How to sell more stuff to your existing customers

Abstract:

Attracting and converting new visitors is very important, we all know that. But don’t ignore your existing customers. There’s good money to be made selling more stuff to people who already purchased from you before.
This session will focus on cross- and up-selling to existing customers, using email campaigns, newsletters, auto-responders, Facebook, Twitter, etc…

See you in London!

I had no idea what to expect. But it appears that a large part of our audience (home users) are on Facebook.
Now, 10 months later, the Collectorz.com page on Facebook has almost 12,000 fans and it has proven to be a great new way to communicate with our customers.

Here’s a quick post on the why and how of Facebook fan pages for software.

Why create a Facebook fan page

For us, the most important benefit of having a Collectorz.com page on Facebook, is being able to reach 12,000 of our customers a few times each day.
Sending email newsletters to your existing customers is powerful, but you are limited to once or maybe twice a month, for risk of being reported as a spammer.
While on Facebook, nobody has a problem with seeing a short message from us a couple of times each day (as long as the messages are interesting/useful/funny).

Some examples of what we post about:

• Small updates on what everyone at the office is working on.
• Announcements of new releases (including small maintenance builds).
• New testimonials.
• Reminders for sales we are running.
• Tips for using our software.
• Special offers for fans.
• etc… etc…

Want more ideas for Facebook updates?
Just “Like” my Collectorz.com page and watch my daily posts

Doing this helps to keep our company “top of mind” and our customers involved. They comment on our posts and create new wall posts themselves. We always try to respond as soon as possible and our users like seeing that there are actual human beings behind this company, directly interacting with them.
The result: they buy more stuff and are more likely to tell their friends about us.

How to attract fans for your Facebook page?

Of course, the more fans your page has, the bigger the effect (and the more effective your time spent on Facebook is). Here’s some things we do to attract fans:

• Facebook fan boxes on our home page and all product pages, like on our Movie Collector page (on the right, scroll down a bit).
• Regular invites to existing customers to join us on Facebook (in newsletters).
• A link to our Facebook page in the signature of all our emails.
• A dedicated email about our Facebook page on Day 2 of my auto-responder sequence for trial users and Day 7 of my new customer auto-responder:
  

  Howdy,

  Alwin again, of Collectorz.com. I will keep it short and sweet.
  I was just wondering, are you on Facebook ?

  You see, I am posting regular updates on our Collectorz.com Facebook page. The latest news on what we’re working on, hints and tips for our software, special discount offers, and other fun stuff.

  So if you’re on Facebook: Connect with Collectorz.com by going here:

  http://www.facebook.com/Collectorz

  then just click the “Like” button at the top.

Now go create your own Facebook page.
Let me know about it in the comments and I’ll “like” it

The reminder email

First let me show you the reminder email I sent out on Saturday. It took me about 5 minutes to write.
And as you can see below, that was time well spent

Two days left to upgrade Music Collector for $14.95

Hi John,

Quick reminder:
There’s only two days left on the special offer for upgrading
your Music Collector license.

Upgrade to version 9 for Windows or version 3 for Mac OS X, for just $14.95:

http://collectorz.com/up.php?product=music&key=123456789012

On Monday May 17, the upgrade fee will be back to its regular $24.95 level.

Don’t miss out. Upgrade your license today.

Alwin
Collectorz.com, http://www.collectorz.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/Collectorz

The results

Here’s the results of my upgrade week in a nice chart. I have include some extra days from before the Upgrade Week, so that you can better see the effect of the offer.

• The first email caused a huge peak in upgrades. That day we sold about 30 times as many upgrades as in the days before.
• The quick reminder on Saturday, caused another peak that was exactly as high as the first one.
• The drop-off after the the 2nd peak was much less than after the first one, probably because Sunday was the last day (urgency).

If you are doing a limited-time special offer, don’t forget to send out a final reminder email 1 or 2 days before the offer ends. If you don’t, you may be missing out on nearly 50% of sales!

Here’s the email I sent out today, to all pre-v9 customers:

Upgrade your Music Collector for just $14.95 (6 days left)

==========================================================
Upgrade Music Collector for $14.95 :

http://collectorz.com/up.php?product=music&key=123456789012

( offer ends Sunday May 16 )
==========================================================

Hi John,

This is Alwin, with a great (but very temporary) upgrade offer for you.
But first, some news about the Collectorz.com online music database…

In February, when we lost Amazon, we added two new data sources to our
online music database: Discogs and MusicBrainz. This resulted in more cover
images (front and back!) and improved success rates for CD-ID searches.

But because of the added sources, the search results in the Add Albums
Automatically screen had become a bit messy.
This was particularly noticable for CD-ID and barcode searches. These had lost
the laser-targeted effectiveness of single exact matches. Not good.

So 4 weeks ago, we decided to fix all this once and for all.
Robbert and Dinh got to work and rewrote most of our search engine.

Their changes (released 2 weeks ago):
- CD-ID and barcode searches now give you single, auto-checked matches.
- Improved success rate of CD-ID searches: it now recognizes 91% of your CD-IDs.
- Artist/Title searches now return much less and better targeted results.

But we were not satisfied yet.
So while Dinh got back to his iPad project, Robbert focussed on barcodes.
After the loss of Amazon the “hit rate” on barcode searches had dropped to
about 45%. Ouch… But Robbert now has it back up to 65%.
Not good enough, I agree, but a big step in the right direction.

Anyway, why am I telling you all this?

Well, I guess what I am trying to say is that Music Collector is not a
stand-alone piece of software on your PC or Mac. The world (read: internet)
around us is changing continuously. Amazon goes, other sources appear, some
devices go out of fashion (classic iPods), new devices appear (iPhone, Android,
Blackberry, iPad), web-based software solutions are getting more popular…

And the 12-man Collectorz.com team here at the office is constantly updating
Music Collector, our mobile apps and our server-side software to keep you
connected (pun intended) to this ever-changing software landscape.

This year alone we will bring you: mobile apps for iPad, Blackberry & Android,
plus we will finally release the music edition of Collectorz.com Connect.

But you do need the latest version of Music Collector to enjoy our efforts.
And our customer files show that *you* don’t own that version yet.

Because I would hate to see you left behind, I have created a temporary
upgrade offer, valid through Sunday May 16 (that’s just 6 days from now):

* Upgrade your Music Collector for only $14.95 (regular upgrade fee is $24.95)

http://collectorz.com/up.php?product=music&key=123456789012

Need a reminder of what’s new? Go here for full info and screens:
v9.1 Windows : http://collectorz.com/music/upgrade.php?key=123456789012
v3.4 Mac OS X: http://collectorz.com/music/upgrademac.php?key=123456789012

And remember, once you have upgraded you get to download all of this year’s
minor updates free of charge.

This offer ends in six days, so don’t miss out.

Alwin
Collectorz.com

On Saturday, I will sent them a nice “two days left” reminder. Usually, that results in a huge peak in sales, bigger than the first day peak.

Don’t be afraid to keep reminding your “old version” crowd of your cool new version. Eventually they *will* upgrade You have spent too much time and money creating all those new features to just let people get away with not upgrading.

If you want as many users as possible to evaluate your trial version, it makes sense to make downloading it easy as possible, no barriers at all.
On the other hand, having the email address of your trial users lets you follow up with them, hopefully increasing your chances of converting them into customers.

Which approach will bring you more profits?
Public Download Links or Mandatory Sign Ups?
As always, there’s only one way to find out: an A/B split test.

The Collectorz.com situation

Of course, testing any form of sign up approach only make sense if your going to follow up, either automatically or manually. Otherwise the reduced number of downloads will only hurt your sales.
At Collectorz.com, we have been experimenting with autoresponder (AR) follow-up sequences for over a year. We are currently using a simple, but effective 4-message sequence, that is being sent out to people signing up for the free trial:

• Day 0: Welcome, $5 discount coupon, download link, link to Getting Started guide, testimonials.
• Day 2: Buying guide, standard vs pro, barcode scanners, iPhone app, testimonials.
• Day 6: Subscribe to newsletter invitation, benefits of cataloging your stuff, testimonials.
• Day 30: Outright invitation to buy, more testimonials.

Up until 2 weeks ago we used the soft approach, with the sign up being sort of optional. That is, our product home pages only showed a sign up box, no download link, but on the Download page one could still download the trial without signing up. (the Download page could be reached through our navigation bar at the top).

I have always been procrastinating to go for the mandatory sign up only, because:

• I was afraid I might loose sales.
• I wasn’t sure my AR sequence was good enough.
• I didn’t have a solution for existing customers yet. I mean customers who already own a license and are just looking to (re)download the latest version of their software.

But I have been optimizing my ARs in the past year, plus a few weeks ago I implemented a smart download link request form for existing customers.
So I figured, let’s go for the big test.

The test

In the past 2 weeks have been running the following A/B split test:

Version A

As described above. The product home pages showing a sign up box only, the download page allowing direct download, plus offering an optional sign up for the Getting Started guide:

Download Page - Version A

Version B

The Product homes as in A, but the download page having a Sign Up For The Trial box only:

Download Page - Version B

Note that in version B i have added the Download Link Request box for existing customers.

The results

These are the results after running the above A/B split test for 14 days. In these two weeks, the test counted 69,000 first time visitors and just over 600 sales.

• #Downloads: down by 33.6%
• #Sign Ups: up by 20.7%
• #Sales: up by 3.4%
• Average First Purchase Value: up by 13.5%
• Profits: up by 15.4%

Interestingly, the sales of the B group lagged behind during the first few days of the test, then began catching up fast, to end the test as the winner. The effect of the AR emails at work, i guess.
Another fact to notice is the most of the gain in profits is caused by the increase in the First Purchase Value, not so much by the number of sales. Maybe the AR is helping to build trust, convincing users to include a barcode scanner with their purchase, or to buy multiple cataloging programs in a bundle?

My advice?

First, don’t try this at home! At least not until you have a tried and tested AR follow-up sequence in place.
And even then, your results may vary. My customers are home users and my guess is that these people are more likely to willingly provide their email address. If you are selling to more tech savvy users or to businesses, your download counts may drop too much to be compensated by better AR conversions.
But then again, business users may be more serious about evaluating software and therefore perfectly willing to let you email them more info. And if you’re in a “low volume, high ticket” business, you could even send personal follow up emails manually. Or here’a a crazy idea, ask for their phone number and just call them.

Anyway, for us a mandatory sign up process seems to be workig. And I haven’t even implemented all our AR ideas yet. Obvously, that is at the top of my to-do list now.

We have been using urgency with our offers for quite a while, but last week we tried adding some scarcity.

Creating urgency using offer end-dates and reminder emails

All our offers are temporary and we clearly mention the end date in the emails. Giving the offer an expiry date results in urgency, a reason for customers to act now. They will be less inclined to postpone their purchase, which will reduce the risk that they forget about it entirely.

Reminder emails
To increase the urgency, we always send out at least two short reminder emails about the expiry date getting closer, e.g. 5 days before the end date and a final “24 hours left” email. It’s amazing how many extra sales you can pull in with that “24 hours left” reminder. We have seen cases where we sold more on that final day than on the first day.
Worried about annoying your customers with those reminders? I can understand, I had the same fears when we started doing this. But this doesn’t seem to be a problem at all. Just keep your reminder emails short and to the point. Repeat the offer, state how many days are left, then give em the buy link again.

Increasing the urgency by adding scarcity

Last week we tried something different. We were able to buy a large quantity (850 units) of laser barcode scanners from Opticon, at a very good price. We decided to offer them to our existing customers at a discount. For this specific offer stock was limited, so I tried to use that scarcity to our advantage.

I created a special page about the promotion on our website. In the top right corner of the page, I added a live counter, showing how many scanners we still had in stock (or to be more precise, showing 850 minus the number of units sold).

Then last Thursday, on October 22, I sent out the following email to existing customers:

Subject: Get Your OPR-3201 Laser Scanner Before Stock Runs Out

Hi ~Contact.FirstName~,

Alwin here, with a special, and temporary(!) barcode scanner deal:

*********************************************************************
The high quality, super robust Opticon OPR-3201 laser scanner.
Retail price: $114.95, Collectorz.com price: $99.95, NOW ONLY : $79.95
This offer ends November 15, 23:59 or when stock runs out (835 left)
http://www.collectorz.com/opr3201-offer.php
*********************************************************************

Here’s what happened:

A few weeks ago, my friend Margaret from Opticon called me and asked if I
was in any way interested in buying 850 OPR-3201 laser barcode scanners at
an extremely low price. But I had to decide quickly because this batch had
to go before the end of September (something with the end of the fiscal
year, crazy Americans…).

I quickly ordered a sample unit to check it out… And we all love it!
This pistol-grip scanner feels great in your hands and it scans very well.

After some negotiation, we decided to buy the entire batch of 850 scanners.
They’re in our warehouse in Portland now, ready to be shipped out to you.

The OPR-3201 scanner has been available in the Collectorz.com shop for a
couple of days, and we have already sold 15 (for $99.95).
Of course we can just continue to sell them for that amount and make some
extra money, but I figured it would be nice to offer it for an even lower
price to our loyal customers. (I want everyone to experience the joy of
cataloging stuff by scanning barcodes.)

So here’s the deal:
For the next 25 days, up until November 15 – 23:59, I will let you buy this
scanner for only $79.95. This is a ridiculously low price for this
professional barcode scanner, which means that there’s a good chance we
will run out of stock before that date.

To take advantage of this temporary offer, secure your OPR-3201 scanner here:

http://www.collectorz.com/opr3201-offer.php

This robust laser scanner can only be purchased for the $79.95 price
through the link above, it will not be available on our regular website.
Please don’t give the above link to anyone else, it is for YOU only!

Again, don’t miss this opportunity, because when these 850 units are sold
out, the OPR-3201 scanner will never again be available for this price.

Tip: At the top right of the offer page you will find a live stock counter.
Keep an eye on it so you don’t miss out. Hit Refresh in your browser to update.

Currently there are 835 units left …

http://www.collectorz.com/opr3201-offer.php

Alwin
Collectorz.com

The results

We have done a similar scanner offer last year in August and in that month we sold almost 500 units (at $114.95). So I was expecting to sell roughly the same amount now.
(BTW: that August 2008 scanner promotion is a story in itself, now known as the “Cable Crisis”. I will tell you the full story later )

This time, with more urgency and a bit of scarcity, we sold 341 units on the first day. Today, 5 days after the offer announcement email, stock is down to 231 scanners, over six hundred sold.

Of course, I couldn’t resist using the increased scarcity to generate some more urgency. So in today’s October issue of the Collectorz.com newsletter, I started with the following news item:

** Get your OPR-3201 laser scanner for only $79.95 **

I was able to buy 850 units of this high-quality and super robust scanner,
for a very low price. And because I want all of you to experience the joys
of cataloging stuff by scanning barcodes, I will let you buy this scanner
for only $79.95 (regular retail price is $114.95).

This offer ends on November 15 – 23:59 or when stock runs out,
whichever comes first.

HOWEVER: since announcing this offer last Thursday, we have already sold
over SIX HUNDRED units. Currently, there’s only 231 scanners left.

So… if you want one too, you will have to act NOW. Go here, fast:

http://www.collectorz.com/opr3201-offer.php

At the time of writing, we’re down to 196 scanners left. So it’s likely that stock will run out before time does

Quick tips for using urgency and scarcity

• Always have an expiry date on your special offers
• Be clear about the expiry date in your emails and promotional pages.
• Stick to the end date. Resist the temptation to keep the promotion running and catch some more sales. Your customers will learn that you are serious about your end-dates, which will increase the urgency next time.
• Send out reminders. At least 2 or 3, maybe more if the promotion is running for a longer time.
• Don’t forget the “24 hours left” reminder, as it can pull in a lot of sales.
• Use scarcity to add urgency. Use fake scarcity if you have to (I know most of you are not selling stuff for which you may have limited inventory). Just tell your customers you will end the offer after 200 copies sold.
• If you can do it, display a live “items left” counter on your promotion page. This will not only increase the urgency, but it will also give your offer some credibility, as it shows that other customers are taking advantage of it already.

UPDATE (October 30, 17:42)

They’re all gone. 850 OPR-3201 laser barcode scanners sold in 8 days

We have received notification from several Internet Service Providers that your recipients are reporting your emails as spam at a rate which exceeds their allowed thresholds. In order to prevent any further spam complaints from your contacts and to protect your email sending reputation, we have temporarily disabled all email sending capabilities.
To restore email sending service to your Infusionsoft application and learn how you can prevent future spam complaints, please contact the Infusionsoft Customer Care Staff at the information listed below.

FYI: this threshold is normally set at 0.1%, which means that you are allowed one spam complaint for every thousand emails you send.

We did send out our monthly Collectorz.com Newsletter on Wednesday, but this newsletter is quite popular among our subscribers. So I am surprised if we would suddenly get a lot of spam complaints about it.

Of course I checked my Spam Complaints reports inside the InfusionSoft system. It showed 12 spam complaints for this newsletter, for about 100 thousand emails sent! That’s not too bad, is it? At least way below the 0.1% threshold.

Maybe one or more ISPs did get a higher percentage of spam complaints, fine.
But what bothers me is that InfusionSoft just disabled my email sending capabilities without waiting for my response. And then their email just tells me to “contact them”, without any hint as to what exactly has caused the problem, what actions I should take to resolve it or what information they need from me in my response.

Of course, I did reply to their email right away, giving them as much information as possible, about my list, my autoresponder sequences and the newsletter we had just sent out. But no reply from InfusionSoft until now, other then a reminder of the disabled state on Saturday.

Guess they are not working weekends. I am though and my business is continuing in the weekends too, for us these are the best days of the week. But not now, because my autoresponders are not working.

Anyway, looks I will have to call them tomorrow. Sigh…

Sorry for the rant, just had to vent my frustration. But there is a lesson here too:

Autoresponders are a great way to raise conversions, both on the front-end and on the back-end. But make sure sure your business does not fully rely on them. Because one spam compaint too many, and you’re out.

Well, maybe Twitter is the way to do just that. I am not sure yet, but I’m having a go anyway.

In last week’s newsletter, we invited our customers to “Follow us on Twitter”. Up till now, this has generated over 300 followers.

Nice… but now there’s the need to tweet…

And if writing content for a monthly newsletter was hard, how am I going to say something relevant, useful and interesting a few times a day?
Here’s some things I am trying:

• Explain what everyone’s working on at the office.
• Give little progress updates for current projects.
• Teaser screenshots of new upcoming products and features.
• Answers to today’s common questions.
• Snippets of fresh testimonials, linking to the full text on our website.
• Links to new reviews and blog posts about our software.
• Highlight popular or especially interesting forum topics.
• Point to new or rewritten FAQ entries.

I will let you know how it goes in a future blog post.
Or, just follow my Twitter adventures here: http://twitter.com/collectorz

Isn’t that a time-consuming hassle each month?
And what to write? Do I have enough news every month to fill a newsletter?
Do I have to hire someone to design a fancy html template first?
Won’t my customers start complaining if I spam them every few weeks? I am already hesitant to annoy them by email when I have a new version…
And why would I send a newsletter each month? Why not just email them when I have something new to sell …

Sounds familiar? Because that is how I looked at it. At least, up until two years ago.
But now, I changed my mind on all of the above concerns, except one…
Which one? Read on…

Why do a monthly newsletter?

Let’s look at the “why would I” question first.
The main reason for sending a monthly newsletter is to create “top of mind awareness”. A nice marketing term, what does that mean for us software authors?

Well, reminding your customers of your existence makes them more likely to:

• Buy more software from you.
• Tell their friends about you, so that those friends will buy more software from you.
• Blog about you, so that their readers buy more software from you.
• Tweet about you on Twitter, so that their followers buy more software from you.
• etc… you get the point… you’ll sell more software.

The first one is the most directly noticeable effect, but of course only applies if you actually do sell more than one program (which you should!).

During the first years of Collectorz.com we only emailed our customers when we had a considerable update for the app they owned. Which meant they only heard from us once or maybe twice a year.

Now, they hear from us every month and each time we see a nice bump in sales right after we hit SEND. It’s like switching on a money making machine.
People suddenly start upgrading to the new version, upgrading their Standard editions to PRO editions, buying our other programs and buying our bar code scanners.

And that’s with newsletters free of any offers or sales pitches.

What to write?

If we’re not selling anything, what should the newsletter be about then?
General guideline: make it relevant, useful and interesting.

First, it’s a NEWSletter, so try to give them some news. News can be about anything, as long as it’s relevant and somewhat newsworthy.
Some ideas:

• New software products you launched.
• New versions you released, including maintenance builds. Make sure users are aware that you are actively supporting and maintaining your software.
• Short quotes from recent favorable reviews, with links to the full story.
• Company news, like new or leaving employees, moving to a new office, new partnerships, etc…
• Statistics. People love stats and “most popular” lists. Maybe you can include popularity stats for user generated content, like skins, templates, plugins, etc… Or list the most popular forum topics or most active members.
  We often include top 5 lists of the most popular DVDs, CDs, books, comics and games. Easy to do and always interesting and relevant.

The above will probably not be enough to fill an entire newsletter. So in order to make the newsletter useful, I recommend to include practical tips for using your software:

• Answers to frequently asked questions: take a common support question and write an elaborate answer. Added benefit: it may reduce your support load too. And don’t forget to rehash that answer for your FAQ.
• Tips for using your software: highlight an often missed or under-used feature or explain different ways to accomplish a more complex task.

What else? We’ve covered relevancy and usefulness. So let’s add something interesting.
Stories of course!

• User stories. Can you include extra-long testimonials? Or invite your users to tell about how they use your software and why?
  In the Collectorz.com newsletter, we always have a Meet the Collector section, where a user tells about his collection.
• Your own stories. Tell the story about how you got into this business, why you created this program. Or write something personal that is relevant to your products?
  I like to write about my own collections, which games I am playing, which TV series I like. About the new shelving system for my CDs, DVDs and games. Anything goes, as long as it’s relevant and interesting.

The above should give you enough ideas to fill a long newsletter each and every month.

How? HTML or Plain Text? Formal or Personal?

For our Collectorz.com newsletter, it took some time to find a good format and writing style. The first ones were HTML formatted, nothing fancy but with a logo at the top and colored headings. They were written in the “we” form and the writing style was professional and businesslike (some might even say boring). We signed the emails as “The Collectorz.com team”.

After about a year, we moved to a first person writing style, written, introduced and signed by me, Alwin. The tone of voice became more personal and loose.
And we immediately noticed a difference in response. People started replying to the newsletter in a more personal and friendly way too, addressing me personally, asking me questions, thanking me personally for the nice newsletter.
It’s like they suddenly realized there were real human beings behind the company

Here’s an example of a nice email I received after last week’s newsletter:

Hi Alwin!
I just wanted to let you know how much I really appreciate reading your updates/newsletters. They are wonderful, informative, and entertaining. Thanks for keeping me on your mailing list.
Unfortunately, my husband, like so many others, was one of the victims of the economy, so my purchase has been delayed. I still look forward to the day I can make use of your wonderful program. I just wish I had had the program before Katrina destroyed our extensive library (which we were in the process of rebuilding before the lay-off).

And after Sytske gave her a complimentary Book Collector license:

YOU MADE ME CRY!!! In such a good way! Thank you so very much for your generosity. It had made a very bright spot in my day. (Of course, it scared the daylights out of my husband when I went blubbering in to him. An incoherent explanation and pointing at the e-mail finally solved the problem.) Again, thank you so much.

Needless to say, this made a bright spot in our day too

Anyway, on to formatting:

A few months later we took the personal approach one step further and dropped the HTML formatting. We now send simple plain text emails, with lots of white space and nicely formatted to a width of 75 characters to make them readable. For example, here’s our January newsletter. (the bold headers were added for the website version only).

We find that the plain text formatting makes our newsletter just a little more personal. (And it makes it a bit easier to get through spam filters.)

So no, you don’t need to have fancy HTML formatted emails. Just start with simple plain text emails and see how it goes.

The one remaining concern …

Is it a time-consuming monthly hassle? Well, yes it is, I can’t deny that.
It takes me a full day to write and send a good newsletter. And that’s not including the increased support load the day after (being top of mind has its disadvantages too). But still… it is definitely worth it.