Sell more “gift” membership subscriptions by offering a physical reciept, pricing for the gift-giver, and making your website look valuable
It’s the holiday season, and consumers are frantically looking for things to give the people they love. They’re also looking for gifts to give people they don’t love but need to buy gifts for anyway. The good news here is that when you run a membership website, you have the opportunity to capture last-minute buyers with an item that doesn’t need to be shipped.
However, there are plenty of places where membership websites can fail with this method.
Give the customer something to print out, email, or otherwise distribute.
Even more importantly, let them know that they’ll receive something that they can “give” as the physical gift. This tiny detail can make or break a digital sale.
The problem with digital gifts is there’s no real sense of ownership. When someone buys a gift, they want something to be able to physically “give” to the recipient.
This is the reason why some people don’t “gift” magazine subscriptions.
First, it’s because they don’t want the magazine to show up before Christmas and ruin a surprise (and many magazines don’t define when the first issue will be sent). Second, it’s because many publishers don’t offer any kind of printable “card” that the buyer can give as a gift to let them know what they’ve bought.
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Price for the gift giver, not the recipient
This time of year is the one chance you have to dramatically drop your membership cost without angering your current subscribers. The holiday season is the one time where people blame themselves for not “waiting for the holiday sale” rather than blaming the website for offering a new discount.
Keep gift givers in mind when you offer discount pricing. When giving a gift, people want their recipients to see the highest perceived value, not the actual cost. This is why people shop for name brands at Marshalls and TJ Maxx for things like Calvin Klein socks. $10 for a shirt instead of $49 for a shirt means that you still look like a great gift giver, and you still have more cash to spend on extra gifts.
It’s just common sense. Remember that the gift giver isn’t buying this for themself, so the easier and more appealing the offer, the more conversions you’ll have. If you’re selling a $99 membership for $29 for the entire month of December, make sure that “normally $99” is front and center. The perceived value versus the discount is very important.
Consider that the way your site looks, reflects on the gift-giver.
Simply put, have a great looking membership website, because giving the gift of a crappy looking website is like shopping for presents at the thrift store.
First impressions really do count, especially online. If the look of your site doesn’t immediately gain the respect of visitors, you are in trouble.
Studies have shown that visitors decide within the first 10 seconds whether they will investigate further or move on. That’s how long it takes to run the look of your site through their mental filters and determine whether you are worth their time.
