 5 user account, they\u2019d only pay for 3. If they wanted 7, they\u2019d pay for 5 – and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were pretty excited about this. We thought it was a strong Black Friday offering that would help convert those people who\u2019d signed up but not been enticed, for whatever reason, by the AppSumo promo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launch & promotion<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We launched the deal on Tuesday 26th November. I know, it\u2019s early!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Black Friday – as well as expanding from its origins – has also slowly grown to become far more than just one day. Retailers regularly talk about \u2018Black Friday Month\u2019 and run deals all throughout November (Amazon, I\u2019m looking at you!) so launching earlier in the week didn\u2019t trouble us at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We knew that doing this would give us some time to promote and build some interest. We did, however, state an end date and time of midnight on Black Friday itself – 29th November, to make sure there was a sense of urgency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We segmented our user database and sent an email to 2,127 people who matched the following criteria:<\/p>\n\n\n\n