Raising Rates: How Detrack used a simple feature table to increase prices amidst economic uncertainty – without losing customers

Nikki: As soon as I saw it, I knew we had to add a similar thing to the Detrack email. 

 0:03: It was such a good proof point. 

 0:05: Welcome to email swipes, where we peek behind the scenes at the emails that catch your attention and earn their place in your swipe file. 

 0:12: Every other week, we’ll talk to an email expert about an experiment they ran, and in the following episode, we’ll dive into the strategies and methods used in the email so you can inform. 

 0:20: And inspire your own email work. 

 0:23: I’m Miki Elvas, the copywriter behind winning emails for 8 and 9 figure sassin e-commerce brands like Shopify, For Sigmatic, and Sprout Social. 

 0:30: And I know that hearing the background stories to these emails will help you turn pie in the sky insights into plug and play actions. 

 0:36: Ready to make inspiration tactical? 

 0:38: Let’s go. 

 0:39: First, let’s read today’s email. 

 0:43: Your DTRC plan will increase from $24 a month to $29 a month in November. 

 0:48: Here’s why. 

 0:49: It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a decade since we submitted our app for review in the App Store. 

 0:54: We’ve come so far in 9 years, and we have you to thank for it. 

 0:58: We are so grateful. 

 1:00: Since those early days, we’ve grown from just 3 family members to 28 almost family team members, all dedicated to making your deliveries faster, smoother and more cost effective. 

 1:11: We’ve worked incredibly hard to make DTtrack the best delivery app on the market. 

 1:15: In the past 9 years, we’ve added hundreds of features, despite keeping our pricing the same since inception. 

 1:22: To continue delivering the product and support you deserve, we need to ensure our pricing reflects where our product stands today and where we plan to take it. 

 1:29: On November 1st, Dre’s pricing will increase from $24 per month to $29 per month. 

 1:35: The new price will take effect from your first new billing period on or after November 2022. 

 1:41: Here’s how you can keep your current pricing for another year. 

 1:44: We meant it when we wrote that we’re so grateful for your trust and loyalty, and we’d like to offer you a full year’s extension with our current pricing when you switch to our annual plan. 

 1:52: Lock in the current price. 

 1:54: Pay only 24 dollars per month until November 2023, when you switch to an annual plan before our November 2022 price increase. 

 2:02: A lot has changed. 

 2:03: Take advantage with a 1 to 1 growth consultation. 

 2:06: If you haven’t had a chance to see all our new features, check them out here. 

 2:09: Or better yet, book a free growth session with our onboarding team to make sure you’re taking advantage of everything DTrack has to offer your business and vision. 

 2:17: Book your growth session. 

 2:20: You know when you get an order confirmation text that has a picture of your newly delivered package on your doorstep, that is powered by an app like DTtrack. 

 2:30: DTtrack is a logistics and operations app for shipping and delivery companies. 

 2:35: It helps them map their driver’s routes, it tracks the drivers and delivers notifications to the customers, and it’s Go those critical proof of delivery features like collecting the customer’s signature and you got it, taking pictures of the package on your doorstep. 

 2:51: Derek is run by a really wonderful team. 

 2:53: They’ve got a super sweet family feel and are just super passionate and excited about the work that they do and how they serve their customers. 

 3:00: It was always such a joy to talk to them. 

 3:03: The team also had a really good handle on their customers. 

 3:06: They even warned me when I first audited their messaging not to get scared off by the app. 

 3:11: It’s ugly on purpose, they told me. 

 3:14: User friendly for their customers was not sleek and full of bells and whistles. 

 3:18: It was super simple. 

 3:20: Straightforward and big. 

 3:23: The buttons were so in your face, it felt so outdated because that’s what their drivers needed to understand how to use the app. 

 3:30: And yes, you can bet we will get into this in the takeaways. 

 3:33: Anyway, TTrack was set to raise their prices a few months down the line. 

 3:37: And they were petrified. 

 3:39: They had never raised their prices in the near decade that they had been operating, and this was in late 2022 when things were economically unsteady in general. 

 3:48: Even worse, a lot of software subscriptions were suddenly raising their prices and there was a lot of Angry buzz about rising costs and how badly these companies were treating their loyal users. 

 3:58: The communications around the increases were often really last minute and presented as an exciting update. 

 4:06: It was so out of line with what users were actually experiencing. 

 4:10: It wasn’t necessarily even software that the DTRC customers were using. 

 4:14: They might not have even been subject to any other price increases in the period that DTtrack was increasing fees. 

 4:20: This was happening to a lot of more tech that the team was using, but it just contributed to the general mood and feeling that raising prices needs to be handled with kid gloves, that the communication around the increase would need to be one. 

 4:33: 1,000% clear, compassionate, and value driven. 

 4:37: In a way, it was a blessing that this was the environment when they increased their prices, because this is always true. 

 4:43: Price increases are what I consider crisis emails. 

 4:46: They do need to be handled with kid gloves, but when you see how strong backlash can be, you make sure to prioritize this. 

 4:54: You make sure to be super careful. 

 4:57: In Dietrich’s case, they likely would have planned this email in-house, and instead they hired me. 

 5:02: They also set the end time for August 3 months prior to the increase in October. 

 5:07: I don’t know that they would have given that much lead time, or even if they would have pushed out the increase, they ended up the increase to November when there were delays. 

 5:15: So, we planned the sequence out to include an initial notification email, an initial in-app notification, a resend variation for the email, and a reminder email notification, also with a resend variation. 

 5:28: I knew the subject line and 1st 5 seconds of the email had to be super, super clear. 

 5:32: And then we could get into the whys and the details, and of course the positioning. 

 5:37: It was a solid email that I first drafted and I was excited to present it to the team. 

 5:42: And then I got the slack pricing increase email, which you could take a look at in the show notes. 

 5:48: The Slack email had this nifty little table that showed the history of Slack changes. 

 5:53: All the features that they had added or changed to justify the pricing increase. 

 5:58: As soon as I saw it, I knew we had to add a similar thing to the DT track email. 

 6:02: It was such a good proof point. 

 6:04: I also tweaked the subject line to match the slack one. 

 6:06: My original is similar, and I’ll get into the strategy of the subject line in the takeaways, but I figured that using their exact verbiage would be a good idea because they probably did some small segment AB testing and why not lean on their data and use the proof and formula. 

 6:21: And then I got a ping from one of the team members on Slack. 

 6:23: Did you see the Slack pricing change email? 

 6:26: I laughed. 

 6:26: We were totally on the same page. 

 6:28: It was great. 

 6:30: It did give them another change idea. 

 6:32: So we added the table, we tweaked the subject line, and then they had this ask. 

 6:36: The initial call to action was to book a growth consult to help users take advantage of all the new features. 

 6:42: I love the idea because software changes over the years, but early adopters just keep doing the things that they initially come in for. 

 6:49: They may not even be aware of all the new features. 

 6:52: have access to. 

 6:53: We talk about this a bit in episode 3 with Devin from Bitly. 

 6:56: If you want to dig into this more. 

 6:58: Once they saw the slack offer at the end, letting users lock in current pricing for a year with the annual plan, they wanted us to do the same. 

 7:05: So we broke the rule of one and we had two offers. 

 7:08: Not ideal, but hang on a sec because I’ll get into this when I talk about what I would change about the email. 

 7:14: So, thank God the email did really well. 

 7:16: None of their customers had hissy fits. 

 7:18: Everyone was OK with the pricing changes, and it was obviously a huge relief and really exciting. 

 7:23: So, what would I change about the email? 

 7:26: First off, I would add a 3rd email and notification. 

 7:28: A 2 week reminder is good, but I think there should be an OK, we did it. 

 7:32: Here’s our new normal sort of acknowledgement. 

 7:35: I don’t even think it needs a standalone email. 

 7:37: I think customizing the first billing email after the change to include some messaging on the change is a really good move. 

 7:43: Open rates on transactional emails are higher, and it ties the conversations together. 

 7:48: It preempts any sticker shock from anyone who may have missed the message, and it moves people forward, especially if you focus the conversation around value. 

 7:55: By the way, if you’re curious about why transactional emails do really well and how you can take advantage of that, check out my postur transactional playbook at NikkiLbuzz.com/email-playbooks. 

 8:06: I’ll link in the show notes. 

 8:08: OK. 

 8:08: Now let’s get back to that dual CTA that broke the rule of one, where we offered an annual pricing offer and also a growth consult. 

 8:16: I personally think the rule of one is a little more flexible than we tend to think. 

 8:19: I see a lot of criticism around emails with multiple CTAs, but I don’t think that’s the crux of the rule of one. 

 8:25: The rule of one is more around the fact that each email has only one goal, but I think how that goal presents itself, i.e., the CTAs offered, those can vary. 

 8:35: So for each email, we have to define our big picture goal, and they actually that hits that big picture goal can vary depending on the persona. 

 8:43: In the case of this email, the big picture goal was keeping the users calm with the price increase. 

 8:48: The power users got so much value from the app that we weren’t concerned about the reaction, and they were perfectly primed for an annual plan, but the at-risk users, those ones needed a little hand holding to see the value despite the price increase. 

 9:01: So why am I talking about This in the what I would change section, because it is more ideal when we offer only one option. 

 9:07: It makes things fuzzy to add more, and there’s a simple solve, segmentation. 

 9:13: Each user should have been tagged based on in-app behavior and gotten the CTA that matched their level of activity. 

 9:19: We could have avoided this whole fuzziness and just offered one thing for each persona. 

 9:26: That’s it. 

 9:26: That’s the story of this email. 

 9:28: I happen to love pricing increase emails and I cannot wait to dig into so many different pieces in the Takeaways episode next week. 

 9:36: Thanks for joining me for email Story Time. 

 9:39: If you enjoyed today’s story, give this podcast a review so email marketers like you can have more fun with email. 

 9:45: See you next week when we dig into this story’s takeaways.