Don’t Put Pricing In Your Marketing E-mails
A couple posts back, I wrote a post on how I’m handling my sales processes. When first sending our cold e-mails to spear prospects, I had a subject line something like
Nutrition facts labels for $XX/month
For the most part, everything was fine and dandy, until I began experimenting with the pricing model. When I first started the saas site, I didn’t know exactly how to price the plans. After the site was running for a couple months, I had some concrete data to make a decision on adjusting the price.
Now about 6 months later, I got an e-mail asking something like
From reading your e-mail, I’m confused on the pricing of your product. Is it $XX per this e-mail, or $YY as specified on the site.
When examining the e-mail, this prospect was replying to an e-mail I sent 6 months ago, when the pricing was different. Now I’m thinking perhaps something weird happened and the e-mail got delivered 6 months later. Or perhaps the prospect really did check the e-mail months later.
Regardless of this mystery though, the prospect already has the price of $XX in their mind. And when they see $YY as a higher price, they no longer think they are getting a good deal.
Let’s say you are at a electronics store and you are buying a laptop.
In January, you see the laptop priced as $1,500 dollars. Two weeks later, the price of the laptop drops to $800.
First off, you might be whoa, great deal! I want to buy that laptop now! But it is only a great deal because you perceive $800 to be far less than $1,500.
Let’s rerun the example.
In January, you see the laptop priced as $900 dollars. Two weeks later, the price of the laptop drops to $800.
Now you no longer see the laptop as a good deal because the pricing pivot is only a $100.
In short, if you plan to experiment with your pricing models, don’t put pricing in your initial e-mails. It may come back to haunt you.
