The end of the year can be a lucrative time for SaaS companies.
While new software won’t be at the top of everyone’s Christmas wish list, users are still keen to bag a bargain. Some companies have yearly budgets to use and the end of the year can usher on extra spending. Q4 is also a time of forward planning, and setting into motion projects for the following year.
Starting with Black Friday, through to Cyber Monday and into the December advent period, there are plenty of opportunities to take advantage of the season of spending. Brands lean heavily in to emotional and persuasive language, flashy graphics, and clever branding.
We took a look at some of the best holiday campaigns of 2019 to get the low-down on how the pros are doing it, and to give you lots of actionable tips for your own holiday campaigns.
Social media management platform Hootsuite are running an entire week worth of discount in their 2019 Cyber Week Offer. While the deal is a great one (90 days free), this campaign stands out due to the clever and distinct branding.
Having a dedicated campaign aesthetic helps differentiate Hootsuite from their competitors, by signaling that the Cyber Week campaign is both important and substantial. You wouldn’t create custom illustrations for something small, right?
The branding is carried through to the dedicated landing page and really helps build excitement around the Cyber Week offer. Even I’m excited and I don’t have any need for a social media management platform!
Along with great branding, they use bold and frequent call-to-action (CTA) buttons; there are 6 CTAs on the landing page alone. The green stands out against the muted colors of the landing page and is a color we often associate with ‘winning’.
There’s a nice amount of personalization on the CTA buttons with Hootsuite telling people to ‘Claim Your Offer’. Referring to the reader directly adds to the excitement of the Landing Page and is a classic move in sales and advertising. The clever language doesn’t stop there with the copy using words like ‘hurry’ and ‘win’.
Everything on the Hootsuite Cyber Week landing page is designed to increase conversions and turn viewers into users. While we can’t be 100% sure on the campaign's intent, we can assume that Hootsuite were looking for high conversion numbers. Offering a free trial of a product is a great way to get new users into the funnel without users feeling like they have to commit to your product.
For the Venngage Black Friday campaign, we decided our end goal was to attract users with a high lifetime value (LTV).
As Venngage works on a freemium model, where there is a sliding scale of account features based on how much you pay for your account, we wanted to specifically target users who were likely to become long term paying customers.
We created a 40% off a Business Yearly account (our most valuable plan) coupon, and we focused on showing the value of our tool to potential new users.
By comparing the cost of our tool to something as simple as one weekly coffee, we were really able to stress why Venngage was a ‘must have’. We also purposely spotlighted the things that we know attract ‘sticky’ users such as our professional looking templates, and even included examples of the infographics that you can create with Venngage.
We know that customer reviews can be a massive influence in making buying decisions so we opted to also include reviews from actual users in our landing page.
Having these reviews on the landing page can help prove the value of Venngage and push people into taking advantage of the discount.
Having a super targeted, highly focused campaign like this was a great success and the average LTV of users who redeemed the Black Friday coupon was significantly higher than the LTV of users gained in our 2018 Black Friday campaign.
Another SaaS company that killed it with their Black Friday 2019 campaign is SocialPilot. The Black Friday branding is eye-catching, and the landing page makes use of multiple techniques to draw users into the conversion funnel.
Immediately at the top of the page we are greeted with a lead generation form, asking users to submit their email. This way even if users don’t end up taking advantage of the Black Friday offer, their emails are still in the system and can be retargeted multiple times.
Underneath the lead gen form there’s a countdown of how long you have before the offer expires. This adds a sense of urgency for people viewing the page. A countdown can drive people into action for fear that they might miss out otherwise.
One of the best things about the SocialPilot campaign was the 360 degree approach to promotion. SocialPilot took their Black Friday campaign to social media, updating their cover photos and pinning posts advertising the offer:
This 360 degree approach meant the post was being shown to the most people possible, increasing the likely-hood of higher conversion numbers. A lot of companies this year appear to have kept their Black Friday discounts quieter with no mention on their homepages or on social media. In fact, when researching this article I was unable to find a lot of the landing pages that were delivered to me via a paid ad in the past week.
But when so many companies now offer Black Friday discounts, it’s almost expected that every company will offer a Black Friday discount. There are arguments for keeping a promotion exclusive and only sending to your email list, but if your intent is to generate leads as well as create sales then it makes sense to share your promotion as wide as possible.
Though all three Black Friday campaigns are different, there are a few key takeaways from each that you can use in your own holiday discount campaigns:
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1. Use strong and frequent calls-to-action 2. Brand your campaign to help build excitement 3. Know your campaign intent 4. Add a sense of urgency to your campaign 5. Use a 360 degree approach to promoting your campaign |
Looking for other ways to boost your marketing campaigns? Check out our marketing strategy hub, chock full of over 50 incredible resources to help you all year long!
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