If you ever visit St. Louis, check out a restaurant called Bailey’s Range. They have great burgers (even if you’re a vegetarian like me–their mushroom veggie burger is excellent) and their shakes are delicious.
Bailey’s also offers a fun twist on their menu: Two burgers face off, and the burger that sells the most every 2 weeks stays on the menu, and the other goes away. I think it’s a great way to encourage people to pay attention and participate. It gives customers agency over a decision that would normally be in the hands of the restaurant.
I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time at Stonemaier Games, and I finally found a way to experiment with it. A few months ago on the Champion newsletter, I picked two products that we had in stock at all fulfillment centers at the time, and I asked Champions to vote on which product they wanted to see at a special discount the next month. They could also nominate one product they hoped to see on a future matchup.
Here’s the original matchup from a few months ago:
In the next month’s Champion newsletter, I revealed the winning product and put it on a special sale for the next 30 days (while only Champions know about the sale, the sale price is available to all webstore customers). This has resulted in a few dozen purchases of the product each time.
Essentially, we’re giving customers the power to choose which products go on sale. Not that price is everything, but as a consumer myself, I know that sometimes I need a little nudge before I buy a product (even if I already know I want it). This is the nudge.
I also view it as a fun perk for Stonemaier Champions that doesn’t require a purchase for them to participate–they can vote and nominate just for fun if they’d like.
What do you think about this method? Have you seen other engaging head-to-head matchup systems or ways for customers to choose which products go on sale?
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10 Comments on “This or That: What Happens When We Let Customers Choose Which Products Go on Sale?”
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It’s a fun idea. It’s also a way of providing social proof. Do you have a guess as to what % this voting procedure (combined with discount) increases sales, if at all, compared to simply running a discount by itself?
Oh, it would be a total guess. I have no idea. What do you think?
The voting procedure draws attention to the upcoming sale and does so via a form of engagement. Therefore, I’d guess it’s roughly as marginally impactful as comparable forms of engagement marketing oriented toward building awareness (and creating a bit of stickiness).
I’d guess that the voting procedure would have similar marginal impact to comparable engagement marketing oriented toward awareness (and a bit of stickiness).
IIRC, you did a voting procedure of some sort for Euphoria’s theme and might infer a guess at effectiveness from your prior interactions with backers on that campaign (did getting their input jazz them up a little or a lot?)
Kickstarter Lesson #219 implies that getting people to pre-commit by voting might be quite impactful. Your 4 August 2022 post in the blog implied the same, in terms of effectiveness of engagement marketing for Xia and Moonrakers. You’ve previously discussed GMT’s P500 system, but only from the standpoint of how well it measures demand versus how well it creates demand.
As far as real data, the effectiveness of the voting procedure could be measured by giving a slightly better discount (e.g., $1.01) to everybody who voted at all, and giving a slightly smaller discount (e.g., $1.00) to the general public. The experiment would work best for an expansion because then you know or can estimate the denominator for each group, thereby converting the measurement to a normalized percentage (adoption rate) that you could compare between groups. To correct for selection bias and draw conclusions about the effectiveness versus just doing a discount alone, you could compare these percentages to the purchase rate for another comparable expansion that had a similar discount situation but without any voting procedure. For instance, doing a voting procedure for a future Wingspan expansion would provide a basis for comparison to a historical Wingspan expansion.
I really like this idea. In general, it seems like offering people choices gets their attention and is motivating. I know for sure when I ask my kids “what do you want to eat?” Vs “do you want pizza or chicken?” gets a MUCH different response, haha. Also, recently when the new Tapestry Fantasies and Futures expansion was launched, and the other expansions were on sale at the same time, that was enough of a little push for me to order them all at the same time. Thanks for always being so thoughtful and trying new approaches to things!
I think the “this or that” mentality is a great way to bring engagement. You have two options boiling it down to a simple decision but you’re creating a way to invest into a brand beyond paying them money. You can bring it closer to home and do this in the design/development process of a game as well but that isn’t nearly as frequent of an endevour as something like product sales would be. I wonder what other micro interactions you could use this model on to bring community engagement into the day to day of a brand.
I think it’s a great simple way to engage with your Stonemaier Champions. I enjoy all forms of Stonemaier engagement; whether it be this or surveys or blog posts. It all helps contribute to a strong sense of community.
P.S. Great to hear that you’re a fellow vegetarian!
I did vote for the matchup but eventually didn’t order the plans and plays due to the relatively high shipping cost. The real tip over for me actually came when Plans and Ploys was also reduced when Fantasies and Futures was released, so I could combine both in one shipment (and included Expeditions in the proces, so I’ll have to be patient). I did like the matchup though.
I like it for the website, but as someone who’s a couple flavors of neurodivergent, and is also an over-planner that finds comfort in reading menus and planning her food order well before the first time she eats at a place, that restaurant would make me anxious- my immediate thought is falling in love with a sandwich only for it to be sent to the shadow realm never to return. It’s not that I only eat chicken nuggets or whatever, I’m normally quite an adventurous eater, but I’m able to do that far more comfortably when there’s a fallback on the menu I know I’ll like. But that’s okay! Not all restaurants are For Me, and it’s cool that this exists for the people who thrive with it.
I like the product-on-sale matchups! But there’s a very important difference between a Burger Battle and a board game battle: burgers are consumables. You could eat the same burger every week, if you would want. Board games, on the other hand, are durable goods. You buy a board game to play it over and over again, but not to consume it and buy it again the next time you want to play it (well, except legacy games :-)). So, while I like voting for the match-ups, I have never actually ordered something, because I already own the games.
The Rolling Realms dry eraser pens are the only real Stonemaier consumable I can think of. And even those last a long, long time.
Which is all a very good thing, obviously. :)
I appreciate you pursuing so many of our products, Karel! I try to keep in mind that new customers discover Stonemaier Games every day; someone who became a Champion to preorder Expeditions may not be familiar with anything else we make, so this is a way to invite them deeper into our games.