by Michael Evans, February 8, 2024
First of all a PSA: I am so excited so many of you are running Valentine Day promotions for your subscription :). Just a reminder to do your very best to have the code, tier, and other aspects of your promotion ironed out BEFORE filling out the form (which you can find here) so that we can correctly set up your promotion with as little hiccups as possible.
For those that don’t know, we have an actual amazing human, Bobbie, creating all of the codes on the back-end… so it helps us help you to get that all in order (in the future, this will be automated entirely, but we wanted to roll out promo codes into Public beta ASAP, hence our awesome Ream Team member Bobbie).
Now… for a different topic. Last week, I gave a fireside chat all about Cross-Promotions for Your Subscription.
I think Cross-Promotions can be great.
But… your promotion is only as good as your incentive.
And sometimes… we can go a long way to run a promotion that actually attracts the WRONG kind of reader.
Retailers have trained us into the mindset, and it’s toxic.
On a retailer like Amazon — all sales are created equal in your sales ranking. 1 sale at $0.99 is the same as $9.99 (at least to my understanding, I’m not an Amazon expert, have just published 12 books there).
The obvious point is this: promotions are not as good if they target a group of readers not interested in the stories you write. For instance, writing hard science fiction and targeting an audience of readers who enjoys alien romances… is maybe not the best cross-promotion for you even if you can get hundreds of people to Follow you.
We know this and in fact, retailers have trained us to avoid this.
With the dynamics of Also-Bought algorithms, it is imperative to have readers in a narrow persona/profile purchase/read your stories so that it can be promoted to readers with a similar “Interest Graph”.
But what if I told you that’s only half the battle?
Following this logic, it would make sense to offer the juiciest cross promotion incentive to get as many readers in your target subgenre/persona/market to join your subscription and become paying members.
Remember, your promotion is only as good as your incentive.
Incentive ATTRACTS intention.
We are shifting from the attention economy (one where Follower counts and top of the waterfall metrics like sales mean everything) to the intention economy (one where customer retention and depth of connection matter most).
With an incentive that attracts freebie seekers or purely discount-buyers, you are likely to see higher unsubscribes from your subscription and lower revenue than you may expect.
Is this a bad thing?
No, not necessarily. If you are aware that juicy promotion incentives may attract the wrong kind of reader (one with lower intent) then that is okay. You can still have a great promotion, but going into it with the expectation that 1 more member from a promotion is not the same as a member recruited from an organic means is key.
And another thing to keep in mind is… cost.
One fun thing about running a technology platform for authors is learning about how other technology platforms grow.
A common one is through referral programs and incentives.
Many authors have asked us to create a referral program for their readers.
*We may* do this at some point. But there’s a reason it’s not high priority on my list.
Readers recruited through gamification, discounts, referrals, and other means… just aren’t as profitable as readers recruited through word of mouth.
And sometimes it can have the opposite effect.
An incentive you use to get someone to sign-up may cost you $10 or $20 of revenue, when meanwhile that person would have signed up anyway. Instead, they just needed a bit more time to convert or needed a recommendation from a trusted friend (good old word of mouth spreading which never happens fast enough… but it’s the invisible force keeping everything alive!).
The takeaways:
- Having a promotion targeted at the right group of readers is table stakes, great promotions also have the right incentive.
- Sometimes offering too large of an incentive actually hurts your profit since readers who would have signed up anyway… just take the deal… and reader who wouldn’t have signed up… take the deal and unsubscribe.
- Even with my word of caution, promotions are still a valuable tool you can use to grow your business. Most of all, use it sparingly. Once a year is the ideal amount to run a discount promotion. Twice a year at most. Any more than 4 times a year… and your discount is basically your normal price… thus, it’s not really a promotion anymore!
Let me know if you found this helpful.
You all rock and I love seeing all the promotions you are creating.
And one last note.
Ream has a referral program for authors. When you refer author friends to join Ream, you can make 30% of the revenue that Ream generates from referred authors for the next 12 months.
We have this referral program for two reasons:
- It aligns incentives. We want to help authors make more money, and we get to win together.
- Instead of spending money on ads, it’s way more fun to give our marketing cost back to our community and see what you all do with it (likely create even more amazing stories for your readers, cover bills, etc.).
That’s it from me today.
And don’t forget…
Storytellers Rule the World!