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%
Unknownfeature-developmentword-of-mouth
What they did
Regularly poll customers: is it life-changing, very awesome but not life-changing, or worse? Hypothesis: the 'life-changing' group drives most word of mouth (each bringing many new customers). The CPO's explicit goal is to build features that move this to 50%.
What happened
About 20% of respondents say life-changing; target 50%.
“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.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
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- Skylight: 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
- Skylight: 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
- Skylight: 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
- Skylight: Test a free trial, with and without asking for a credit cardNo extra subscribers; trial takers were people who'd have subscribed anyway
- Skylight: 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
- Skylight: 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
- Skylight: 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
- Skylight: Don't mark which features are premium once someone has subscribedRenewal rates high even for light users of paid features; no numbers
- Skylight: 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
- Skylight: Sell the device everywhere: your own site, Amazon, Costco and Best BuyCalled very successful; retail acts as a quality stamp, but lowers subscription attach
- Skylight: Change how you show what's in the subscription bundleRarely moved the share of buyers who subscribe