One Time Offer (OTO)

Name of the pattern:

One Time Offer
OTO

Summary:

A one time offer is just that: an offer you do only once that won’t be repeated ever again.

Description:

A one time offer is always made during some conversion. For example, it may be made on a thank you page for subscribing to your maillist, right before or after a customer enters credit card details and the sale happens. Always make sure it’s what it is: a one time offer.

Don’t try to represent a regular discount as an OTO, if you get your customers into continuity, your bluff will be called and you will lose credibility. Just use some other scarcity tactic if you have to.

An OTO should normally be better than your regular price and any regular discount. Although it’s true that a lot of your customers may not notice that, some do verify and you may even lose the original conversion. That said, it’s a common practice not to do many sales at a regular price at all, and do most of the sales through some discounts. Occasionally, “the regular price” is just a scarcity enforcer.

When to use this pattern:

When you want to upsell either right before or right after another sale or conversion and within the same process.

Attribution:

Have you ever bought a car? Not a big surprise that the OTO term in Internet marketing was introduced by Mike Filsaime who started his Internet business success while being a manager at an auto dealership. In real world sales, the OTO pattern has been known for centuries.

Related patterns:

Pre-transactional upsell offer, post-transactional upsell offer, scarcity, time scarcity.

Related anti-patterns:

None