Sale Duration

stuarthazley

Hi everyone, I'm planning to run a sale soon and it got me thinking about not the percentage you offer off, but the length of time you run the sale. I currently offer my small selection of fonts through YouWorkForThem and MyFonts and I believe from memory that MyFonts do/did recommend running the sale for 45 days. Is there any benefit to running a sale that length of time as opposed to running a much shorter sale? I understand there also would be many other additional factors coming into play (the popularity of the fonts, foundry, etc.) but I'm curious about everyone's input. 

For my input, I've noticed that when I run a sale for 45 days, I tend to see more sales during the last few days of the sale.

Thanks!

myersjj

Have you tried running a short-term sale (like 7 - 10 days) to see if that encourages sales?

dascaluflorin

Hi there.

I work as a designer in an email marketing agency (if anyone is looking for help on that front, I can try an put you in contact with the bosses - will provide more details via DMs, if anyone's interested) and, although none of the clients are type designers/foundries, the sales we run for our clients are usually shorter (sometimes shorter than a week, by a few days, sometimes around 7-10+ days if they're centered around a big holiday) and centered around some big day or event - like a holiday - or are part of a flow (Welcome Flow, Cart/Browse Abandonment Flow, etc.) and most of the time those sales are divided into 3 parts: Early Access, the actual sale, Extended Sale.
From what I can tell (tho, I might be wrong - it's morning over here and I haven't looked too deep into it), everyone gets access to the "Early Access" sale and the actual sale with no discount code needed, most of the time. While for Extended Sale there's always a discount code, which you can get if you're a subscriber to the email list of that client.

Maybe it's worth trying something like that? Even look into using some other channels, like email marketing, or an Instagram channel/group (not sure what's the correct term for it - it's basically a group that people can join, but only the administrator can post) where you give a last discount, right before the sale ends?

I think, but I have no source to back it up, a longer sale means more time for the users to forget about it - it will still be there tomorrow... and the day after tomorrow... and the day after that... So why should I hurry and buy something now?

Cheers.

Dave Crossland

Some jurisdictions have rules about this, like you can't say "this product is 50% off" until its been available for purchase at the 2x price for X amount of days, and the sale can't run for more than a specific fraction of X.

John Hudson

Interesting, @Dave Crossland. What are examples of such jurisdictions? I presume these regulations apply to where an online store or service is hosted or its business registered.

Dan Reynolds

In Germany we have laws that prevent sellers from hiking prices up and then lowering them again, calling the “lowered” prices Sales. There are also regulations that require sellers to list the pre-sale price, at least the pre-sale prices as they were in place over a certain about of time. This also applies to online selling, but as you suggest, it surely only applies to sellers operating with German states. I am not sure if the regulations apply to business-to-business to transactions. The type business, as least as most of it operates in Germany, must still be B2B and not B2C.

Dave Crossland

The UK! 

Looks like rules changed in 2017 (8 years after I left)

• "Price establishing for 28-days within a 6-month period so that a product is at full price for one month and then on discount for 5 months [is unlikely to comply with the rules]. The recommendation is to move to 1:1 pricing (i.e. the product is offered at a discount for the same period of time or shorter than the product is sold at full price)." https://marketinglaw.osborneclarke.com/advertising-regulation/no-more-28-day-rule-pricing-and-promotions-under-the-spotlight/
  
• "Remember that claiming an offer is limited when it is not is a criminal offence." - https://www.dfalaw.co.uk/faq_type/i-am-planning-a-sales-promotion-what-are-the-legal-rules/

I remember I first heard about these rules existing in the UK when I was studying digital design and marketing ~20 years ago, because I had seen online USA based businesses making fictitious sales offers and a mentor told me that many things that are legal businesses practices in the USA are illegal in the UK and blindly implementing stuff taught to USA audiences could have serious consequences....

Jasper de Waard

At a major player in the music production plugins business, sales >50% are pretty standard year round: https://www.waves.com/best-sellers