# Annual price cut from $69.95 to $59.95: more subs, -8.2% revenue

- Outcome: Lost
- Page type: Pricing page (SaaS)
- Elements: Price
- Date shared: 2008-02
- Test run by: [MarketingExperiments](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/marketingexperiments/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/finding-ideal-price-points
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/me-reference-publisher-price-59-95/

Cutting an annual subscription from $69.95 to $59.95 lifted paid subscriptions from 183 to 196, but total revenue fell 8.2%, from $12,800.85 to $11,750.20. MarketingExperiments (MECLABS) ran this test for an online reference book publisher. It was one arm of a five-way price test over two weeks.

## Result

**more subs, -8.2% revenue**

- Paid subscriptions: 183 to 196 (+7.1%). Conversion to paid went from 0.48% to 0.51%.
- Total revenue: $12,800.85 to $11,750.20 (-8.2%). The extra sign-ups did not make up for the lower price. This is the result that counts as a loss.
- In the same test, $50 sold the most (218) but earned the least ($10,900), and $75 earned the most ($13,575).
- No significance level was reported, and the subscription counts per arm are small.

## Control

The offer page sold a year of unlimited access to the publisher's research for $69.95, with a line showing the saving against the print edition.

## Variant

The same page with the price set to $59.95 and the saving line updated to match. Nothing else on the page changed.

## Why it likely lost (our reading)

- A $10 cut is about 14% off the price, but it only bought about 7% more buyers. Demand at this price range looks fairly insensitive to small cuts.
- Visitors came from a reference article, so they likely already wanted the content. Buyers with high intent care less about price.
- The saving against the print edition was already over $1,300. Another $10 off barely changes how good the deal looks.

## Caveats

Two-week test from 2008 with about 200 paid subscriptions per arm and no stated significance. The revenue figures cover first purchases only, not renewals or refunds.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we lower the annual subscription price, then paid conversions will rise enough to grow total revenue, because price is the main thing stopping visitors from buying.
- Primary metric: Revenue per visitor to the offer page
- Guardrail: Paid conversion rate
- Guardrail: Renewal or retention rate of each price cohort
- Guardrail: Refund rate
- Who should test it: SaaS and content businesses with one clear paid plan and enough traffic to see a few hundred purchases per arm. Test several price points, both higher and lower. If you only see a handful of sales a week, a price test will not give you a clear answer.

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Credit: MarketingExperiments ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/me-reference-publisher-price-59-95/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.