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

andrewchen.com

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

#121

Post by tetrisgm »

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…

This is a value judgment. You're assuming the author is scheming an elaborate way to be dismissive of poor people.

You just split the entire world of coupon users in 2 arbitrary sections. That's another value judgment.

There are many other reasons to use coupons. Such as: I like a good deal. I like to use coupons. I wanna try something new. I am bored and want to cut coupons. I got this coupon book. This place opened and I'm not sure I wanna try it full price. Etc.

There are so many ways to explore this question.

As for "worse customers", it is entirely possible for a customer to be bad, and for it to have nothing to do with being poor. I recommend studying the user journeys of user cohorts motivated by external rewards, vs those who aren't.

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

#122

Post by bombcar »

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.

Cost of processing vs most customers ignoring them, based on my experience with the biggest one left that I know of (Menards 11% and the Home Depot equivalent).

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

#123

Post by ghaff »

bombcar wrote: post #122
ghaff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cost of processing vs most customers ignoring them, based on my experience with the biggest one left that I know of (Menards 11% and the Home Depot equivalent).

I suspect it's some combination of the human processing cost increasing and the idea of finding a stamp and an envelope to get a check (maybe) mailed to them making more and more people roll their eyes and just discount rebates out of hand.

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

#124

Post by jawns »

standardUser wrote: post #97
pflenker wrote: post #94

Only tangentially related - one big hardware store chain in Germany ran bankrupt because they started to frequently ran „20% on everything“ marketing activities. The idea was to attract customers who would return when one activity ended, but the result was the opposite: the extra customers only came for the 20% and didn’t return between the activities, and the loyal customers started avoiding the chain and waited for…

In the US we had Bed, Bath and Beyond which was famous for it's ubiquitous 20% off coupons. I'm not sure if their failure had anything to do with the coupons, but many people, myself included, only went there with the specific intention of using that coupon. They were bought by Overstock and all the stores were shut down.

Those 20% off coupons allowed them to price an $80 item at $100. If the customer has a coupon, they get that item for as low as the store is willing to sell it for -- which works out to be market price. But if they lack a coupon, they're likely paying above-market price, and that's extra revenue for the store! Granted, this is an oversimplification, because many people might decide not to buy the item at a perceived above-market price. But I think, in general, coupons work. JCPenney famously got rid of coupons in 2012, and the customer outcry and effect on its stock price forced them to restore them soon after.

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

#125

Post by ghaff »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #109
ghaff wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The free alternatives were also kind of ridiculous with terrible UX. Like hotmail was the best MS could do

Yahoo wasn't terrible but Gmail was definitely better. I kept using Yahoo for a while as the address I used when I ordered stuff but over time Gmail tabs did a pretty good job of compartmentalizing email and it made more sense to just have the one address.

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

#126

Post by geraldwhen »

booleandilemma wrote: post #60
szundi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a multimillionaire and love coupons and good value

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

If you make a game small enough, it’s doable over 8 years. If the real number is 100, it’s definitely doable

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

#127

Post by zakki »

fireflash38 wrote: post #95
ipaddr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. A dollar off coupon will encourage purchasing otherwise ignored products. I buy toothpaste. A dollar off coupon will encourage another brand purchase to a more expensive product that may get repeated. The shop may get addition money by having me buy other items to save me the time of multiple store visits. There is a reason why each week a different item goes on sale. That loss leader leads to more purchase…

But would you continue to buy it afterwards, or just chase the discounts? Aka:are you truly a "conversion" or just a single discount sale?

Not continuing to buy doesn't make someone worst customer. What about turn out it is a worst product so they need to offer a discount?

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

#128

Post by eightysixfour »

graemep wrote: post #90
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?

Sure - an example for me is RunwayML. It is a neat product that is very accessible to anyone, so I signed up and played with it a bit. Every once in a while I hop on and show someone a little demo of it as a cool GenAI/ML thing, but video isn’t a medium I work with or intend to work with. I am never going to become a paying customer.

The low barrier to entry (both in sign-up and usage) helps amp up user counts and usage which makes you think you have some sort of market fit, but the interest is not real.

The startups I worked with that experienced explosive growth were ones where their initial UX was mediocre or even hostile, but the demand for the thing was so high they had customers anyways. Improving the UX unlocked more growth.

I have a skewed perspective since people came to us for UX issues, so this isn’t an iron law or anything, but I think about it a lot when I see very shiny, polished launches.

A counter to this may be something like Linear, where the UX is the value.

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

#129

Post by akudha »

FredPret wrote: post #46
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…

Another answer is “someone who would slog through some effort to get a tiny bit of a better deal” and these people are definitely worse customers, rich or poor.

There is this movie on Netflix called Queenpins, who run a coupon scheme/fraud business.

I don’t have any experience with coupons, but I found the movie interesting.

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

#130

Post by etrautmann »

ghaff wrote: post #69
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably they were introduced as marketing and when more-preferred customers realized they never mailed anything in, and therefore the rebate price is misleading, it ceased to be effective marketing. Sounds like it was also the difficulty around “doing it right” which is probably different per seller. https://www.consumeraffairs.com/consumerism/rebate_madness01...

Though they weren't a flash in the pan thing. It's true that their allure for marketing was that a lot of people priced the rebate in and then never mailed for it or violated some term/condition. But they were commonplace for a long time.

Sending outgoing mail is more rare now though? Perhaps when it used to be common to stamp and mail letters then one more wasn’t as big a deal. Now, I’m not even sure where our stamps are or if we have any at home.
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