{"id":882,"date":"2019-11-12T16:49:51","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T16:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/project.co\/?p=882"},"modified":"2024-06-12T13:00:22","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T13:00:22","slug":"appsumo-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/project.co\/appsumo-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"$93,884 & 3,500 customers in 3 weeks: Our AppSumo experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
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To AppSumo or not to AppSumo? That is the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s almost certainly what Shakespeare would ponder if he was a 21st-century software entrepreneur instead of a (pretty good) Tudor playwright. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s probably a question you\u2019ve asked yourself, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a long-time follower of AppSumo – nothing crazy, but I\u2019ve bought a few deals in the past – it was certainly on my list of possible marketing strategies when we first launched. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, I decided it was the right thing for us to do, and now the process is complete I wanted to share our experience and the results with you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully, you\u2019ll find it interesting – and it\u2019ll help you decide whether running an AppSumo promotion is right for you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Executive Summary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We had an awesome experience with AppSumo. They are a thoroughly nice team and 100% delivered on their promise of a flood of traffic and educated new users. They have a very slick process that has clearly been been tried, tested and refined over time. Their ability to provide their community with what they want is also impressive. When the deal closed out we had received a ton of traffic, a lot of new account sign ups, a lot of purchases and we\u2019ve been speaking with new customers non-stop. This provided us with a huge amount of exceptionally useful product feedback. So overall this was a huge win for us! Some of the key stats are as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"AppSumo<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

AppSumwho?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ok, for the uninitiated, AppSumo is essentially a deal site offering deep-discounted, \u2018lifetime\u2019 deals on software products for early adopters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have a huge database of around 800,000 users who are passionate about getting early access to software, and score some amazing deals in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This makes the AppSumo decision a balancing act; yes, it can lead to new users, revenue and crucial feedback, but it also means heavily discounting your product. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For these reasons, it isn\u2019t always a \u2018no-brainer.\u2019 There are pros and cons to weigh up, which I\u2019ll talk about shortly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Background<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So, for context, we were coming at this from a standing start. We had only just launched Project.co, and we were really looking to just get out there – to build some visibility and traction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help us do this, we launched on Betali.st<\/a> and a few other beta sites a couple of months before we spoke with AppSumo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of these sites is roughly the same – their audiences are made up of people looking to discover emerging startups and software tools before they become mainstream. It\u2019s all about that competitive advantage of finding an awesome tool before your competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We paid $129 – for the listing on Betali.st. And that was where AppSumo found us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d already taken a sneaky look to see if AppSumo might be right for us in the future, but they actually approached me before I had the chance to take this further. (Incidentally, I almost certainly would have reached out to them eventually if they hadn\u2019t made contact first.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why run an AppSumo promotion?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the things I was most concerned about was potentially devaluing our product. I didn\u2019t want future potential customers to look back and wrongly surmise that this significantly slashed price was a true reflection of our actual value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, though, I concluded that this exercise wasn\u2019t entirely financial, and paled into insignificance behind the reasons to go ahead\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exposure<\/strong> – AppSumo\u2019s list is seriously huge. The ability for a startup to reach 800,000 people isn\u2019t to be sniffed at, and – more than that – it\u2019s a targeted audience of early adopters who are actively engaged in trialling and using the latest software products.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Feedback<\/strong> – By getting our product in front of people who were likely to try out and use it, I knew we\u2019d also get a bunch of interesting and useful feedback. I thought of it as a sort of public beta; a logical next step in testing Project.co and building our audience, while still generating some revenue rather than giving the product away for free. The feedback would be ongoing, too – we\u2019d be able to get data around how many people were using it every day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Network Effects<\/strong> – Because of the nature of Project.co – a collaboration tool – I knew that the likelihood was that people would invite colleagues and clients to the tool, and that this would further building exposure and visibility in the market. I knew there was a high chance that the people AppSumo users invite to Project.co might also create their own accounts in the future as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Negotiation <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The promotion we ended up with was that users would pay $49 for a lifetime (small plan) account, providing access for up to 10 users and 25gb storage space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AppSumo also offers the ability for customers to \u2018stack\u2019 deals, increasing things like user limits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, this meant we were giving away a lifetime deal for the price of just one month. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, we\u2019d have to support people forever for one relatively low up-front payment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also agreed on a 30\/70 revenue split in AppSumo\u2019s favour. This doesn\u2019t sound like the most favourable deal, but, ultimately, it comes back to the fact that this was never a purely financial thing for us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opportunity to get in front of 800,000 targeted potential users is priceless, and – given that AppSumo handle all of the promotion – I wasn\u2019t particularly unhappy with the split.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to mention that there was minimal negotiation around this. The team at AppSumo will tell you their terms – and ask you to confirm you\u2019re happy to work on that basis. Of course, we were! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Testing & Evaluation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not to sound conceited – but AppSumo don\u2019t just promote anybody. They understandably have an evaluation and testing period where they check a product out and make sure it works before they stake their reputation on promoting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also invite 3-4 of their testers that they know and respect to check it out. This is all perfectly understandable as a way for AppSumo to safeguard the value of their business, which comes mainly from their audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Strategy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

From the outset, my view was that we should minimise our own promotion of the AppSumo deal. Ultimately this was the whole point of working with AppSumo – we would provide the software, they would provide the audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This also meant we could focus more of our time on what was really important (and pretty challenging): support. There\u2019s no other way to put it: it was hard work. I pretty much single-handedly dealt with support issues for the whole period, and this meant working non-stop for two weeks, responding to a barrage (in the nicest possible way) of support requests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course – this was to be expected and, actually, as I\u2019ve mentioned earlier, honestly a good thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wanted to dive in at the deep end and fully test the product. Every support ticket, every customer conversation, was a chance to improve our understanding of what people wanted from the system – so that we could improve and make it better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In comparison, if we launched without the AppSumo promotion and saw a slow trickle of traffic and sign-ups, we would ultimately be in a much worse place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a new product to market it\u2019s essential to get committed people using the software as quickly as possible. It\u2019s only with a significant amount of users that you can make quality decisions about what features the general consensus of people want. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we had 1-2 users asking for something instead of 100-200 users then we could be building the wrong things and wasting a lot of our time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pre-launch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To kick things off, we created a test account for AppSumo, which they shared with their testers for evaluation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The testers came back with a bunch of questions and some positive feedback – and we also got a nice review article<\/a> published on the AppSumo blog to raise some initial awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next up was the fairly mundane – but highly important – logistical task of creating 10,000 unique deal codes. This was on AppSumo\u2019s advice, and, while we ended up selling far less than the 10,000 codes, it at least gave us some breathing space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you set up 10,000 deal codes? Good question, and one I asked myself in a cold sweat when this challenge presented itself, but it turns out it was actually fairly easy to do. We used Chargebee, a subscription management software. We found this article on the Chargebee blog<\/a> which explained how to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To further complicate things, we had to build in the ability to \u2018stack\u2019 codes as I mentioned earlier – so users could upgrade their account to incorporate more users. Our workaround here was for them to use one code to get onto the \u2018Small\u2019 plan and then, for any other codes they bought, they\u2019d simply email over to our support email and we would stack them onto the account manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another pre-launch step was to fill out 5 fairly long documents with our info, the deal info and various other bits for AppSumo to use as sales collateral. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We took the time to get our website set up, refreshing our brand and message in time for launch so that we\u2019d make the best possible first impression when people found us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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