Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

andrewchen.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 175 posts

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#81

Post by ipaddr »

ghaff wrote: post #70
dylan604 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What effort/sacrifice was expelled? Flipping through the paper with a pair of scissors? You didn't even need to buy the paper as the coupons were ignored by the majority of those that did buy the paper and would just toss the coupons. It took no more effort than what people expend doom scrolling the socials.

People "waste" time on lots of things. But, yes, coupon-clipping and redemption is a certain amount of effort and I'm not going to bother unless it hits a fairly high threshold for something I'd have bought anyway.

Coupon clipping is not wasting time. Understanding how much you pay finding coupons to reduce that is will save a lot of money. Just the awareness itself will help.

Write on here that it's a waste of time is probably the biggest waste of time. At least it's low effort.

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#82

Post by steveBK123 »

rib3ye wrote: post #59
steveBK123 wrote: post #36

Thinking more on this, I have a group of friends who partake in these types of deals. They are arguably a leading indicator of business models that are going to fail. Why? Because they will cycle through every single deal and never sign up. Every single one of them cycled through all the meal kit trial discounts during the ZIRP era, without ever signing up for one (it's free food dude). If you think I am kidding, go…

I frequently use 50% off discounts to buy square pie guys pizza. Will I buy that pizza at full price? _probably_ not, but I will tell everyone that it’s amazing because is it. So it’s a $12 review, right? Compared to a $1k-$5k /video influencer, isn’t that a deal? I’ve even spammed their name in this comment. Disclaimer: I know nothing about marketing economics

A loyalty program is probably a better model for attracting regular customers than this though, right.

You want to attract people willing to pay more or less full price. A program that you get the 10th pie free, and always get a free 2L soda with every pie or something would accomplish that better.

An example - I live part of the year in an area that is more a "summer destination" so a lot of the local restaurants close November thru April.

One hotel restaurant stays open year round, and in their first year they mailed everyone locally an offer to get a 15% off "locals only" loyalty card. You had to apply, send some proof you were local, wait for them to mail the card, and then keep it in your wallet. 15% is a nice little incentive, but given tax/tipping/etc, doesn't materially change the price. Going there off season, even just monthly, all the hosts/waiters know us well now vs the more transient guests. So it sticks out in our mind as a reminder that they are always open, and a friendly place to go eat.

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#83

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

almostnormal wrote: post #48
red_admiral wrote: post #29

The kind of people who ran coupon schemes in the pre-internet days could have told you this. Back in the day, coupon schemes were things like you had to physically cut out and mail in vouchers from newspapers or magazines, and you got a discount on something like groceries in return. The point of this was market segmentation: you want to get people who (1) otherwise wouldn't buy your product, or at least not as much…

Lured into a physical shop by a voucher they are likely to by things they would have bought elsewhere, the effort to visit another shop not being justified.

A similar effect happens online with free shipping over a certain dollar amount, which incentivizes getting as many things as you can from a single site.

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#84

Post by ghaff »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #83
almostnormal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lured into a physical shop by a voucher they are likely to by things they would have bought elsewhere, the effort to visit another shop not being justified.

A similar effect happens online with free shipping over a certain dollar amount, which incentivizes getting as many things as you can from a single site.

Alternatively, free shipping (or free shipping at quite a low threshold for what's being sold) is sufficiently normalized that if shipping is not free, some percentage of users will just close the window and move on.

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#85

Post by lupusreal »

ghaff wrote: post #70
dylan604 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What effort/sacrifice was expelled? Flipping through the paper with a pair of scissors? You didn't even need to buy the paper as the coupons were ignored by the majority of those that did buy the paper and would just toss the coupons. It took no more effort than what people expend doom scrolling the socials.

People "waste" time on lots of things. But, yes, coupon-clipping and redemption is a certain amount of effort and I'm not going to bother unless it hits a fairly high threshold for something I'd have bought anyway.

Couponing is a hobby that is practiced by many people who have secure financial positions but get a thrill out of saving a few dollars on stuff they didn't need to buy in the first place. It happens that these sort of people are often pains in the ass from a retail worker perspective. They try to bend the rules by stacking coupons, using expired coupons, twisting what product the coupons are for, etc. They also waste a lot of time rifling through coupons looking for the best one to use, and just generally waste a lot of time and cause grief for everybody near them.

It may not seem like an exciting hobby to you so maybe you think this is made up, but try to remember that there are people who collect stamps or sit around train tracks to see locomotives. One man's absolute bore is another man's nailbiting thrill.

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#86

Post by steveBK123 »

warner25 wrote: post #80
steveBK123 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with either mindset, most people are incapable of doing both at once. You can have "scarcity mindset" and be rich. Of course someone with scarcity mindset grows savings over time because they have scarcity mindset! They are good at saving your money! But this part: > It's still moderate because I'm a government employee with a relatively low ceiling on what I can make; not much room for growth.…

I see where you're coming from regarding "[settling] into that job & [accepting] that life path" as a government employee. I thought about that after I wrote it myself. The alternative, however, strikes me as taking imprudent risks, if one is supporting a family, and having a work-life balance that one's family wouldn't appreciate (mine already thinks that I work too much). You're right on the mark: my savings rate,…

It could be more like risk vs conservative / growth vs savings / etc.

Personal anecdotes - in college I wanted more spending money, so I ran a little eBay business related to my hobby. One of my roommates got big into MMORPG goods mining & selling. Our other roommates got into things like getting their baked goods for free by showing up to bakeries at closing time.

Later, at some point in our careers my wife & I found our industry to be stagnating and tried some side businesses. They didn't pan out after a couple years, so then we both switched industries/subindustries. We both change jobs every 4-5 years. I've had 5 jobs by 40, my wife 6.

But on the other hand we come from families where our moms didn't work and our dads worked the same jobs for 30 years.

For me, just like compounding interest makes a big difference in returns in terms of saving more earlier.. so does growth. If you settle into a stable safe job with 2-3% inflation raises, vs making sure you are always getting an average 5-10% raises, you would be shocked what it means to your compensation at the end of a 20 year period.

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#87

Post by red_admiral »

ghaff wrote: post #56
red_admiral wrote: post #29

The kind of people who ran coupon schemes in the pre-internet days could have told you this. Back in the day, coupon schemes were things like you had to physically cut out and mail in vouchers from newspapers or magazines, and you got a discount on something like groceries in return. The point of this was market segmentation: you want to get people who (1) otherwise wouldn't buy your product, or at least not as much…

I'm actually sort of curious why, sometimes substantial, mail-in rebates seemingly largely went away? I haven't seen one in years. A significant customer of a former employer processed a lot of these out of Minnesota.

This is a pure guess, but one of the things a buisness would get out of a mail-in rebate scheme is a customer's contact details, for future marketing (or even to sell on to other companies). Of course, along with the information that "this is the kind of customer who takes part in mail-ins".

That kind of thing can be done far more cheaply, and far more effectively, online these days.

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#88

Post by ghaff »

wcunning wrote: post #43
JoshTriplett wrote: post #12

How well do invite systems perform, of the style that gmail and other services famously used, where you need an invite to sign up and users get a certain number of invites to hand out? (They do a great job of rate-limiting user acquisition, such as if you want to ramp up slowly for resource reasons. The question is, how's the quality of users obtained through invite systems?)

So it famously worked really well to create desire around Gmail, but it also famously didn't actually get anyone to use Google Plus or Google Wave. I was desperate for invites to both and then... never found a reason to use them? So it probably does better in terms of rate limiting than anything else. Maybe the right modern comparison would be Threads to BlueSky?

Everyone increasingly needed email at the time, people weren't especially wedded to their current email providers, and Gmail was arguably better than whatever they were using and free.

Google Plus was a social network that never got widely used outside of certain circles and Wave was this new weird thing that never took off.

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#89

Post by rand846633 »

ipaddr wrote: post #78
booleandilemma wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your previous comment you said you wrote "about 1000 games" in your school years. I wonder if that was a lie too? :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39235575

Why would making 1,000 games (that can be translated to many) that lead to a game startup and successful exit would call you to question if the parent was a millionaire. Successful exits usually are worth millions.

If 1,000 games can be translated to many, then multimillionaire can be translated to “at least many thousand dollars in net worth”?

The point for criticism of unlikely claims online is that it is hard to know if made up, thereby kinda dubious as an justification for an acclaim of authority on a specific topic..

Re: The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons

#90

Post by graemep »

eightysixfour wrote: post #76

I spent some time in UX consulting and I started to notice a pattern that surprised me a bit - having really slick UX (if that isn't your key selling point!) in a very early product seemed to be a bit of an anti-pattern for long-term success. My hypothesis is that there are a group of users who will sign up for anything and "play with it" if it is easy enough and slick enough, but that doesn't make them good customer…

Could you elaborate? Easy to signup for or initially easy to use?

Would it actually lose customers long term or just give you early extra customers you fail to retain?

Post reply on HN