Christmas is just around the corner and if you’re looking for creative ways to grow sales this holiday season, we’ve got your back…
In this short guide, we’ll show you 6 ways you can make more money and grow your awesome video membership business.
You can pick and choose which marketing strategies to go for, or use them all! Either way, these are all designed to help you earn more money this Christmas.
Let’s jump right in…
1. Create An Upsell Offer For Your Annual Packages
If you offer both monthly and annual packages, you can create an upsell offer that will convert more customers to your long-term plans. An upsell offer is where you convince a customer to buy a discounted offer of your annual membership over a monthly plan, like Barre Body does here.
Upselling works because it taps into primal psychological elements that influence how we buy products and perceive value.
When clients make the decision to buy a product, like your monthly membership, their brain goes into what’s known as ‘purchasing mode.’
They already know that they’re going to spend money on your product. Now, it’s just a question of how much.
That’s where your discounted annual membership offer comes in! By offering an upsell you can increase the amount they spend, and lock them in as a customer.
Now:
It’s common for discounts to make you feel like you’re going to make less money. But, annual membership upsells actually make you more money over the long term.
They help you do this in 3 main ways:
- Longer retention: the average churn time for monthly subscribers is 3-5 months, which means even a discounted annual membership will bring you more profit.
- Increased engagement: customers on annual plans have a full year to integrate your service into their everyday life and are more likely to be active users.
- Improve your business’s cash flow: you get a bigger sum of money upfront as opposed to smaller, incremental payments.
And, we have the numbers to prove it! We saw Uscreen clients convert 50 – 100 customers a month to annual subscribers with a discounted annual membership upsell.
Better still, these clients saw a 553.8% increase in just 4 months just by using upsells!
Yup, you read that right…that’s 6.5x their revenue! If you’re a Uscreen customer, you can use our built-in membership upsell tool.
This will trigger an upsell popup to the buyer right before they complete their order.
Best of all, this feature is customizable and automated. You can offer whatever discount you think works best on any of your membership plans. (Although we recommend upselling your annual plans.)
Convinced? Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to use Uscreen’s upsell feature.
Membership Upsells: How To 6x Your Revenue With One Small Change
2. Offer An Exclusive Christmas Coupon
Discounts trigger core emotions like desire, scarcity, and FOMO, that make your potential buyer more open to purchasing.
This goes back to our hunter and gatherer roots, where scarcity made us want to hoard resources. Take Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Boxing Day, for example.
People know these discounts only last one day and once the deals are over, that’s it until next year. They have to act now to get the product they want at its lowest price!
This means many consumers react like this:
People often expect to spend $400+ around these events. They actually save money to spend on deals ahead of time!
You can leverage these emotional triggers yourself by setting a limited-time coupon offer.
To do this, you can create a coupon valid for 3-4 days only that gives people a discounted price for your product. Perfect for the holiday season!
Coupons can take the form of:
- A giveaway prize on social media (more on that later).
- A membership package of your choice (i.e. monthly or semi-annually).
- Your content bundles (more on that later).
Having a short time frame for the coupon offer creates a sense of urgency and encourages people to act before the offer ends.
If you’re a Uscreen customer, you can set up your coupons from this tab in your Marketing dashboard:
For more information on how to use our coupon tool, check out our help guide here.
Essential Guide to Black Friday & Cyber Monday Marketing
3. Leverage Gift Cards
Gift cards are a surefire way to increase your sales this holiday season. They’re gifts that are always in demand. In fact, Google Trends data shows the demand for gift cards grows every year with a big spike around the holiday season, starting in November.
People want fun and easy ways to give personalized gifts to their loved ones, and 74% of consumers now prefer engaging and valuable experiences over material things.
This makes online gift cards that can help people…
- learn a new skill
- work out
- improve mental health
- stream niche content
…super popular among both gift-givers and receivers.
When choosing a gift card for video platforms, buyers expect to purchase either:
- A custom amount of their choosing.
- A suggested amount.
These amounts often come in the form of monthly, quarterly, or annual subscription plans. This gives your potential customers enough options to find the gift card that suits their budget like The Wkout does here:
If customers want to purchase a membership for a different length of time, Uscreen’s Gift Card feature lets them pay for any number of billing periods they choose. This gives them more choices and more ways to customize their experience:
If you’re a Uscreen customer and want to create your own gift cards, check out our guide on how to add suggested gift card amounts.
How to Use Gift Cards to Boost Your Christmas Video Sales
4. Sell Content Bundles
Selling bundles – or, pre-packaged collections of content with the same theme – is a great way for you to boost revenue and attract leads to your subscription service.
You’ll get more money upfront because you can charge a higher fee per purchase and the customers interested in these videos are willing to pay a higher price for the specific content that they want.
Even better, these one-time purchases help customers immerse themselves in your product, which gets them one step closer to subscribing and becoming long-term members. With Uscreen, you can bundle up new or existing content and sell it for one easy payment.
The Ritual does this really well, offering different themed bundles to suit different goals:
This is a great opportunity for you to promote any relevant seasonal content you have, or sell a group of your videos for a discounted price.
If you’re looking to set up your own bundles on the Uscreen platform, check out our guide here.
5. Promote Your Offers And VOD Site On Social Media
Social media is a powerful and cost-effective marketing tool that can:
- Engage your online audience.
- Increase traffic to your video streaming site.
- Strengthen your brand.
- Increase conversions.
Your followers on social media platforms are known as qualified leads.
Qualified leads are people who are already aware of and interested in your content. This makes it easier to convert them to paying members.
With them in mind, you should start creating festive social media content at the beginning of December.
You can do this by using holiday-themed graphics for your posts, reels, and stories. You can also announce special seasonal campaigns like giveaways and discounts.
This will build anticipation among your followers and get them excited to engage with your promotional campaign.
To help you with what to post (and when to post it) we’ve talked to our resident social media specialist, Madison, who put together a 15-day holiday campaign template for you!
She recommends starting your holiday social media campaign 15-20 days before Christmas day to give people enough time to buy gifts early and prepare for any festive giveaways!
Here’s what that looks like:
- December 10th: run a festive giveaway of your choice for one ‘winner’ (or more). This could be a free consultation, ebook, coupon code, or whatever you’re capable of – in return for someone sharing and engaging with your post. The goal here is to get as many people sharing and engaging with your post in the hopes of being that chosen winner.
- December 12th: promote your gift cards as a great present to give to loved ones.
- December 13th: remind your followers to enter the giveaway contest and celebrate those who’ve already entered.
- December 15th: share snippets of content people can expect during the holiday season. This can be in the form of trailers, reels, stories, or the behind scenes of content that’s coming up.
- December 17th: promote a limited-time special offer. This can be the discounted annual membership, a coupon, or your content bundles.
- December 20th: announce the winner of your giveaway and remind people about your gift cards.
- December 22nd: remind your followers that the discounted offer is still available. Or, you can promote an even better discount offer valid only for the day, like a coupon.
- December 23rd: engage with your audience, this can even mean setting up a poll on Instagram and asking your followers a series of festive questions, including who bought a membership, gift card, or used a coupon.
- December 24th: this would be a final reminder of any limited-time offers you put up like coupons or discounted annual memberships.
- December 25th: wish your followers a Merry Christmas.
With this strategy, you’ll be able to engage with your audience, grow traffic to your VOD site, and increase sales!
Social Media Guide for Driving Traffic To Your Video Streaming Site
6. Launch An Email Marketing Christmas Campaign
Email marketing is an effective way to raise awareness, build excitement, and increase sales for your membership platform this holiday season.
You can use email marketing campaigns to promote:
- Gift cards.
- Coupons.
- Discounted annual subscriptions.
- Content bundles.
You should already have an email list of existing leads (this includes customers and people who’ve signed up for your email collection efforts).
Get your list ready, and keep reading to learn how to build your campaign…
We roped in our email marketing specialist, Anna, who was kind enough to make a Christmas email marketing campaign template you can follow:
- November 30th: send an email announcing your gift cards – people start Christmas shopping early, in fact, 31% of Americans already started their holiday shopping in June this year.
- December 7th: send a reminder that you offer gift cards.
- December 14th: send a reminder email about your gift cards and announce your special limited-time Christmas promotions, like your discounted annual membership or your Christmas coupon.
- December 18th: Send a “one week until Christmas” email which includes a link to your special offers.
- December 23rd: Send a “last chance” email for gift card purchases and a reminder that the special offers (i.e. discounted annual membership or coupon) will end soon – it’s important to create a sense of urgency.
- December 25th: wish your email list a “Merry Christmas.”
Using this email marketing plan will help you connect with your audience, direct traffic to your site and promote your holiday offers!
How to Build Email Marketing Funnels that Convert
Wrapping it up…
Christmas is a great time for you to use special offers to promote your video streaming service. That’s because people are on the lookout for good deals to treat themselves or their loved ones.
To recap, we’ve given you 6 ways you can promote your video business…
- Create An Upsell For Annual Memberships
- Offer An Exclusive Christmas Coupon
- Leverage Gift Cards
- Sell Content Bundles
- Promote Your Offer Offers And VOD Site On Social Media
- Launch An Email Marketing Christmas Campaign
…that’ll help you increase traffic and sales for your video streaming site.
