Have you ever raised your prices and found that no one was rushing to buy? We've been there and done that. And that's why this week we're sharing how to increase your prices the right way by telling your audience in advance and creating urgency that will boost your sales. No matter what you sell (a membership, a course, a coaching programme, or any other product) we also have something special for you – our price increase email campaign. 

Ready to find out how to increase your prices, build trust with your audience and customers, and make loads of sales in the process? Let's go!

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 

(6:11) How NOT TO increase your prices.
(8:23) Why give your audience notice of your price increase.
(10:10) Never give people too much notice about your price increase.
(11:53) Why send price increase emails to your audience.
(14:50) Keep track of all the places where you mention your prices.
(17:44) Why tell your existing customers about a price increase. 
(18:55) Why increasing your prices acts as a retention mechanism. 
(20:06) Why you should never extend your price increase offer.
(21:43) Grab our price increase email campaign for FREE - live workshop.
(22:44) Subject line of the week.

How NOT TO increase your prices

If you've ever put your prices up, you probably did what we used to do in the past (and what we see lots of people still do). You posted on social media and found there was absolutely no rush in sales. Sounds familiar? The problem with that strategy is that the reason people aren't buying isn't the price itself, so putting it up or down isn't going to make a difference. But you can use the price (and a price increase at that) as a way to compel people to jump off the fence and go ahead and buy. 

The way not to raise your prices is by doing it quietly and in the background. Because that's a wasted opportunity! Instead, you could use a price increase as a promotional opportunity to get people to buy. How? You tell them you’re going to put the price up in a few days and give them an opportunity to buy now.

Of course, you want people to buy at the new price, right? Sure. But remember that you’re constantly bringing in new people onto your email list – every single week. And the new people will buy at the new price. But don't miss the opportunity to expose your existing subscribers to the old price and create a sense of urgency that pushes people to make a decision and buy now. 

Why give your audience notice of your price increase

Why are you telling your audience and existing subscribers about the price increase in advance? Because it helps create a sense of loyalty and happiness – you're giving them notice so they don't miss out on grabbing your product at the current price. And that's a good thing because we all want customers to be with us for the long haul. You have the rest of time to make sales at the new price. So why not give your loyal subscribers who’ve been around for a while the chance to grab the existing price first?

This is how we handle each price increase for our membership, The League, and any other product we've ever launched. We start with a lower price, get ourselves a good base of members first (who become our solid audience and give us base income), and then gradually increase the price over time.

A benefit of doing things this way is that it gives you the time to refine your offer. When we first launched our membership, the content wasn't finished. It still isn't because it's constantly changing – we’re adding new, amazing features all the time. But we’ve also taken things out that didn’t need to be there. So by increasing your price gradually you get to create the right offer for your audience over a period of time.

Never give people too much notice of your price increase

How you put your prices up is important. But what’s also critical is not giving people too much notice. If you tell your audience about a price increase coming up next year, that's just information. There’s no urgency. And you want urgency – not information.

That's why we tell our audience about any price increase 5 days in advance – no longer than that. And that creates real urgency – almost like an impending sense of doom. Because if we say there's going to be a price increase in 5 days, there's going to be a price increase in 5 days. That's urgency. And urgency only works if it’s actually urgent. That’s why we never use countdown timers of 30 days, for example – because there's no urgency in that. It's just information. 

Why send price increase emails to your audience 

Using a window of 5 days before your price increase also gives you enough to say in your emails over that period of time. The idea is to send 5 days' worth of emails to your subscribers to talk to them about the price increase from different angles. That doesn't mean 5 emails – you can and absolutely should email them more than once a day, especially on the last day before the offer closes. But make sure you always have a reason to send those emails – if you don't, then you're sending too many. 

So what do you say in your emails? Tell your subscribers what the price increase means for them. For example, if you're increasing your price by $20 per month, tell them about their cumulative annual saving. So an increase of $20 per month means a saving of $240 over the course of 12 months if they buy within the next 5 days. Why does doing this make a difference? Because $240 is a bigger number than $20. But also because subconsciously, you’re encouraging people to commit to joining for one year. And that means bigger savings!

Another thing you want to point out in your price increase emails is that if they buy now they'll be getting the same content for a cheaper price. But if they wait and buy later? They'll pay more for the same thing – and nobody wants that! Therefore, buying now becomes a no-brainer. 

Keep track of all the places where you mention your prices

Something you also want to do in preparation for a price increase is to keep a document of every single place where you mention your prices. Why? Because a price increase means updating that figure everywhere – on your sales pages, your special offer pages, your email campaigns, your promotional videos, etc.

If you think this doesn't apply to you because you only mention your price in one place (probably on your sales page) then you might be leaving money on the table! There’s a reason why we make sales for our membership The League every single day. And that's because we mention our price in lots of different places – not just on our sales page. 

Out of all our email campaigns, only a couple send people to our sales page. All the other campaigns take different routes, which means we have lots of places where we mention our prices that need updating every time we raise them. Remember that your sales page is important (a bit like a brochure), but you'll make more sales by sending people to other bits of content.  

Why tell your existing customers about a price increase

When putting your prices up, it's also important to specifically tell your existing customers or members. Just like you did for your audience, let them know what it means for them. Will their price also go up for them? Or will it stay the same? We always tell our members not to worry because the price they pay doesn't change – that's what we choose to do. 

But we also let them know in advance about the price hike because they might know someone who wants to join our membership, and if they sign up now, they'll be able to access the same content at a cheaper price.  By telling people, you're doing them a favour, and as human beings, we all like to help others – it makes us feel good about ourselves. 

Why increasing your prices acts as a retention mechanism

Last but not least, increasing your prices acts as a retention mechanism. People stick around because they want to keep their current price, rather than paying the higher one in case they decide to leave or take a break for a few months and then re-join in the future. So informing your existing customers in advance helps with retention because your members don't want to lose that price. You may also have former customers or members on your list, and by telling them about the price increase in advance, you're doing them a favour too. Because if they're thinking of joining again, now's the time. 

Why you should never extend your price increase offer

We talked about this before, but whatever deadline you give to your offer, don't extend it. If you said the price is going up in X days, it needs to go up in X days. Once you have a deadline in place, stick to it and close your offer when you said you would. 

Why? Because if you don't, people won't trust you again. You might have people in your audience who decide to buy from you right now to take advantage of this offer by using money they'd originally allocated to something else. Buying from you now means making a compromise or sacrifice, even.

So if you extend the deadline and tell people they can still buy at the old price, it's illegal, insulting, offensive, and misleading. And it’s bad for you because you lose people's trust. Whatever you do, don’t be the marketer who extends their discount for another 24 hours for days in a row. It’s terrible practice!

Grab our price increase email campaign for FREE – live workshop

Ready to put your prices up? We’re about to run an interesting workshop about the specific price increase email campaign we use to raise our prices. You’ll get every single email in a nice copy-and-paste document you can take, fill in, and start using in your own business to make sales straight away.

During the live workshop, we're going to walk you through every email and explain why every word is there, what it does, and the psychological nuances behind it. You’ll also get a recording of the workshop so you can watch it back whenever you like. If you want to grab our price increase email campaign and attend this workshop, head over to this link. 

Subject line of the week

This week’s subject line is “My favourite refund request (ever).” This came about because one of our customers got in touch to say that he bought our Bottomless Email Strategy Package and started to go through it but didn’t like it. So he was going to ask for a refund because he didn’t think our framework would work for his industry (he sells guitar tutorials).

But then, he decided to give it a go, and at the back of writing a few emails, he received lots of replies from his subscribers and even made $600 in sales in the first few hours! So he got in touch with us to let us know he'd changed his mind and did not want a refund anymore. That was mind-blowing! Because one thing is to say good stuff about your own products but to get testimonials like these from your customers is incredible!

So the idea behind this subject line (and why it worked so well) is to take something inherently bad (like a customer asking for a refund or “a death threat” or “food poisoning”, for example) and add the words “favourite” and “ever” to it. It works a treat – try it.

Useful Episode Resources

Related episodes

How to Do Deadlines Well and Ethically. 

Why You Need to Avoid These Email Marketing Mistakes. 

How to Create Urgency For an Evergreen Membership or Course Without Product Launches. 

FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketing

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