ONE MAN BRAND: The Art of the 50% Deal

Discounting your product sucks but sometimes it’s the nudge people need to fall in love with your product or decide they hate it once and for all.

We’ve been doing Mantry for 10 years. 10 years in startup land is like 50 in the real world. We’ve come full circle on discounting, all the way from “that will completely f*ck the brand image” to “give people a reason to try your stuff”.

1. Here’s a Hard Hitting Truth

Your product that you think is the best thing ever is completely irrelevant to someone who does not experience it.

2. Here’s the Solution.

Offer a HUGE discount (for the record, nobody really cares about 10%, 20%, 30% ect. , the GAP inundates people’s inboxes all day with that jazz).

3. Here’s EXACTLY What Worked For Us.

Oh Screw It. FREE Mantry

Wait What? What in the Casper Mattress Dumpster Fire world of discounts is this? You’re probably thinking I have a ___ product I can’t give it away for free!

You can, the key is the pinky swear.

Just announce the deal and right before the checkout page just say

“Listen we are a small company, this is for people who are genuinely interested in trying the product and think they want to subscribe, pinky swear you aren’t just trying to get free sh*t”

Boom. It works. People buy, you avoid “deal hawks” and life is good.

Result? 2x membership with a positive ROI after factoring long term value of customers.

What else worked?

Random, one off, surprise 50% off emails.

Yes, you are going to attract the “deal hawks” but guess what? We love them because sometimes they try Mantry and love it or they hate it and write a scathing review and we can try and improve. Most importantly people who have been sitting on the fence for 5 years driving up your Mailchimp bill might just take the dive.

Result? Hundreds of new subs and a way less boring Friday.

Conclusion

Business should be fun, big discounts on idle summer days turns the 23rd of July or 10th of April into a day you can learn, have some excitement and a day your followers might just care.

When you’re 80 years old you’re not going to look back on today and wish you didn’t try more random stuff on that funny little startup you had for 6 months before you got a real job.

PS: This is a new series we are trying to celebrate 10 years in business. We might share all the secrets we have learned through the roughly seven billion bone headed moves we’ve made so you can use them to build a multi-national conglomerate and buy us. If you like this, share it and tweet us and tell us to do more.

PPS: This is probably littered with spelling mistakes, I don’t care. Find one and send it to reggie@mantry.com and I’ll give you 50% off.

-Reggie Milligan, Founder, Mantry.com