Unstyled Apology Email Triples Sales

Shaan shares a story about how his company dramatically increased sales by using scarcity marketing.

"For my company, on a normal day when we launch a product, it would be awesome if 800 people bought the thing right when it launches in the first ten minutes or so. I was trying to think about how to drum up excitement. The team's first instinct was 'Do we discount?' No, we're not going to discount - that's going to have the opposite effect. 'Do we offer a free gift with purchase or some limited time bonus for the first people through the door?' I thought we were on the right track.

We did something similar where I, as the founder, sent a personal note. It was an unstyled email basically apologizing in advance: 'We expect this to sell so quickly. I know many of you are going to be upset, and as a make good, I give you my word that for the next one we're going to have more, but for this one, it's just going to be chaos and I'm already worried about it.'

Immediately we had our biggest day ever. Instead of 800 sales, which would have been great, all of a sudden it was 2,800 - just by apologizing in advance. Because we embedded the scarcity - instead of saying 'Come get it,' we were like 'We're so sorry, you're probably not going to get it.' That reversal really worked."