Shutterstock to Bigstock Downsell Testing Strategy
After business intelligence reports showed that 99.9% of Shutterstock's users have never used Shutterstock's value brand Bigstock, we decided to craft a downsell strategy directed at folks who had signed up for Shutterstock but never purchased anything. We emailed a group of 6 million people, divided into segments by how recently they opened a Shutterstock email. We wanted to simply find out what offer they were interested in, so we ran an A/B/C offer test.

Round 1: A/B/C offer test

A
The A group was sent a series of three emails with the 7-day Free Trial offer, each email getting progressively urgent and action-based.

Landing Page messaging test
For a secondary messaging test, The A group was divided into two sub-groups, each one clicking to a different landing page. The first group was a control, while the second group received messaged referencing Shutterstock.

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B

The B group was sent a series of three emails with the a 30%
off image credits offer, with each email getting
​progressively urgent ​and action-based.

Landing page messaging test
Group B was also divided into two sub-groups, each landing
​on a different page.

C

The C group was sent a series of three emails with the a
low-volume subscription offer, with each email getting
​progressively urgent and action-based.

Landing page messaging test
Group C was also divided into two sub-groups, each landing
​on a different page.

Round 2: A/B test - winning offer versus new offer
The winning offer from Round 1 was the 7-day Free Trial offer. Since the last round we had discovered from a short user survey that these downsell customers were interested in low volume, if anything at all, so we tested in a new offer, which was our 1 free image a month trial, which is simply a way for Bigstock to get users in the door and on an email list. 

A (winner)

Winning landing page
The landing page winner from Round 1, across all offers, featured the messaging that referenced Shutterstock. 

B

Winning landing page
The B group was also sent to the winning landing page with messaging that references Shutterstock.