Next > offer loading explained
In this guide, we'll explore how to create a compelling subscription offer ecosystem for your business. Imagine you're at the helm of a startup, let's call it WonderAI, and you're looking to attract your first customers, including early adopters. Your goal is to entice them with a set of enticing offers that not only make sense but also deliver real value.
WonderAI has three primary types of offers: "Startup," "Business," and "ScaleUp." These offers cater to different stages of a customer's journey, from startups taking their first steps to well-established businesses and fast-growing companies on the path to internationalization.
- Startup: Designed for budding entrepreneurs and startups looking to get their feet wet in the world of AI.
- Business: Tailored for established startups that have found their footing and are ready to take their AI ventures to the next level.
- ScaleUp: The top-tier subscription, reserved for rapidly growing startups looking to make a global impact.
To stand out in the competitive landscape and attract early adopters, or what we like to call "Early Birds," WonderAI is not only offering its core subscriptions at competitive prices but also unlocking exclusive VIP offers. The VIP offers, like the ability to publish articles about the customer's company on the WonderAI website and speak at WonderAI conferences, add a premium touch to the subscriptions.
What's unique here is that these VIP offers aren't limited to just the "ScaleUp" subscription. WonderAI is taking a customer-centric approach by extending VIP access to "Startup" and "Business" subscribers as well. This approach creates a win-win situation where customers at different stages can access premium features.
In this guide, we'll dive deeper into how to structure your subscription offers, manage the different fields in the interface, and leverage utility methods in our library. Let's get started on crafting the perfect subscription offer ecosystem for your business.
WonderAI, much like its startup counterparts, wants to offer its users the flexibility to pay on a monthly or yearly basis, with the added benefit of cost savings for annual subscriptions (for instance, getting two months free with a yearly subscription). So, our three primary offers, "Startup," "Business," and "ScaleUp," come in four different flavors: "EarlyBird" (offering both monthly and yearly options) and "Standard" (with monthly and yearly plans).
Like many startups, WonderAI provides a range of subscription offers, but let's focus on the core concepts for now. We'll delve into adding free trials and basic services towards the end of this article once we've got a solid grasp of these fundamental principles.
Now, here's where things get interesting, and it might not be immediately apparent to users, but it's crucial for us when writing the code for these offers. Imagine a scenario where a "Standard" subscriber initially opts for three months of the "Startup" offer and later decides to upgrade to a one-year "Startup" subscription. In this case, the expiry date for that annual subscription must build upon the existing three months they've already purchased. However, if the user is still within the initial three months of the "Startup" subscription and decides to purchase a "Business" offer, these purchases must be handled separately. This doesn't just pertain to triggering a refund for the remaining "Startup" subscription; it's about managing the "Startup" subscriptions for yearly and monthly plans in a way that they are somehow interconnected. We call this grouping of offers an 'offer group.'
Now, let's talk about the Early Bird subscriptions. These can be enticing lifetime offers, but they may also have a time limit, such as 'get 50% off for three years.' Depending on the developer's choice, the Early Bird offers may or may not belong to the same 'offer group' as their 'Standard' counterparts. This decision provides flexibility and control in how these offers are managed.
As we dive deeper into the world of subscription offers, it becomes evident that 'Offer Groups' serve as a fundamental framework for managing the intricacies of subscription services, particularly in the context of AI and SaaS companies. These businesses often offer pay-as-you-go models where users purchase a predefined set of credits or tokens, each representing a unit of service consumption, much like buying tickets at an amusement park.
Consider the scenario at WonderAI, where they provide customers the opportunity to book conference speaker talks (talking about their company at the same time). A user may choose to purchase a single talk for 1000$, represented as 1 token, or opt for a bundle of three talks at 2000$, denoted as 3 tokens. The versatility of this system allows customers to not only buy multiple instances of a one-token offer but also combine various token packages. In such cases, it is essential that these token offers are grouped together, which brings us back to the concept of Offer Groups.
If for instance, a 'Startup' customer that has 2 tokens remaining in their credits decides to upgrade to the 'Business' plan, subsequently purchasing an additional token. The question arises: should all these tokens fall under the same basket, or should they remain separate? The answer, as you might have guessed, is: it depends. In practice, it's often more efficient to keep each 'token' offer within its respective "offer group order" and to search for available tokens across all active subscriptions. This approach offers a more flexible and organized way to manage token-based services while ensuring that tokens with closer expiry dates are prioritized. We start to see the reason why a dedicated library to manage all this could save us time and pain.
In the evolving landscape of subscription offerings, comprehending the role of 'Offer Groups' empowers businesses to construct tailored subscription models that align with their unique strategies and user experiences. This level of customization not only simplifies subscription management but also enriches the user's journey, making it a win-win-win situation for developers, companies and customers.
In our intricate world of subscription offers, where concepts like Offer Groups, Tokens, and Startup Offers play pivotal roles, another crucial element comes into play: Functional Tags. These are not your typical tags visible to users but rather have a specific function, guiding the system's behavior.
So far, we've laid the foundation with six Offer Groups, thoughtfully organized as two sets of three: "Startup," "Business," and "ScaleUp" offers groups for each of "Standard" and "Early Bird", and each housing both monthly and yearly subscription options. So a total of twelve basic offers. As you can see, the complexity is growing.
Now, let's tackle the challenge of displaying the right offers to our users. We don't want to overwhelm them with all options at once, and we need to differentiate between "Early Bird" and "Standard" offers based on the user's status, perhaps through an invitation link or a specific end of happy days date. Moreover, displaying both monthly and yearly subscriptions simultaneously may not be ideal. Users usually prefer a clean interface with a switch to toggle between subscription durations, with a message highlighting the yearly subscription's advantages, such as "two months free".
Functional Tags come to the rescue here. We can begin by tagging all our subscription offers with the label "subscription". This sets them apart from other types of offers. Now, remember, we haven't even delved into the exclusive VIP offers yet, available only to "ScaleUp" subscribers in the "Standard" scenario but accessible to all "Early Bird" subscribers. These six core offers can all bear the "subscription" tag, distinguishing them.
However, we still have 12 offers to manage, and we need to further categorize them. Six can be marked with the "monthly" tag, while the remaining six get tagged as "yearly," indicating yearly subscriptions. This results in two sets of six offers each. To refine the selection, we add the tags "Standard" and "Early Bird," creating four distinct combinations: "Standard Monthly," "Early Bird Monthly," "Standard Yearly," and "Early Bird Yearly."
Now, the user environment, influenced by their status, will determine whether to display "Early Bird" or "Standard" offers. Then, the switch on the display page lets users toggle between "Monthly" and "Yearly" subscriptions. The power of Functional Tags lies in their role as filters, streamlining the offers presented to users. They don't carry hidden functionalities like Offer Groups, which influence expiry dates and token counts, making them a valuable tool for effective offer presentation.
In the complex world of subscription offers, maintaining a streamlined and efficient system is essential. That's where a dedicated library for handling various aspects of offers, like Functional Tags, proves invaluable.
Now, let's dive into a more intricate topic: Offer Unlocking.
In the Standard section, the process of unlocking VIP offers for "ScaleUp" subscribers might initially appear straightforward. One might think of designating an offer as a child of the "ScaleUp" subscriptions, ensuring that subscribers to these offers gain access to the VIP service. However, a complication arises. We provide two variations of "ScaleUp" subscriptions: monthly and yearly plans. An even bigger issue is that we desire the same VIP offer to be accessible to other offer groups in the "EarlyBird" section. How can we achieve this?
To tackle this challenge, we harness the unlockedBy field. Instead of creating child offers (as our initial intuition might suggest), we precisely specify, for each VIP offer, the particular offerGroup(s) it is unlocked by.
The "unlockedBy" field proves to be a versatile solution that enhances the management and accessibility of related services across different subscription types. Even if we refer to the unlocked offers as sub-offers, it's more accurate to think of them as "unlocked by". We are usually confined to having only two parents, and in the programming world, it's even worse: we have only one parent (or one-to-many relationships). Using the term "parentOfferGroups" (as initially in the library) would have been misleading as it holds a potentially long list of parents.
Within the "EarlyBird" section, identified by the "Eb" prefix, we showcase a VIP offer named "EventTalk". This offer can be unlocked by purchasing an offer from one of the three offer groups: "EbStartup," "EbBusiness," and "EbScaleUp" within the "EarlyBird" section. Moreover, it can also be unlocked by the "ScaleUp" offer in the "Standard" section, as we discussed earlier. To achieve this high degree of flexibility, we once again make use of the unlockedBy field.
The EventTalk.unlockedBy field now contains an array of strings: ["EbStartup", "EbBusiness", "EbScaleUp", "ScaleUp"]. This setup enables us to create a single offer that can be unlocked by purchasing offers from different sections, seamlessly bridging the gap between the "EarlyBird" and "Standard" sections.
This approach streamlines our offer hierarchy and ensures that an offer can be associated with multiple unlocking offers (don't think parent offers :-) ). It's a powerful and versatile solution that enhances the management and organization of offers within the library.
Now, let's discuss how to incorporate a free subscription offer into the mix. This is a strategic move for WonderAI to gather user emails and connect with them through compelling irresistible offers.
The free subscription offer comes with three essential tags: "subscription," "monthly," and "yearly." If the perks for early adopters align with those of "standard" customers, it's possible to include a fourth tag, "earlybird." This tag ensures that you can locate the free subscription offer in any query that searches for root offers. However, for better organization as your customer base grows, it's recommended to create a separate offer exclusively for "Early Birds." This approach facilitates easy management and access, particularly as your customer numbers increase, which is something I wish for you now that you know how to serve them well.