Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Sorry, but we’re not playing

   Amir

Announcements

November 25, 2014
10

We’ve had some back and forth about discounts for this upcoming weekend. This episode makes me feel bad and I’d like to put things straight.

Initially, we thought that it would be cool to offer a one-time discount, like everyone else, over this weekend. You know, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Without giving much thought to it, this appeared like a great opportunity to promote Toolset.

But you know what? We soon realized that this is not taking us where we want to go. I think that it isn’t getting us where you want us to be either.

Toolset plugins are tools for people who build websites. When you buy Toolset plugins, you make an investment. It’s not just the cost of the plugins. Learning a new tool takes time and trusting the company who makes it requires confidence. You are engaging with us for the long term.

We are not selling popcorn makers or flat-screen TVs. These things are also important, but we’re not in that business.

Here are some of the problems that we immediately noticed (with your feedback) after that Black Friday promotion was published:

  • We are punishing everyone who bought outside of the sale. It’s not just the cost. When you buy from us, you get support and require our attention. It’s not entirely fair to have a rush of discount orders, coming in one day, causing a jam in our support for a whole week.
  • If we don’t respect our price, who will?
  • We don’t want to push people into wasting time looking for bargains and waiting for deals. If you need Toolset today, get it today. It’s going to be the same price on Friday and next week.

To make a long story short, we’ve cancelled this sale and we’re not going to have sales in the future. Here is something for you to quote us on, in the future:

There is just one price for our products. We think that Toolset plugins justify the price and we spend all our energies building Toolset. Toolset will cost the same every day of the year for everyone. If we decide to revise prices, it will apply to everyone, the whole time.

How do you feel about it? Leave your comments and we’ll get back to you.

 

Comments 10 Responses

  1. I commend you on this pricing policy. Toolset is a great value for the price. You don’t need artificial urgency gimmicks like cyber-Monday sales to motivate buyers when the basic value of this powerful and versatile Toolset is there every day.

  2. I can certainly see why business owners coming from a development background would become frustrated by the apparent irrationality of marketing, but sales promotions do seem to work.

    In the case of Toolset, anyone who has a definite use for it will probably buy it as soon as they discover that it solves a problem for them. What short promotions do is to soak up the OTHER people who were interested but not interested enough to buy it at the full price.

    Very often, these folks jump on the offer but, because they do not have an immediate problem to solve, end up not using the product much anyway, which is fine, all that matters is that they have paid some money into your pot, which funds further development, which benefits all your “real” users who paid the full price.

    Another useful aspect of short promotions is that they spur your existing users, who paid full price, to recommend the discount to friends and other developers. Their personal endorsement, along with the discount, creates sales that, again, might never have happened otherwise.

    HOWEVER, all of that is just strategy, if the owner of a company is satisfied with the amount of money coming in, and if he is not worried about the momentum of competing products, there is no reason why he should waste time worrying about marketing tricks, just focus on the stuff you enjoy.

    One area, however, where I do think your company missed an opportunity, and I feel this is substantially different from Black Friday offers etc, was the chance to cross-promote WPML to existing Toolset buyers. For a few years, I had it in the back of my mind that, even though I did not have an immediate need for WPML, if you ever ran a half-price offer for existing Toolset users, I would buy the WPML lifetime license to match my Toolset license, just in case I ever did need it.

    Such an offer never appeared and, obviously, you have expressed in this blog post the principles underlying that decision, but it would have been a very effective upsell without cannabilising the sales you would get anyway, and without upsetting existing WPML buyers because it would not be a public offer.

    • You have good points. It isn’t that we have too many sales and don’t want to have more clients. It’s just that I decided that we better build our brand, market and sales on value, rather than opportunity. It’s realy a matter of personal preference. I don’t connect well with sales days and discounts. I prefer to do my shopping where prices are always fair and there is no need for special saless to reach reasonable levels. I hope that it will work out for us this way, because it’s the only way I know to do things.

      • I agree that straight-forward pricing has advantages; I hate shopping in places like Morocco, where you have to waste time negotiating sellers down from their ridiculous initial prices. My personal preference is generally for pricing clarity, so, yes, the firm promise that “If you need Toolset today, get it today. It’s going to be the same price on Friday and next week” is compelling.

        There are, however, situations in which you can generate purchases which would not otherwise occur and which don’t break that promise. Cross-promotion of your products to existing buyers of your other products is a good example. By conflating Black Friday offers (which, I agree, can get ridiculous) and cross-promotional offers (which are a terrific way to get more money from existing customers), and deciding to do neither, you are probably leaving quite a lot of money on the table and failing to capitalize on the advantages of being a multi-product company.

        Also, have you considered that some customers may misinterpret the promise you are making today? You are not actually promising to never lower prices, only that you will no longer lower your prices for short, promotional periods. If, eventually, you decide that you do need to lower prices, many of your existing customers will feel that this somehow breaks the “same price on Friday and next week” promise you are making today, even though you have worded it in a way that gives you the necessary wriggle room.

        Anyway, an interesting declaration, I find this stuff fascinating, it will be interesting to see if other plugin sellers decide to adopt the same policy. As ever, thanks for all your hard work on Toolset.

  3. Just starting out and I for one would love to have purchased a full license at a reduced price, even if just the Views plugin, as I just can’t afford that pricing right now, with the current Exchange Rate, I live in South Africa and it makes your product out of my reach.

    Anyway respect your decision. Keep up the good work.

  4. Dear Toolset team,

    i respect your stand and support your decision. But to be fare, i have to explain the other side too. I am a student who does part time web designing. For me, from where i come, anything above 150$ is a huge price. I am sure in long run its not that bad. But right now i dont know whether i will be in long run or not. The completion is becoming fierce day by day. So, from a student/freelancers point of view, it is these days like Halloween, Black friday, Cyber monday . . where we can purchase tools for an affordable price. I was really looking forward for this day but disappointment. Hope you will have some offers on Christmas.

    • Makes sense. Thanks for explaining your point of view. In the long run, it helps us establish good and fair pricing for our products. BTW, we’re hiring.

  5. I look at these big discounts as tricks to get me to buy something that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Large discounts devalue a product deservedly or not.

    Each year iThemes has a 50% off sale, so to me that means that for the rest of the year they’re ripping people off at twice the price it should be.

    Proudly charge what you think people should be paying for Toolset, never discount the price and people will respect that.