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How Kodeco scaled sales by 960% with Paddle on Black Friday

960

%

increase in transactions on Black Friday

Challenge

Maximize yearly subscription upgrades

When Kodeco (formerly raywenderlich.com and Razeware) launched in 2009, its customers were independent developers wanting to learn how to build their first mobile app. Today, Kodeco offers both beginner and advanced programming content for mobile app developers of all skill levels, through the largest collection of mobile development tutorials, books, and video courses on the Internet.

As with any consumer-facing company, Kodeco knew it had to take advantage of the Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales period because of its ability to impact customer and revenue growth significantly.

When planning for the Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales period, Kodeco set out two main goals: to win new customers and to encourage existing customers to upgrade from monthly to yearly billing.

Because of the higher margin involved, Kodeco decided to focus efforts on growing the number of customers for video courses, available as a monthly 
or yearly subscription. The subscription model means Kodeco benefits from predictable revenue while continually delivering value to subscribers.

Solution

Effortless one-click upgrades

Kodeco uses Paddle to power both one-time purchases for digital books and recurring subscription billing for access to video courses. Having previously used FastSpring, Kodeco used Paddle's adaptable APIs to retain control over the entire purchase flow and build a seamless user experience.

To encourage existing customers to switch from monthly to annual billing, Kodeco looked to see how the upgrade experience could be improved. The engineering and design teams were able to reduce the existing flow which took four clicks to complete, to just one click, using the "upgrade subscription" API in the background.

For its Black Friday / Cyber Monday offer, Kodeco led with a 45% discount for the video subscription offering, using targeted email marketing to drive a tremendous amount of traffic to the website landing page, along with lower discounts for digital books.

On Paddle's advice, Kodeco beat the rush by starting the sale three days early, on Wednesday, while waiting for sales to organically die down before switching the campaign off. This SaaS Black Friday / Cyber Monday strategy allowed Kodeco to stand out from the crowd, beat competitors to market, and benefit from a longer sales period.

Paddle's success team also recommended implementing a 'win-back campaign' to reactivate customers who had previously canceled a subscription. Kodeco sent targeted email marketing to this group as well, leveraging data-backed recommendations on the best times to send.

Results

960% increase in transactions

Paddle's flexible, stable, platform, combined with a market-leading offer, data-backed advice, and an engaged marketing audience meant that Kodeco's 2018 Black Friday / Cyber Monday period was its biggest sale event ever.

  • 960% increase in transactions.
  • 942% increase in revenue compared to an average week.
  • Gained over 1700 new and reactivated customers.
  • Upgraded over 500 existing monthly subscription customers to the annual subscription offering.

This upfront cash flow allowed Kodeco to invest in creating even more helpful technical educational resources for its customers.

Ready to start using Paddle to sell your SaaS or digital product globally with ease? Create an account now or speak to our team to Get Started.