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The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

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Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#21

Post by tgrass »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #17
cooperadymas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All a matter of taste, I guess. We've seen good results with it, as have plenty of other people. It's easy to overdo it, but 4-5 helpful emails spread out over 30 days isn't too much I think. This is assuming the emails actually are helpful and not just an annoyance. A lot of recent tools like Intercom and GetVero and Customer.io can help make this even smarter by emailing about specific abandoned tasks, different em…

What would you define as helpful? Just as a data point, let me tell you how my mind works because I'm the person your raw numbers won't tell you about: Just getting the emails is likely to annoy me unless it's really, really earth-shatteringly useful and I've yet to ever see an example of this. I'll likely open the email and give it 1-2 seconds of scanning time to make sure I'm not missing out and to find the unsubsc…

This is my gut reaction. And yet time and again you hear from the likes of patio11 et al that one should leverage email as an engagement tool.

For anyone with experience in this, does it just come down to weighing the benefit of gaining a customer against the risk of losing two?

Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#22

Post by Moto7451 »

chaz wrote: post #7

Another thing I don't like about 30 day free trials is that they usually start right away. Before I know it, I'm getting an email saying that the trial is almost over, and I've barely used it. It takes time to develop a new habit and explore a product or service. This is worse if it requires some integration, setup, training, or data import. I wouldn't say the 30d free trial is broken, or even mostly broken, but it's…

One thing we do at work is offer a single 30 day extension to trials that haven't converted. Definitely helps conversions.

Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#23

Post by olegp »

A survey we ran at https://starthq.com confirms the points the post brings up. We are looking to add pricing and trial duration info to our SaaS directory, but I was wondering: what does everyone think would be the best way to display this information & how should we go about collecting this data?

When it comes to displaying the info, I was thinking of using two sets of tags, one for the pricing model, i.e. "Free", "Freemium" or "Trial" and the other for the starting price per month once you do start paying: "As for collecting the data: the only thing I can think of is that we either do it ourselves, which would be time consuming for the 700+ apps we've got in the directory, or get the SaaS providers to register and do it themselves. Perhaps there's some way to automate this or crowd source it, but I can't seem to think of anything sensible.

Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#24

Post by edhallen »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #17
cooperadymas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All a matter of taste, I guess. We've seen good results with it, as have plenty of other people. It's easy to overdo it, but 4-5 helpful emails spread out over 30 days isn't too much I think. This is assuming the emails actually are helpful and not just an annoyance. A lot of recent tools like Intercom and GetVero and Customer.io can help make this even smarter by emailing about specific abandoned tasks, different em…

What would you define as helpful? Just as a data point, let me tell you how my mind works because I'm the person your raw numbers won't tell you about: Just getting the emails is likely to annoy me unless it's really, really earth-shatteringly useful and I've yet to ever see an example of this. I'll likely open the email and give it 1-2 seconds of scanning time to make sure I'm not missing out and to find the unsubsc…

These are great points, and speak to why measuring the impact of email is really, really important. Until you're holding your emails accountable to performance (whether it's getting someone to come back or to buy), you're just throwing darts in the air and potentially annoying someone.

At Klaviyo (I'm one of the co-founders, so note bias), we've helped many web apps and ecommerce sites setup full email strategies - and we definitely find that some emails don't work. You've got to test different emails and strategies, see what works - and then ideally optimize and personalize what (or even whether) you are sending based on individuals' actions.

Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#25

Post by tgrass »

patio11 wrote: post #18

Test against your own audience, but I would bet heavily against the conclusion "Usage limited trials outperform free trials" for the majority of SaaS apps. Dropbox's case is different with a capital D because the trial/invite mechanic is code to their viral adoption. One powerful reason why you generally want to avoid having a meter running is you are really making two related but distinct sales: you are trying to co…

For more on patio11's thoughts on pricing and conversions, please listen to his MicroConf lecture: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-who...

Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#26

Post by crazygringo »

chaz wrote: post #7

Another thing I don't like about 30 day free trials is that they usually start right away. Before I know it, I'm getting an email saying that the trial is almost over, and I've barely used it. It takes time to develop a new habit and explore a product or service. This is worse if it requires some integration, setup, training, or data import. I wouldn't say the 30d free trial is broken, or even mostly broken, but it's…

Yeah -- I really thought about providing a "4 hours of actual usage" trial instead of a 14-day trial for a product of mine -- thinking that they could sign up immediately, not worrying that they don't need to fully try it within the next 14 days.

But the problem is, users don't understand it. The think it's 4 hours from when you sign up. The amount of text it takes to explain that it's actual cumulative usage, is so much that they don't read it. They just see 4-hour trial, and think, that's weird, and I don't have time for that right now.

Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#27

Post by kintamanimatt »

tgrass wrote: post #21
kintamanimatt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you define as helpful? Just as a data point, let me tell you how my mind works because I'm the person your raw numbers won't tell you about: Just getting the emails is likely to annoy me unless it's really, really earth-shatteringly useful and I've yet to ever see an example of this. I'll likely open the email and give it 1-2 seconds of scanning time to make sure I'm not missing out and to find the unsubsc…

This is my gut reaction. And yet time and again you hear from the likes of patio11 et al that one should leverage email as an engagement tool. For anyone with experience in this, does it just come down to weighing the benefit of gaining a customer against the risk of losing two?

The thing is, overly-aggressive marketing tactics that you wouldn't want to be subjected to yourself have downsides that aren't readily detectable by your stats and dashboard.

There was someone who's articles and videos I'd share on reddit because they contain (and still do!) really, really great content. The trouble is, they're now wrapped up in overly-aggressive marketing tactics. The videos now have a YouTube ad and a 15 second intro lead-in that reminds me of the THX intro clip [1]. This is followed by an advertisement for other products, followed by the actual content, followed by the spammiest looking "click subscribe!" clip. If you visit his website for the first time, you're now immediately greeted with a popup asking to subscribe to their email list. Again, really great content wrapped up in unempathetic marketing tactics. Last time I shared something he'd created on a targeted subreddit, everyone immediately bitched it was spam and it was downvoted; they missed the content because of yucky marketing.

Every time I'd post a link, pre-unempathetic marketing, it would (apparently) net him a lot of traffic and reach a previously untapped audience. (I'd get a thank-you email for the huge spike in traffic!) Social media traffic is harder to convert but can be done quite effectively when done properly. What this person can't measure is my current unwillingness to continue to share his best content because of these overly aggressive, unempathetic tactics. I put up with them and still consume his content because I know it's good and it appeals to my interests, but it seems to make newbies bounce very quickly.

There are marketing tactics that "work" and will result in a positive bump in metrics but have an ick-factor to them and hidden cost. Same deal with on-boarding emails, nagging emails, jQuery popups begging for an email address, etc. They have tangible results and appear to be working, but the undetectable damage is still present.

My general rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't want someone to subject you to the tactic, don't subject others.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfg9DVwOd9w

Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#28

Post by jimmaswell »

crazygringo wrote: post #26
chaz wrote: post #7

Another thing I don't like about 30 day free trials is that they usually start right away. Before I know it, I'm getting an email saying that the trial is almost over, and I've barely used it. It takes time to develop a new habit and explore a product or service. This is worse if it requires some integration, setup, training, or data import. I wouldn't say the 30d free trial is broken, or even mostly broken, but it's…

Yeah -- I really thought about providing a "4 hours of actual usage" trial instead of a 14-day trial for a product of mine -- thinking that they could sign up immediately , not worrying that they don't need to fully try it within the next 14 days. But the problem is, users don't understand it. The think it's 4 hours from when you sign up. The amount of text it takes to explain that it's actual cumulative usage, is so…

This is how the video game service Steam does it, as far as I remember.

Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#29

Post by kintamanimatt »

edhallen wrote: post #24
kintamanimatt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you define as helpful? Just as a data point, let me tell you how my mind works because I'm the person your raw numbers won't tell you about: Just getting the emails is likely to annoy me unless it's really, really earth-shatteringly useful and I've yet to ever see an example of this. I'll likely open the email and give it 1-2 seconds of scanning time to make sure I'm not missing out and to find the unsubsc…

These are great points, and speak to why measuring the impact of email is really, really important. Until you're holding your emails accountable to performance (whether it's getting someone to come back or to buy), you're just throwing darts in the air and potentially annoying someone. At Klaviyo (I'm one of the co-founders, so note bias), we've helped many web apps and ecommerce sites setup full email strategies - a…

How do you measure how pissed off I am? From your side of the table a lack of positive action is indistinguishable from absolute apathy, passive interest without action, undelivered mail (most tracking widgets fail in webmail), etc.

I've observed that some less-savvy people don't know how to unsubscribe from emails, or fear doing so will "upset someone" and so grin and bear an otherwise annoying deluge of email they never react to.

Re: The 30 day free trial is mostly broken

#30

Post by jimmaswell »

I was expecting this to refer to how easily most software trials are bypassed. Some simply by changing your clock, others require uninstallation and reinstallation or change registry settings (I have yet to come across trial software on linux), and some even go so far as to have rootkit behavior, modifying your boot sector. For website services like this, it's trivial to just use multiple accounts. Not that I'd want to do this, I just think it's an interesting subject.
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