Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Every float center has their own tricks to pricing, appealing to first time customers, and encouraging repeat business. One of the most common is using a three float intro pack that usually offers three floats at a 3 for the price of 2 package. Given how prevalent these are, do they work really well? Is this something that will soon become industry standard? What else needs to be considered before offering a package like this?
Graham and Ashkahn provide their thoughts on this pricing trend and how Float On does pricing (admittedly very differently than a three float intro pack) and what to consider for each float center that looks at this option.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Our question today is “what are your thoughts on introductory packages for floaters? I see a lot of three floats for however many dollars around.”
We don’t offer one is, I guess, the first disclaimer to put out there. We’ve never had a three-float intro package ourselves.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I’d say the most …
Graham: Yeah, take anything we’d say with that in mind.
Ashkahn: I’d say the most popular things I see out there is people will often do a three-float intro pack, and I also see a lot of the first float is cheaper. It’s your first time coming in.
Graham: Almost like a one-float intro kit.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I guess a one-float intro pack.
Graham: I’m guessing, then, pack is superfluous there.
Ashkahn: These are both usually for first-time customers and stuff like that. These are very common pricing strategies you see throughout the float industry.
Graham: Yeah, often it’s a pretty decent discount, even down to that range of pay for the price of two.
Ashkahn: Three for the price of two is pretty typical.
Graham: The goal, too, is the kind of psychology there, I think, is someone comes in to float. They paid full price and then the center can make a pitch to upgrade to that three pack. Since they’ve already paid full price for one float, if it is in that three for two category, they’re just paying the cost of one float to get two more floats after that. It almost, even though it’s not that quite steep of a discount, it feels like it’s half off.
Ashkahn: I guess I also wanna say in addition to us never having run anything ever like that, I also don’t know of a lot of other centers that do have those deals that have started without them. Everyone seen their side of offering it or not offering it or something like that. Be interesting if there was a center out there that went for years without offering a thing like that and then started offering it to actually compare the data.
Graham: Yeah, yours is really interesting. I know a couple centers who added it in 6 months or 9 months or a year into doing stuff, but I can’t think of any that I’ve talked to personally who went for a really long time without one.
Ashkahn: You know what would be really cool? To maybe get a few floats in isn’t actually dig through the information.
Graham: It’d be cool to actually have answers.
Ashkahn: We could actually have answers. Short of that, we’re just gonna have opinions.
Graham: We have a lot of opinions.
Ashkahn: I have plenty of opinions.
Graham: Yeah, that’s good. At least we have some podcast content.
Ashkahn: Here are my opinions. Here’s usually what I hear is the reasoning for offering either one of these things: either the three-float intro pack or the even cheaper float. It’s mostly to do, I find, are most of the people who are using the understanding of people’s behavior with float tanks, rather than just trying to come up with a great deal or pitch them on an awesome discount or something like that, usually the intro one for a single float is a lot more obvious. I think people just want to lower the barrier of someone trying floating in the first place and hoping that once they try, it will be a lot less of a strange, mysterious concept to them. They’re realize how much they like it, and they’ll wanna come back. I think the three float thing is along a very similar vein. There’s a lot of people out there who will tell you that it takes three floats to really get it.
Graham: Yeah, there are some undetermined amount of floats. Some people get it after number one, but at least if everyone one who came in were floating three times, a much higher percentage of those people would eventually figure out what’s going on and relax inside the tank and hopefully have a little more profound experience.
Ashkahn: Yeah, almost more than the hope that you’re gonna be able to upsell somebody into a nice package, I find that it’s the hope that, that will encourage someone who maybe would’ve floated once not really quite gotten into the zone and maybe never come back, it might encourage that person to try it a second and a third time and, hopefully, over the course of those three floats, get to spot where they really have that great float experience and decide to continue coming back over and over and over again.
It’s a method of helping deal with the fact that first floats are not always the best float or can sometimes be just getting used to the environment or slightly difficult for people to totally let go and relax and stuff like that. I think there’s a logic to that, for sure. If that’s the reason why you have a three-float intro pack, I think you should probably set out a few other rules. Sometimes I’ll see people let people share them, which to me is almost against the purpose of what you’re trying to accomplish. If you can buy a three-float intro pack and the person can take those three floats and share them with their friends and stuff like that.
Graham: Yeah, I guess it just depends on what your intention is going into it, just getting more people in the tanks is obviously also a huge goal. Although those two accomplish different things, I also don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong in allowing sharing of an intro pack.
Ashkahn: Yeah, but just make sure that if what your goal is to get people to have that “real float experience,” make sure you’re not compromising that by allowing different things and stuff like that. You gotta be very conscious of what you’re doing with these discounts or at least what behavior you’re trying to encourage to accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish.
Graham: Yeah, yeah, for sure, and it’s another reason why it’s dangerous to just look around at what everyone else is doing in the industry or even to take our advice without thinking about your unique situation just because if you’re taking some program from another center, chances are an intro pack for other centers are a part of their overall offering ecosystem. It relates to how much they’re charging for a full price, and it relates to how much their memberships are and any other packages. Taking just one part of pricing or general marketing procedure out of context will not likely yield the same results in your center.
Ashkahn: Try to pay attention to the results, too. If you’re offering a three-float intro pack or something like that, look into how many people come and float a fourth time. That’s probably a really important number for you. How many people make that jump from three to four floats? That’s something that you should be keeping track of. Ultimately, that’s the one thing that can be the downside of some of these discounts. One of the reasons I think we’ve never done it is just that when you offer someone a cheaper first float or a cheap three-float intro pack when it’s something you just get at the beginning like that, you’ve all of a sudden at the end of that discount, that first float or the three floats they used, now you’ve created an especially high paying point.
Now they have to go over a bigger hump to get from three floats to four floats or to ever come back a second time if you’re offering a significantly cheaper first float. You’re moving the hurdle. You’re taking the hurdle from the beginning of coming in for the first time and stepping it back a little bit. That hurdle still exists. It’s something that you should focus on and make sure that you’re looking at that conversion period and seeing what the numbers are and seeing if you can encourage it to increase somehow.
Graham: I really liked in Float House where I saw this. I think they’re still doing the same pricing model. I’m not 100% sure. I’ll go check their website, and we’ll link over to their membership. Basically, they have their full-price float, which is set at a reasonable amount for 90 minutes. The cost for three floats goes down from there to much lower, I think, not quite half off but getting there. Their membership, which is just the model of one float a month and you can buy extra floats for that same price, is even cheaper than three-pack. At every step, the decision to engage in the extra floating behavior you want your customers to do, makes sense financially. It’s cheaper to get the three-pack than just your one intro float. After you’ve done your intro three-pack, it makes sense to get the membership if you wanna keep floating.
I really like that direction. All of a sudden if you switch that membership so it’s more expensive than the three-float intro pack, and I see that a ton in different float tank centers in their pricing model, that feels to me like you’re selling yourself short, like you’re almost selling those three initial floats but giving up a good chance to have pulled someone on for a much longer time commitment just over a longer period of time. Definitely think about that. In my mind, memberships are the more important thing to try and sell and get out there. It’s also why we personally don’t offer an intro three-pack is we just offer a membership that has a three-month commitment. That’s right now one float per month.
Ashkahn: Our pitches are usually that people can apply the amount they spent on a float to a membership if they like. If they float and they come out of a float and they enjoy it, we’ll let them take that full price they just paid and just put it towards a membership and sign up for membership if they want.
Graham: Which means their first month of the membership has technically been free almost in that sense. The next month is for us, is that $23 dollars off of just the next month of membership because they already paid that full price? We do that same pitch that you do for a three-pack just for a membership.
Ashkahn: There’s lots and lots of ways to do discounts and pricing. Even with something as simple as selling one thing, a float, it’s amazing how many different things you can come up with. Most importantly, just be purposeful in what you’re doing. Don’t just create a discount ’cause you see other people doing it and saying it works well. Use discounts to encourage the type of behavior that you wanna encourage. Keep track of it. See if it’s actually working again. See if your hunch is correct or if you’re just totally wrong about how you think people are reacting or how their behavior is affected by the discounts you’re offering.
Graham: Yeah, and your intentions and what you want to happen really will affect what your ultimate policies are, internally as well as customer-facing. There will be a certain amount of people who buy a three-float intro pack. They floated once, and they never used the other two floats. Now you just have this account sitting there that has two floats, and they might never get used. If your goal is to just to pull in extra revenue with your intro three-pack, then great. Mission accomplished. You didn’t have to take any of your actual float time. You got extra revenue out of the customer. You’re set.
If your goal is to get people floating more regularly and you’re really hoping that that intro three-pack is that introduction towards giving them more profound experience and getting them talking about it and wanting to come back more, maybe you should make a shop policy of checking in with those people. Two months after someone bought an intro three-pack, you just go and run a report and see who hasn’t redeemed them or hasn’t even redeemed a second float and send them an email or call them or something like that. Again, what you want to accomplish will determine these other protocols that you put in place to get the most out of your three-pack.
Ashkahn: Cool.
Graham: I think that was pretty good considering that we don’t actually know what we’re talking about here.
Ashkahn: Yeah, those were some opinions that we just made up.
Graham: If you wanna hear more of our opinions, go to floattanksolutions.com/opinions. That’s not in there. Don’t go there. Go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Are Tankless Water Heaters the Best? – DSP 270
Graham and Jake take on talking about Tankless or “On Demand” water heaters today. They break down a lot of the benefits of them compared to storage water heaters like the fact that they provide a nearly limitless source of hot water, require less energy consumption, etc. They’re not perfect though, and any float center considering one should look closely on how best to implement them. Jake shares some of the pitfalls of them as well as how to maximize their usefulness.
Should Float Centers use Light or Heavy Gauge Studs? – DSP 269
Still no Ashkahn today. He’s taking a couple of post-conference days to himself.
Jake and Graham are on the scene though to answer construction questions, though. Even the straight forward ones, like today. Jake informs us which to choose when doing construction, light or heavy gauge studs when constructing a float center, while getting a little sidetracked when comparing wooden and metal studs.
Construction to Make Your Life Easier – DSP 268
Graham and Jake cover a wide range of construction tips to make running a float center easier. Everything from making sure you have extra storage to installing mop closets with sinks in them for dealing with heavy duty chemicals.
The advice is pretty much a shotgun approach of tips, tricks, and hard lessons learned throughout the years.
Draining Float Tanks into Septic Systems – DSP 267
Graham and Jake tackle the difficulties of draining float tanks and how that process can differ based on different municipalities, different water treatment systems, or whether you’re using a septic system or not.
Water treatment typically involves whole contained ecosystems and highly concentrated epsom salt water can impact that pretty drastically. The guys provide good tips for each type of system and what to be prepared for if you’re operating in a rural area with a septic system.
The Difference Between STC and Decibels – DSP 266
Post-Conference Ashkahn is still out of the recording studio, but fortunately Jake is keeping Graham company in there.
Graham and Jake break down the differences between decibels and STC ratings, two very important to understand when figuring out soundproofing. There’s a lot to digest in this episode, but fortunately the guys keep it easy to understand by providing a broad level overview of the different concepts.
Latest Blog Posts
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #28
Home sweet home! After so many months on the road, it was strange being back here in Portland. We were exhausted, excited, and a little travel weary. The first night back, I slept in my own bed for the first time in three months and the world just melted away.
Having travelled across the United States, I’m reminded of how insular Portland is. We are aggressively fixated on keeping things local. Local beer, ketchup, bikes, pet food, pillows, phone cases… it’s part of our charm. We want to reward people for living here and being a part of the community. It’s so pervasive that, after living here for so long, I kind of forgot that Secret Aardvark hot-sauce isn’t available everywhere, and that most cities don’t even recycle, let alone compost.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #27
Our northern neighbor – a sister city, of sorts – Seattle is the largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the land of Microsoft and Kurt Cobain, and the culture here embraces both simultaneously. It’s tech business professional in the front and rock n’ roll grunge in the back. This blend creates a perfect storm of high energy business life and high energy nightlife, making relaxation a valuable commodity. Floating helps fill the void left by nightmarish traffic and overcrowded restaurants.
Given that it’s so close to home, the float centers in Seattle are a lot more familiar to us. Our visits here were more like a high school reunion than they were like the first day of school. During some of our visits, we were picking up conversations right where we left them.
The Float Tour Blog Issue #26
Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in Canada, and third largest on the West Coast. It’s a major hub for international trade, with one of the largest ports in the world, giving it a large migrant population, mainly from Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. It’s also been a long-time home to the Canadian film industry, and has even been nicknamed “North Hollywood.” Dozens of film and television productions from major studios film here every year.
Vancouver is very much an international city. It has large boroughs dedicated to varying cultures, including one of the largest Chinatowns in the world. The society here is more receptive to new ideas, always looking for the next big thing; it’s not surprising that floating has blown up in Vancouver as much as it has.
In the last 3 years, 10 float centers have opened up, most of them being larger 4–6 tank centers. The really interesting thing is how they all opened within the same short amount of time about 1 ½ to 2 years ago, within months of each other.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #25
We finally made it back to the West Coast! We went through the Canadian Rockies and were overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. We drove through hours and hours of winding mountain roads, fertile valleys, and tiny towns so picturesque they looked like movie sets. It was so captivating, in fact, I suspect Graham and Ashkahn may have secretly replaced themselves with robotic doppelgängers to hike throughout Banff.
This post will focus on the smaller communities in B.C. that are bringing floating to new people every day. We also get to visit Canadian manufacturer Pro Float. They’re relatively new to the scene, just opening up earlier this year – another exciting sign of the growth in the industry.
