If you haven't heard of Basecamp, they are a very successful SAAS company with some great marketing minds behind it. Put simply, they know what they're doing...View More
& act with purpose. For several years, Basecamp has used different versions of this landing page below with the copy "last week, [#] companies signed up for Basecamp. I love this use of statistics because it is a current number (last week). They pull it off really well, but there are upsides & downsides. The upside is that not only are people impressed by a big number of signups, they also feel like lots of people are signing up now as they're making their buying decision, which is very assuring. The downside is that in order to pull this off effectively, you have to have a significant number of signups coming in & most importantly, you have to figure out a way to update the number. First of all, you should never lie in your marketing. Second, if people see that the number isn't changing, they likely won't believe the number is real & will lose trust in you. It's a tricky use of stats, but can be extremely powerful if your company is built for it.