Do Discounts Help Your Startup Grow?

I’ve always believed discounts should help you earn more, not less. So giving them out “just because someone asked” never felt right.

Volume discounts for big clients worked fine and helped us close deals.

Annual discounts are also a good win-win, but to convert well the difference has to be significant. At 30% off signups spiked. At 15% the effect was much smaller.

Urgency campaigns surprised us. For a few months, every last week we ran “Sign up in the next 5 days and get 25% off.” Conversions went up on those days, but the real win was retention. These customers stayed longer because they didn’t want to lose their deal.

Still, we never made it a regular thing. It feels unfair to existing customers who paid full price. And if you repeat it too often, people just wait for discounts. That only cuts your revenue.

We never tried lifetime deals. For B2B, in my opinion, it doesn’t really fit. Small clients don’t want to pay a big sum upfront and large ones make it unprofitable. Honestly, it can even cheapen your product in their eyes. Maybe you have a different opinion.

We also tested “cancel discounts,” showing an offer when someone clicked “cancel subscription.” Some stayed, but fewer than we expected. Plenty of people already know the trick, so they unsubscribe on purpose to see if a deal pops up.

Curious to hear your take. What discount strategies have you tried in your product? What worked, what didn’t and what have you decided to avoid completely?