The worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by anonymouskimmer » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 8:03 PM UTC

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.

Just an anecdote but years ago when Tiger Direct was still a decent place they offered a mail-in rebate for a product and I sent in everything that was asked for. I asked later about why I hadn't gotten the rebate, and they told me that I hadn't sent in everything that was asked for and wouldn't be getting the rebate. I responded that I couldn't send the things in anymore as I had sent in the originals in the first rebate request, and that if they didn't rebate me I'd never shop from them again. They sent me the rebate. I also never shopped from them again anyway.

Probably not the reason they went away, but I do wonder how many customers were lost from bad rebate programs or rebate program mistakes.

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

#142

Post by saurik » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 8:15 PM UTC

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #141

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.

Just an anecdote but years ago when Tiger Direct was still a decent place they offered a mail-in rebate for a product and I sent in everything that was asked for. I asked later about why I hadn't gotten the rebate, and they told me that I hadn't sent in everything that was asked for and wouldn't be getting the rebate. I responded that I couldn't send the things in anymore as I had sent in the originals in the first r…

Yeah: when I see "mail-in rebate" I just think "low-key scam". It also now tells me the "real price" of the product is cheaper, and so I feel screwed if I don't intend to put in the effort to deal with the scam, which is a rather different mechanism from coupons.

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

#143

Post by graemep » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 8:28 PM UTC

eightysixfour wrote: post #128

graemep wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 us…

Thank you. That makes a lot of sense.

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

#144

Post by MichaelVangard » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 8:56 PM UTC

legutierr wrote: post #112

treffer wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It becomes more funny once you shift online. Basically every checkout has a "coupon" field. Now you look for coupons, and some coupon aggregator of doubtful quality pops up. You find something that works. Or give up. Done. The coupon sites are usually of doubtful quality because .... Basically all affiliate networks forbid it. It's also the reason why "last click" attribution is horribly broken. Funnily enough it's n…

> The coupon sites are usually of doubtful quality because .... Basically all affiliate networks forbid it. I wasn’t aware of this, and I’m not sure I understand why this would be the case. Do you have any more information about this?

If you’re asking why a referral program would forbid the listing of referral links on coupon sites, I’d imagine it’s because most people visiting a coupon aggregator are already on the website checkout page ready to make a purchase. You’re not referring these customers and bringing someone new to the table.

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

#145

Post by dylan604 » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 9:14 PM UTC

rib3ye wrote: post #116

dylan604 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it’s a $12 review, right? > Compared to a $1k-$5k /video influencer, isn’t that a deal? I mean, that totally depends on the "influencer" right? How many people will you actually talk to where you've spent $12? How many people will hear about it from the influencer? If they have 1M subs and get $5k, that's half a cent per view. Sometimes, simple arithmetic can disprove ridiculous viewpoints. Now, it's just a matt…

Well how many people do you calculate saw my comment?

1

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

#146

Post by SkyPuncher » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 9:20 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #49

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…

They still mostly were neither free nor a particularly good deal. I tried Blue Apron once (probably with a discount). In addition to the dark pattern of we'll send you meals next week by default they pretty much all used, they all seemed to have a really narrow use case. Basically, you had to be fine with cooking sometimes fairly time-consuming recipes for 2+ people three days a week, but didn't have a well-stocked p…

We use HomeChef now and only get their oven ready or “quick” meals. It’s wonderful.

Previously, we tried a few services. It would often take an hour for me to cook a meal. These weren’t anything special either. I had four major complaints:

* it often felt like recipes would include unnecessary steps just to make you feel like a cook. Things like mixing siracha and mayo to make the dressing when they could have simply sent it combined.

* reading the instructions was a ridiculous slow down. After a full day of work, it wasn’t fun having to interpret the overly zealous recipes.

* the time estimates were clearly made by someone who preps food all day.

* they still expected you to have certain basics. Not really the end of the world, but part of the point was to not worry about any other shopping.

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

#147

Post by SkyPuncher » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 9:26 PM UTC

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…

This aligns with my experience as well.

My hypothesis is slightly different. When people have a strong enough need, they’re willing to look past UX/UI issues because they see the core value. They’re okay using a “crappy” product because it’s actually doing something really important for them. Later in a products life, it needs a better Ui to attract the remaining user and compete with the market.

The crappy UI serves as a bit of a filter, helping you learn quickly if something is valuable.

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

#148

Post by paulmd » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 9:38 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #55

dazc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference in those days is that people had to present an actual coupon that they had gone to trouble of cutting out and keeping. The advent of search 'business-name voucher code' brought this to anyone and everyone.

9 out of 10 times, those online coupon finders never worked. You needed to use them pretty much on the day they were posted to the site, otherwise there would be too many redemptions by the time it found it ranked on Google search.

Today it is pretty much actively a scam and you are better off searching for a newsletter subscription that often come with a 15% off code etc.

(I assume the mechanism here is to obscure the coupon enough that Amazon doesn’t get mad you’re selling under their pricing but you let the customer have some of the savings from avoiding Amazon’s commission.)

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

#149

Post by eightysixfour » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 9:46 PM UTC

SkyPuncher wrote: post #147

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…

This aligns with my experience as well. My hypothesis is slightly different. When people have a strong enough need, they’re willing to look past UX/UI issues because they see the core value. They’re okay using a “crappy” product because it’s actually doing something really important for them. Later in a products life, it needs a better Ui to attract the remaining user and compete with the market. The crappy UI serves…

I agree and I think our hypotheses are two sides of the same coin - if the UX is great it gains users that aren’t good for business, if the UX is bad it filters for users that deeply need the product.

I’d certainly rather be in a startup that is dealing with the latter than the former.

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

#150

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 10:21 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #119

electriclove wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the downvotes / disagreement? “People using coupons -> worse customers” makes sense to me. The shop isn’t getting more money from these customers.

It’s the other way around. Not all coupon users are worse customers (who would refuse a 5$ discount offered during checkout?) - but the worst customers will also go out of their way to find coupons.

But even that isn't so simple, because there are at least three types of people who use coupons.

The first are the ones coupons nominally target -- not people who go out of their way to find coupons. Just ordinary new customers who need an incentive to try the product once and then might become repeat customers. These are actually great when you can get them, but they're not that big a percentage of coupon users.

The second is the, let's say, analysts. Smart retirees who now have lots of free time and can use it to find a good deal. Tech savvy customers who know how to use advanced search features to find the best deal or are willing to set up a scraper to send them an alert. These customers are great too -- you don't make much margin from them, but you make a little, and then they immediately go away and leave you to keep their money in peace. And when you offer a good deal, they will come to you, so your margin is lower but so is your marketing expense.

The real problem is Karens. They don't know how to read but own a fanny pack that says "the customer is always right" and want to spend two hours arguing with you to try to get you to accept an expired coupon for the wrong product over something that has a $0.17 margin.