when you say an offer ends, end it

Trust is something a lot of us take for granted.

“When I say something, people believe me.”

I thought the practice of BS online countdown timers was done and gone, but turns out it’s not. Even at big, seemingly reputable companies.

Discounting is a terrible way to run a business. Putting that aside, I understand why discounts are used and I also understand how time pressure helps nudge people towards making a buying decision.

But here’s a thing that happened almost all week. This is from a Saas company:

• I got an email telling me that if I upgrade to an annual plan by close-of-business Wednesday, I get 25% off.

• Then I visit the product page to login on Thursday and get a banner telling me that the sale is still on. So it wasn’t Wednesday, but Thursday that the deal ends?

• Friday, I again login and now the deadline is for late Friday. Wait, what?

Scarcity and time pressure work to convince people that now is the time to buy. But when those same people are shown the same “scarce” and “time sensitive” offer day after day, the opposite happens:

They now have almost no incentive to buy.

Far from making me jump at the chance to save a few bucks on this subscription, I’m now wondering if I should stick around or not. Not because I’m better than this kind of discount marketing. But because I don’t know if A) it’ll be cheaper tomorrow and B) the product is as good as I thought, if they’re practically begging me to give them some money.

If you run a discount, do what you say you’re going to do. Stick to the discounted rate for the time you said. Otherwise you burn trust and probably end up losing more than you could ever gain from heavily discounted sales.

Peter

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