Create CTA to obtain 2 free months of GitLab upon purchase

Summary

In https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/sales-team/self-service/-/issues/11, we're thinking about ways to increase FO web conversion. As such, we've been asked to scope the effort to achieve option 5.

5. Sign now and get 2 Months Free! (aka convert trial days into free days on your contract)
Revive the extend trial functionality (60 days) and augment for upfront conversion.

Goal

Increase total amount of first orders in a self-service channel in Q4.

  1. Where first order = new business
  2. No gitlab footprint
  3. Trial is good because this is the typical ideal target segment

Questions

  1. How will users receive this offer? (email, in-app, something else)
    1. A: Likely, email
    2. Q. How will you segment the email recipient list to target just first timers
      1. A: Target business email
  2. Will there be a population of users who the offer doesn't apply to? (personal namespaces, single user namespaces, non-company email users, A/B experiment, etc.)
    1. A: Yes, that would be the hope in order to help us test the success of this
  3. How long is this offer expected to last?
    1. A: Through Q4
  4. Should the offer be repeated if not taken at first opportunity?
    1. A: Meaning if they don't take the offer in Q4, can they get it in Q1? I don't think so
  5. Should the offer be presented to all users (if in-app), or just users of a certain role?
    1. A: Since we're just targeting trial conversion, I think all users would be fine unless you would not recommend?
  6. Is tracking of "clicks" on cta needed?
    1. A: Not a need to have but it is a nice to have
  7. How does this need to be tracked in Zuora?
    1. A: It likely does from a rev rec perspective but on my end, so long as we know who we give the offer to (eg via email), I can do any tracking I needed after the fact
  8. Ideally both SM and SaaS but SaaS only ok (SM only not ok)
  9. Does it matter whether the "free months" are at the beginning or end of the subscription?
    1. A: To me (Alex), no. We can ask rev ops if it matters to them.

Workflow

  1. Pull user list based on trial
  2. Segment down
  3. Send with custom self-service flow link + coupon code
  4. User follows the link
  5. User completes purchase (buy 14 months for the price of 12)
  6. User enters coupon code
    1. Cannot be used more than once
    2. Can have expiration date
  7. Create zuora sub for 14 months
    1. Start date = after trial? (follow current logic)
    2. End date = 14 months
    3. Renewal start date = day after end date
    4. Autorenewal will renew sub at 12 months at list price
    5. Set the SS fields
  8. No change to SFDC downstream flows

Dev Effort

  1. Generate bulk of coupons BE - .5 milestone
  2. Create UI - copy the Community Programs FE - 1-2 milestones
    1. BE - hook in the coupon code logic (same as 3.1)
    2. FE/BE - discount logic (static based on link) - .5 milestone
    3. FE - create link .25 milestone
    4. BE write new value to track trial conversion for this promo
      1. Can be SFDC, customersdot, zuora - whatever is the most boring
      2. Should be reusable to distinguish between promo offers in the future
  3. If SM - validate that the license generates w/o issue

Total Project Effort Dev Estimate

The below estimate is not yet reviewed or qualified by engineering, was prepared by @amandarueda

Based initial requirements, I expect this to be a 2-3 milestone effort for a single FE and single BE. We may be able accelerate the dev to 1.5 milestones if we conduct many efforts in parallel.

Edited by Amanda Rueda