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Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

maxklein.posterous.com

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Re: Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

#51

Post by edw519 »

The idea behind it was to let the people know that I actually wrote the email to them, and this was not a form email or a machine sending it to them.

I know my opinion generally runs counter to general thinking here at hn, but I find this technique unacceptable. There are plenty of ways to be successful while being totally forthright and honest with your customers that you should never have to resort to tricks like this. If I found out a vendor did this to me, I would never do business with them again.

When I was younger and more foolish, I once did something like to this. I made 1000 perforated postcards to send to local businesses with a simple "anonymous" survey on the tear-off asking about their software. Except the tear-offs were not anonymous at all. Every single postcard had a slightly different return address. By slightly altering the positioning of 6 different items and recording it in the data base, I had enough permutations to uniquely identify who returned the card. I could then call on those who needed what I had.

I thought it was pretty slick until my partner refused to participate. He said that my hack wasn't worth the hit to our reputation if anyone found out. He also thought we should earn our business without any tricks and establish excellent relationships with our customers.

It took me a while, but I understood his lesson. This hack seems eerily similar.

Re: Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

#52

Post by lanstein »

maxklein wrote: post #9
lanstein wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had the same thought, 'taht' would make me _less_ likely to buy.

You sure about that? Imagine there are 6 or 7 vendors selling a component you need for your software. Most are sending you form replies. With one you are talking to a real person who emails you and answers your questions promptly, and speaks in a normal way and made a spelling mistake in his rush to email you, but otherwise spellt correctly. Would you not feel reassured that someone will fix your problems when you ha…

Positive. Max, you're selling developer tools, right? My instinct would be "how good could your tools be if you can't be bothered to spell-check?" To me, it just shows a lack of attention to detail which puts any detail-oriented product like the one you're selling in a poor light.

Re: Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

#53

Post by lanstein »

lanstein wrote: post #52
maxklein wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure about that? Imagine there are 6 or 7 vendors selling a component you need for your software. Most are sending you form replies. With one you are talking to a real person who emails you and answers your questions promptly, and speaks in a normal way and made a spelling mistake in his rush to email you, but otherwise spellt correctly. Would you not feel reassured that someone will fix your problems when you ha…

Positive. Max, you're selling developer tools, right? My instinct would be "how good could your tools be if you can't be bothered to spell-check?" To me, it just shows a lack of attention to detail which puts any detail-oriented product like the one you're selling in a poor light.

However, let me add that the 'Re:' business is an excellent idea IMHO.

Re: Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

#54

Post by nzmsv »

DenisM wrote: post #41

This thread is funny and depressing at the same time. So a guy found a way to improve his sales be significant number. Tons of people respond with "yeah, but it wouldn't work for me - I hate it". How is this even relevant? Clearly you are not his target audience. He has data to back up his approach, while you have a precious little of an opinion. It's not about you , it's about customers .

This is a good point.

I think many people here have at least thought of a startup, and often a startup idea is to solve some problem they are facing, or a way to make something better. So the natural way of thinking about customer service is "what would I like?"

Of course, not everyone is alike (otherwise there would not be such a word as "geek" :) So what actually works in sales may seem counterintuitive.

Which means that being able to see things from a customer's point of view is both hard and a valuable skill.

Re: Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

#56

Post by kevinherron »

edw519 wrote: post #51

The idea behind it was to let the people know that I actually wrote the email to them, and this was not a form email or a machine sending it to them. I know my opinion generally runs counter to general thinking here at hn, but I find this technique unacceptable. There are plenty of ways to be successful while being totally forthright and honest with your customers that you should never have to resort to tricks like t…

But he _did_ actually write the email. His technique was not convincing people of something that wasn't true.

Re: Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

#57

Post by gridspy »

teamonkey wrote: post #23

>Previously I had >Subject: About your pricelist request for Klein SDK >Body: Dear John Doe, I saw that you... > >I changed it to >Subject: Re: Klein SDK pricelist request >Body: Hey John Doe, I saw taht you... - Without the "Re:" the second subject line is still much better than the first. Without the misspelling, the "Hey" gives a very different tone to the "Dear".

The first title puts the relevant information in the 6th word.

The second title promotes that to the 2nd (first to most people since they ignore RE:)

Re: Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

#58

Post by qeorge »

Max, I usually like your stuff, but I disagree 100% with this one.

I'm currently evaluating software DRM wrappers for a client. They're ready to spend 5 figures on the software, so it qualifies as an expensive developer tool. I've spoken with 15 vendors in the past 2 weeks.

Any vendor with no pricing was immediately tossed out. No pricing listed says to me that you're price discriminating, and nothing pisses me off more than being overcharged because my client is a big fish.

The only exceptions were companies like Flexera, who have to be included in any such report. But if you're a no-name vendor that I Googled into? Forget it.

Also, a misspelling in the email subject says you didn't take the email seriously. I already don't like you. Maybe you can overcome this, but its an uphill climb.

Comparing this to an automated response is silly. If I got an automated response from a vendor selling expensive software, after I've taken the time to fill out their form, forget it.

I know you have data which appears to support your conclusion, but correlation != causation. Its equally possible your site rose in Google rankings, word of mouth spread, or you got lucky that month. $1500/month (3-5 sales at the price you stated) isn't a large enough sample to be drawing conclusions from, and an automated letter is the wrong control group.

Summation: you're sacrificing a good first impression to account for a non-issue. Don't send automated emails, and don't do this either.

Re: Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

#59

Post by mattmcknight »

DenisM wrote: post #41

This thread is funny and depressing at the same time. So a guy found a way to improve his sales be significant number. Tons of people respond with "yeah, but it wouldn't work for me - I hate it". How is this even relevant? Clearly you are not his target audience. He has data to back up his approach, while you have a precious little of an opinion. It's not about you , it's about customers .

It is relevant because you are annoying some possible customers if you do this. It is worth knowing that it is not universally good advice.

It could be that his software was mis-priced and poorly marketed (just added a link on download.com). Publishing his price may have hurt him if he was way over or under (making his stuff look cheap) other vendors. Getting sales leads certainly helped him, but there are other many ways to do that AND publish the price of the software. Price discrimination can be effective (see automobile sales), but it isn't exactly an endearing strategy.

Re: Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

#60

Post by wheels »

We often do something similar -- I usually try to find at least one detail about a site that wouldn't work in a form letter and work that into a personal follow-up. On sign-up people first get an automated mail, but then we (for paid accounts) always do a personal follow-up.
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