Skylight · B2C · digital family calendars and frames
Survey customers on whether the product is life-changing, and build to raise that share
About 20% say life-changing today; goal is 50%
What they did
What happened
In their words
How Skylight Balances Growth and Profit for Sustainable Success – Michael Segal & Mark Ungerer, Skylight
David BarnardSay that growth PM, you need to hire. Somebody in this audience, go apply for that job.
Michael SegalYes, please, and thank you. But influencers are huge and very authentic. People can smell an inauthentic influencer. We have thousands of people out there using this, loving it, talking about it, that, plus paid growth. Retail is the biggest influencer of all in our world. The fact that we are in Costco and other great retailers, it's a stamp of quality that can't be underestimated. So, it's kind of that. And the fourth part of the square is just word of mouth. We often poll our customers and we ask, how impactful is this thing to you? Is it life-changing, pretty high bar? Is it very awesome, but not life-changing or is it worse than that? Today, about 20% of people who reply say that it's life-changing.
Michael SegalAnd our hypothesis is those are the people who are getting us dozens and dozens of new customers just by virtue of they can't stop talking about it. But not life-changing is probably an order of magnitude, in terms of the chatter and how good our business is. So, probably, the best thing we could do for growth long-term is just build, build, build features that take us into 50% life-changing territory. Mark as our chief product officer, that is …
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- Raise the yearly plan from $39 to $79, not the $99 tests favoredMinimal loss of subscribers or retention; ARR curve 'transformative'; no exact numbers
- Keep old customers on the old price, and honor it for anyone who asksGave up an estimated couple million dollars for goodwill; no measured effect
- Send the device's QR code to an Apple in-app purchase instead of a web checkoutOver 100% more conversions, on a small slice of users
- Knock money off the device when people buy it with the subscriptionMuch higher subscription attach on the own website than on Amazon or in stores; no numbers
- Test a free trial, with and without asking for a credit cardNo extra subscribers; trial takers were people who'd have subscribed anyway
- Make every first purchase cover what you paid to get the customerEvery order in company history paid back on day zero; grew without VC money
- Borrow from risk-tolerant lenders at 15-20% to buy holiday inventory, not raise VCStayed bootstrapped and profitable; paid 15-20% a year at times
- Keep what people bought the device for free; charge for new add-ons like meal planningPhotos-on-calendar paywall 'just worked' for years; now some customers want it free
- Don't mark which features are premium once someone has subscribedRenewal rates high even for light users of paid features; no numbers
- Push marketing spend on a new calendar product before the product was goodDidn't work; nearly killed the product; took off only after product fixes in fall 2022
- Sell the device everywhere: your own site, Amazon, Costco and Best BuyCalled very successful; retail acts as a quality stamp, but lowers subscription attach
- Change how you show what's in the subscription bundleRarely moved the share of buyers who subscribe
Tags: customer-survey, north-star, nps