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.