Skylight · B2C · digital family calendars and frames
Raise the yearly plan from $39 to $79, not the $99 tests favored
Minimal loss of subscribers or retention; ARR curve 'transformative'; no exact numbers
Workedpricingexperimentation
What they did
Plus subscription had been $39/year (same SKU for Frame and Calendar). Asked what a Calendar-only company would charge, then ran a batch of variants varying both the subscription price and the hardware discount when bought together (tracking hardware conversion, margin per unit and subscription attach). $99 maximized revenue slightly in the spreadsheet, but surveys, one-on-one conversations and focus groups showed $99 was near 'disgust / not worth it yet' territory, so they chose $79 as a middle ground they were confident in, keeping room to go up later as more value is added. Applied to new customers only (see t2).
What happened
Called the biggest win of the year: 'going from 39 to 79, with minimal loss of retention or attach'; 'phenomenally successful'.
- Stage
- Scale (~7 years after subscription launch; >50% of Calendar buyers already subscribing)
- Effort
- Multiple price x hardware-discount test variants plus ongoing qualitative research
“But we ran a bunch of different variants and we variated both the price of the subscription, as well as the discount on the hardware.”
“And we knew 99 on paper penciled a little bit better, but that was getting into closer to that disgust or it's not worth it yet territory.”
“It has to be the plus subscription, going from 39 to 79, with minimal loss of retention or attach.”
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