Don’t run too many sales.

In the past, I’ve been pretty negative about running sales. I agree with Chris Lema that you risk training your customers to wait for a sale before buying. Worst of all, you confuse your customers by implying that your product is worth less than your list price. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the price of our service and defend our current price daily as the correct price for our customers and our business. Running a sale contradicts the reality that our price is correct.

On top of the psychological impact, managing a different discount every month can be difficult, time-consuming, and confusing.

Discounts require promo images, sales copy, emails, social media, and sometimes paid promotion. Each new price adds an additional factor to any custom logic you might have around renewals, upgrades, or cross promotions. Your support channels will be stressed with customers asking for last week’s sale price, or next week’s sale price, or a deal they found in an old email. How can you tell them a certain price was only available for a limited time when you’re going to be running a similar deal in a month or two?

Is Black Friday/Cyber Monday an exception?

Despite the above concerns, the occasional sale can be very lucrative.

Running a sale once or twice a year offers a means to include potential customers you’ve ‘priced out’ or who might have been on the fence to give your paid products a try. Scott Bolinger offers an analysis of this in his post: Lessons Learned From 3 Years of Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sales. He says his BFCM sales nearly double his revenue in November. I’ve heard similar things from others… that a well done BFCM sale is like an extra month of revenue.

Who doesn’t want to cheat physics and get an extra month of revenue out of their business?

The BFCM weekend offers a unique opportunity if you’re going to run just one or two sales a year.

• Since sales are expected during this time, the pricing/branding impact is minimized.
• Depending on your industry, sales are either weak or strong during the holidays. If sales are weak, a BFCM discount can offset this weakness. If sales are strong, a BFCM discount can make the most of the increased traffic during a competitive time.
• Blogs and other marketing sites are going to be aggregating BFCM sales and sharing them with their readers, creating organic SEO opportunities and increasing traffic.

The downsides are minimized and the upsides are maximized. So, let’s do this!

What to offer

The easiest promotion you can run is a blanket percentage discount across all of your products. Anecdotally, 10% off feels lackluster, 25% off feels adequate, 50% off feels good, and anything more than that seems a little crazy but might be appropriate for products with low overhead.

Alternatively, you could bundle products together at a lower overall price. You could offer extra features, licenses, or an unlimited quantity of some part of your product that is usually limited. If you can’t or don’t want to lower the price on your product, you can still get creative to find ways to participate in BFCM.

No matter your offer, your BFCM sale should offer the best discount you give all year. It should be better than any ongoing affiliate deal or discount you offer through partners.

Other Pricing Considerations

Make sure you can afford the sale.

If it costs you $100 to deliver to each customer and support them, don’t run your sale below $100. You might be tempted to price things lower just to get the inflow of customers, but unless you have a direct reason to believe that each new customer is going to lead to further sales or upsells, be careful.

If you don’t know how much it costs to fulfill a customer order and support it, then you need to back up and figure that out. It’s possible your list price needs to be adjusted to account for your true cost of doing business. Start here.

Consider the cost of running the sale.

Besides any time and money you spend promoting your sale you’re also going to have a certain number of customers who would have paid full price for your product but ended up buying at the sale price. Requiring a discount code or a special URL will mitigate this a bit, but even so some number of customers will pay less than they would have. If you expect to average about 5 sales per day at $300 and you’re going to be offering a 50% discount for 4 days, there is about (4x5x150) $3000 you’re potentially leaving on the table. Your sale needs to make up for that. A good sale can make 1 month’s revenue ($45k in our example), so it would still be worth it… just make sure you run a good sale.

Remember, you’ll probably upset some current customers.

Some number of customers before and after the sale are also going to reach out to you asking to get the sale price. You can be as lenient (or as strict) as you want here. Our policy is to honor the request for the first X customers who ask. If it turns into a problem (it usually doesn’t, even though we often say things like “we’ll give you money if you just ask” in blog posts like this), then we’ll say something like “Sorry, we are only able to honor the discounted price to customers who purchased during the promotional period.” Be prepared to handle requests of this nature so they don’t catch you off guard.

Promote Your Sale Through Email

Hopefully you’ve been using some method to collect email addresses from potential customers. If not, watch Kim’s presentation here on how to setup an email capture landing page with PMPro. You’ll want to send out a few emails promoting your sale. Maybe one teaser before it launches and then an email every day the sale is live. I wouldn’t worry too much about sending 4, 5, or 6 emails in quick succession to your list. For sure, some people will unsubscribe, but someone who unsubscribes from your mailing list when you are offering your biggest discount of the year is unlikely to become a future customer.

Remember to exclude existing paying customers from your promotion emails. Most email marketing platforms offer a way to “segment” your email list.

If your existing members can take advantage of your promotion unless the promotion applies to them as well (i.e. lock-in special rates, added features to upgrade, etc.), consider sending them a different email specifically targeting them. The perfect message for existing customers is going to be different than the message you use for first time buyers.

Another segment you may want to consider is past customers who may have let their membership expire, only made one purchase from you, or other forms of single-engagement with your company and products. You can send a different email to this group that specifically addresses their unique case.

Promote the Sale on Your Site

Some sites choose to keep their BFCM deals a secret except for people who have gotten the discount code through other sources. I think if you’re going to run a sale and want it to be as effective as possible, you’ll want to promote the sale on your site. Visitors viewing a 50% discount on your site are going to be much more likely to purchase than normal and should make up for any lost revenue.

Some popular places to display a sale on your website include:

1. Page Banners and Boxes
   You can use Memberlite’s page bottom banners or a plugin like Holler Box to add a message with your discount code to the bottom of each page. We also like the plugin WPFront Notification Bar, which adds a bar across the top of your site with text and a button.
2. Popups and Popovers
   You can use something like Optin Monster to show your discount in a pop up when users are about to leave.
3. Automatic Discounts
   You can auto apply your discount code to all products on the site or simply drop the prices of your products with the normal price shown with a strikethrough.

Create a Landing Page

There are many ways to create a landing page, so focus on the simplest method for your customer to get to the offer. Black Friday and Cyber Monday create a sense of urgency to purchase, and more often then not the person making the purchase has already been eyeing up your products. Make it as quick as possible to close the sale.

• Using a Discount Code

  If you’re using a discount code, you can link to your product’s checkout page with the discount code set as a parameter in the URL. With Paid Memberships Pro, you can find these links in the “Levels” column of the Memberships > Discount Codes admin page or simply add &discount_code=blackfriday to the URL of your site’s checkout page (assuming your code is blackfriday).

• Redirect to Checkout via a Custom URL

  Alternatively, if you are using PMPro, you can use code like this in a custom plugin to redirect /blackfriday/ to the checkout page for a level the code is for. This shortened URL will be easier to share in social media.

• Customized Checkout Page

  If you have time, consider creating a new page at /blackfriday/, /cybermonday/, or /bfcm/. You can customize that page to speak directly to BFCM shoppers. You can create a new theme template or use custom CSS to adjust the display of that page. Maybe make the background black instead of the default on your site.

  If you use Paid Memberships Pro, you can create a separate checkout page for a specific product:

  1. Go to Pages > Add New in the WordPress Dashboard
  2. Paste the [pmpro_checkout] shortcode in the post editor along with any other custom sales copy or images
  3. Add a new “Custom Field” named pmpro_default_level. The value of the custom field should be set to the Level ID you want to default to.
  4. You can use custom code like this to autoset the discount code if you have one
  5. Save and publish your new custom checkout landing page!

Use Snappy Graphics

There is going to be a lot of competition for your customers’ attention BFCM weekend. Get into the spirit of things and use some snappy graphics to make your emails, social media posts, and promotions stand out. If you aren’t a graphic designer or don’t have the time or budget to hire one, you can use an app like Canva to make a promotional graphic. If you’re using MailChimp, the MailChimp Mobile Apps offer some nifty, simple and attractive email campaign templates.

Promote the sale everywhere—get listed to increase traffic.

Once you have your campaign in place, reach out to blogs and mailing lists in your industry to get your promotion listed.

You’ll of course be promoting your sale through your own Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Grandmother’s knitting circle, but there are other ways to get the word out. Many blogs and mailing lists are designed to exclusively aggregate BFCM promotions. For example, you can find a list of sites that did Black Friday round ups for WordPress products last year by Googling black friday WordPress 2016. You can do a similar search for your industry and find the aggregators that best fit your products. Reach out to these sites via their contact form, email address, or social profiles. Trust me, they want to hear from you. You can also reach out to leaders in your industry that would be willing to tweet your promotion to their followers.

A special offer to our Paid Memberships Pro-powered sites.

We’ll be publishing a list of membership sites running BFCM promotions here on our site and newsletter. If you’d like your sale included in that list, please submit the details here. We just need your site name, URL, and a short sale description.

What are some things you do that can invite hate?

Anything.

Getting hate? That’s a good indicator that you are working on something that people are passionate about. Because anything worth doing is going to upset someone.

At this time, there are over 50,000 websites running Paid Memberships Pro. The 80/20 rule we use to decide on features is only going to satisfy… wait for it… 80% of them. There will always be features that some users believe are the “most important” features. Even if we provide addons or code gists to account for a certain feature, some will feel the feature should be included in the core plugin, or easier to find, or set to a different default.

You can’t help everyone.

When we were doing consulting work with about 30 clients per year, if a client needed our help with something, we could find a way to help them. We’d work a weekend, stay up late, call in a favor. Now with 50,000 users and 5,000 customers, we can’t possibly help everyone as much as they need. We get dozens of emails every day, and within those emails are plenty of people we have the ability to help but we just don’t have the time. We do the best within the services we offer and try to point them in the right direction to get help from our partners or others, but some of these people are going to get upset.

And some of these users, customers, and potential customers are going to be so upset that they’ll post negative reviews, email us mean things, or even threaten us with legal, financial, or physical harm.

What are some things you do that can prevent hate?

Before I cover a few tips about how to handle hate that comes your way, let me first share a few tips on how to avoid some of the hate.

1. Offer a 100%, no questions, money-back guarantee.
2. Process refunds quickly.
3. Manage expectations in your copywriting.

I cover these topics a bit more in our posts About Refunds and Our 100% Money-back Guarantee and Great Advice for Decreasing Refund Rates.

Managing expectations is hard. There is a fine line between managing expectations and talking people out of buying your product. One thing you definitely can do is keep expectations in mind when processing a negative review or email. Could you have realistically prevented this hate mail without negatively impacting your other customers or revenue.

Dealing with Hate You Can’t Prevent

Here are some general steps I take whenever dealing with an emotionally charged email, review, or support request.

1. Look for constructive criticism.
2. Write a first draft. Delete it.
3. Put yourself in hater shoes.
4. Reply professionally.

Look for constructive criticism.

Even the most hateful of emails and reviews can be parsed for constructive criticism. The messenger may be a complete douchebag, but it’s still okay to learn from it. Maybe there is a bug to fix. Maybe you could update your documentation to make something more clear. Maybe you could update your sales copy to fix expectations.

Don’t like feel you have to take Mr. or Mrs. Hateful’s advice just because they are screaming. Be counscious whenever the “squeaky wheel” is getting the grease. Ideas you parse from negative feedback might be a good or bad. Process it like you would any other feedback.

Write a first draft. Delete it.

Open a blank notepad (that you can’t accidentally submit) to write your reply. The first draft should just be livid and dig into how much of a loser this person is for wasting your time… etc etc. Then delete it. Maybe others won’t need to unload like this, but I find it helps me a lot. It makes it much easier then to step back and address the message objectively.

Put yourself in hater shoes.

Your first response is going to be to lash back or get defensive. That’s why you delete your first draft. After that, take a moment to try to understand why the person is so upset. Some people are just rotten and evil, but maybe they are just having a really bad day. Until proven otherwise, give the user the benefit of the doubt.

One thing that opened my eyes a lot with regards to the hate mail we get is when I realized that we are selling more than just payment software. In a lot of ways we are selling a dream. People dream of using our software to make money, start a business, quit their day job, or to grow their associations in order to push forward their goals of social change. Heavy stuff. They spend hours or days trying to set up Paid Memberships Pro, run into problems, and then reach out to us… just to have to wait a few days for a response or be told they need to spend money they weren’t ready to spend. It is frustrating.

I also think about the “professional hagglers” who’ve been trained by bad customer service over the years to believe that loud threats are the best way to get someone’s attention. Sometimes “flipping the script” on these folks and treating them like human beings goes a long way to calming them down enough so you can help in the way you are willing to help.

Reply professionally.

No matter how irate the original message is, make sure that your reply is controlled and professional. With public posts in particular you will want to address the underlying concerns and issues behind the message. Even if it’s likely the poster has moved on (or you want to encourage them very much to move on), reply for the sake of anyone else who might stumble upon the post. Always reply to bad reviews or comments.The public will see a very irrational negative post, followed by your very rational reply. If your average reviews and publicity are generally positive, your replies will temper the occasional negative post.

Dealing with Stress

So now you might know how to pull useful feedback out of a hateful email. You’ve learned some tips for avoiding some of the hate mail. And you’ve learned a rough system for handling and replying to the hate mail. Even if you try your best to do this with robotic repetition, reading hateful words with your morning coffee is a bad way to start the day. You’re likely to get defensive and experience a nice little rush of adrenaline that could set you off balance for the rest of the day.

In addition to the typical stresses of running a business, as far as my mind and body are concerned I’ve been doing the equivalent of a hostage negotiation 2 to 3 times a week for the past few years. Here are some things I do to manage the stress:

1. Mediate
2. Isolate
3. Use the Buddy System
4. Engage Happy Customers

Meditate

I’m not a prolific mediator, but even 5 minutes of calm mindfulness every other day or so (I use the calm.com app) gives me a kind of super power. When I started meditating regularly I became better able to slow down, to recognize my natural emotional reactions as just emotions that will pass, and to step outside of myself a little bit so I could process hate mail and negative comments without taking it personally.

Meditating has also helped me in my personal life. Regular meditation helps to curb your knee jerk reactions when managing unruly kids, and it helps in the same way with unruly users and customers.

Isolate

I try not to read contact form email while I’m still getting your kids ready for school. I don’t check the WordPress.org reviews before a meeting or a coding session. In general, I make sure I’m ready whenever I wade into the inboxes and forums where hate lurks.

After dealing with support or another piece of stressful work, I try to have a buffer before I move onto anything else in life. I’ll take a walk, play a quick video game, or meditate for 5 minutes or so.

Use the Buddy System.

For a while, I had been shielding Kim from the worst of the communications coming into our business. As I started to struggle with things, I handed contact form duties off to her. She started to process the wide range of email coming in, from good-natured questions, to slightly annoying requests, to the full on hate mail. A week or so in, she looked at me with a horrified face like “you’ve been dealing with this all along?”

We have a larger support team now, and most of them bear the incoming hate at some level. The worst cases still get escalated to me, but since the smaller issues are handled by my team I’m in a better state when I work on the cases I do address.

Our team chat is now also a place we can use to vent, get stuff off our chest, and just generally laugh at how surreal customer support can be.

If you don’t have a team of your own, you can search for other business owners going through the same thing. The Supporting WordPress Products Facebook Group is a great example of a place where business owners come together to help each other through sharing advice and also just being there to listen.

Engage Happy Customers

Unhappy customers are going to be so much more likely to post something in public than customers that don’t run into issues. Every once in a while, and also as part of some of our automated reminders, we try to prompt happy customers to post a review or testimonial. We will often follow up to successfully closed tickets with a request to share an honest review of our plugin on the wordpress.org repository. And every once in a while, we make an ask to our mailing list for folks to write reviews and testimonials. We get a lot of positive feedback from these asks, and the positive reviews on wordpress.org help to diminish the 1 star reviews there. (For each 1 star review we get, we need 3 five star reviews to maintain a 4+ star rating.)

Besides getting some nice things written about us and helping with Internet points, reaching out to happy customers also reminds us why we’re doing this. It feels good to engage with people who are benefiting from our hard work.

In Summary

The amount of hate you have to deal with day to day will scale with the size of your business, and you may not be ready for it.

There are some things you can do to avoid some of the hate, like 100% money-back guarantees and clear copywriting. However, you won’t be able to stop it all.

When hate comes in, look for constructive criticism, discard your first drafts, try to empathize, and reply professionally.

To help with the stress of dealing with this hate, meditate, isolate, use the buddy system, and engage with happy customers.

These kinds of posts are difficult for me, because I fear what our own unhappy customers will think of this. I’m ready for it. But I do hope that my experience here is useful to other businesses working to keep their customers as happy as possible while also staying sane and productive.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or tips with regards to dealing with negativity with your customers.