Drive more online video purchases by running a flash sale
It’s been awhile since you first started selling your videos on Vimeo On Demand (VOD). By now, sales may have slowed down a bit. What to do? Consider a tried and true retail trick: the flash sale. It’s one of the best techniques in existence to motivate your customers, attract new audiences, and get a quick boost in sales.
A flash sale is when you offer your title at a steep discount for just a hot minute (or around 1–2 days). But where to begin? Why, with these tips for setting up a flash sale with Vimeo On Demand.
1) Purposeful planning = meaningful results
To drive early purchases, the Grammy-winning artists Pentatonix planned two flash sales for their film On My Way Home: one sale during pre-order, and then another three days after the title went live. Pentatonix promoted both sales through Snapchat to motivate their most devoted fans to purchase early, and by running two sales a few weeks apart, they kept the fire of their new release stoked.
Before you slash the price and toss your title into the wild, it’s best to think about what you’re actually trying to achieve. Do you want to reach new fans? Reward current ones? Draw attention to a particular social channel? The way you target and promote the sale, and even the level of discount you offer, will all be guided by this answer. Pentatonix chose Snapchat to promote their sale, but you can communicate on whatever channels make the most sense for your title — whether that be Facebook or Twitter, a podcast or TV show, or a live video stream or premiere event.
2) Choose your discount
Flash sales create a sense of urgency, and the amount you discount drives that home. You don’t want to break your bottom line, but you *do* want to drum up enough excitement that it will entice people. As a rule of thumb, discounts that are 10% or less aren’t likely to dramatically boost transactions, especially given that the typical price point of a video purchase is on the lower end.
If you’re targeting existing fans, they’re already engaged with your work, so there’s less of a threshold to hit the illustrious Buy button. For Pentatonix, 15% off was enough to drive transactions from their followers.
But if you’re seeking an audience who’s never heard of your title before, then a steeper discount may incentivize them to try something new. In an experiment with another film, we tested promoting a 15% discount against a 25% discount. As you can imagine, the steeper discount encouraged more people to take action (1.5x as many) — and with an original price point of $10, the 25% discount resulted in 32% more revenue.
3) Think global
With Vimeo On Demand, you have the option to sell your title worldwide. And if your videos are available to all, so too should your flash sale. A good way to cater to different timezones is to schedule social promotions in advance that are tailored to those audiences. That way, you don’t miss out on an audience by promoting to them just once, incidentally, at 3 a.m. This may mean offering your sale for more than 24 hours, so that people in all timezones have all day to access the offer.
4) Engage with customers
Flash sales have the added bonus of increasing traffic as well as engagement, so it’s important that you or your team are available to answer questions, thank purchasers, and keep the momentum going. On My Way Home achieved a nice lift in revenue for each of their 24-hour sales, and it’s due in large part to the Pentatonix’s communication plan: they built hype beforehand, set clear parameters as to timeframes and discount codes, and connected with customers throughout their flash sale.
5) Measure your results
The more data points you collect, the bigger the picture you’ll be able to paint about what works for your title, and the more you can apply the next time you run a flash sale. As the Pentatonix charts can attest, the numbers don’t lie.
Whether this is your first flash sale or your 15th, recording the nitty gritty details will offer tons of insight as to what’s working well and what you can improve upon for next time. Did you launch on a weekend or weekday? Did you put any paid social targeting behind the promotion — and if so, how much, what time, and who were you trying to reach out to? Did you see sales flood in through from Twitter traffic, but remain kinda stagnant through Facebook promotions? It’s an old rule, but a sound one: good data leads to better decision making.
Now that the basics are top of mind, start your flash sale and give your title the boost it deserves. For help with setting up a promo code for your flash sale, read our FAQ on VOD Promotions.
For more selling advice straight from the source, read our creator case studies.
This article was co-written by Rachel Goldberg and originally published on the Vimeo Blog. Follow Vimeo on Twitter or Facebook to stay informed about future case studies. You can also follow me on Twitter or Tumblr.
