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How Mint.com Uses Messages (Email, SMS, Push, Etc) to Improve Retention

40 points by rubenugarte 10y ago

alexandercrohde 10y ago
Now I'm not specifically criticizing mints usage here, because I'm not a mint user. But it's been my experience on both sides (as a dev and an app-user) that it seems companies regularly send unwanted push notifications, that if clicked open the app. If a user opens the app even for 1 second in a month, they are counted as a silly metric "Monthly active user." Through chains of management and obsession over charts and bad metrics (like MAU) it's been my experience that the whole intent of building a great product usually gets lost by persistent opt-out messaging. And it's a situation where everybody loses out (because I uninstall the app, don't recommend it) and I get interruptions I don't want. Now I recognize this article is specifically talking about pushes that do deliver some form of value, but what I don't see is any follow up research on whether ultimately these users are glad they got these notifications (or whether they feel stressed by them, or nagged, or whether they uninstall)
- rubenugarte 10y ago
  Good points. Messaging has become super easy to set up so the natural tendency is to just do more of everything. Send every message through all available channels which means you might get one email, 1 sms and 1 push notification. Looking at whether users like these kind of messages would be interesting. I personally turn off the push notifications but I enjoy getting the emails from Mint. I really dislike when companies don't give you an option for what kind of notifications you want to receive. I would imagine this is pretty similar for all consumers.
devgutt 10y ago
This is a depressing way to see the value delivered by a startup to their users. Instead of making awesome things to their user, they are using messages to "engage" users to not abandon their product. I want to believe that they were doing the former. Believe or not, some of us are not trying to trick users or do anything to show growth, but actually trying to help our users.
- lyricwai 10y ago
  Totally agree with you. Instead of providing better products, too many apps and services abuse the approaches to "engage" their users.
shostack 10y ago
They'd get a lot more retention if they just updated the app to be closer to the web version. Half the charts and views are missing with no way to access things like net worth, change time frames for longer than 6 mo, filter to only chart things with certain accounts, etc. It's all there on the web, but mobile has languished while they rush to get bill pay added. I'd heard rumors they were winding down the team but it has been over a year like this.
- knz 10y ago
  > It's all there on the web, but mobile has languished I've used mint for many years but have just about given up on the web UI. At least half of the time it pulls up the wrong account when I click on transactions or a chart doesn't load. The experience went downhill for me after their last major update and it's reached the point where I'm actively looking for a replacement. I'd also argue that Intuit has focused too much on monetizing it instead of adding more value to the customer.
  - shostack 10y ago
    Yeah--it has a lot of potential, but the reality is it may never be the revenue driver they needed it to be in order to allocate more resources to improve it. Kind of a chicken and the egg problem--you can't get a better product without resources, and you need to monetize to get those resources (or at least be confident that the returns will be there down the line). So what resources you do have inevitably go towards monetization since it is a lot easier to measure impact on growth than with many product improvements.
AznHisoka 10y ago
I stopped using Mint when they continued to insist i needed to fix login issues to my banks. then citibank locked me out because they saw mint was continully trying to log in. i am bearish on Mint because of this. they dont own the banks. sooner or later all the banks are going to block Mint
- sg47 10y ago
  Ran into the same issue with Citibank and Chase as well. I've stopped using Mint because of this. Are there good alternatives?
  - uptown 10y ago
    Haven't tried it yet - but Banktivity looks promising. https://www.iggsoftware.com/banktivity/ https://www.iggsoftware.com/banktivity/
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  > then citibank locked me out because they saw mint was continully trying to log in. It gets better: if you have two-factor authentication turned on with your bank, you'll get text messages or phone calls every day in the wee hours of the morning, because Mint is trying to log in and update your account. > sooner or later all the banks are going to block Mint I don't think so - first of all, because I don't think the banks really want to block Mint. But even if they did, they couldn't. Intuit (the parent company of Mint) makes Quicken, which is very popular, and which already uses the well-support OFX protocol for synchronizing bank information. The real problem is that, eventually, banks will try to start charging users to allow software like Mint to access their accounts (some already do this with OFX).
  - astrodust 10y ago
    OAuth might be annoying but at least it's an understandable and implementable way of conveying to the user what access will be granted to external applications. No standard will ever exist in the banking world because banks. They're their own worst enemy.
vanattab 10y ago
I used to use Mint but they always lost connection to my accounts. I just got one of these emails. Unfortunately for them I was cleaning my inbox of "subscriptions" at the time and promptly hit unsubscribe.
travisjeffery 10y ago
http://stash.cool/ http://stash.cool/ - Personal finance tool I'm working on that's what Mint would have been if they hadn't sold to Intuit, had all that ad garbage and tacked on features.
travisjeffery 10y ago
http://stash.cool/ http://stash.cool/ - Personal finance tool I'm working on that's what Mint would have been if they hadn't sold to Intuit, had all that ad garbage and tacked on features.
douche 10y ago
Mint lost me, because it's too much of a PITA to keep the credentials managed for their screenscrapers. Also it seems like all my banks redid their websites in Angular or React over the past year, and Mint really hasn't handled that well
qasderfcxs 10y ago
I use Geltbox Money. No need to use online financial aggregators, which are limited to certain financial institutions. Record your own downloaders and have them run automatically in your device. Can work in most countries in the world. Data and credentials are stored and encrypted locally. No need to give away your user names and passwords. No need to store your personal financial information online

40 points by rubenugarte 10y ago

Now I'm not specifically criticizing mints usage here, because I'm not a mint user. But it's been my experience on both sides (as a dev and an app-user) that it seems companies regularly send unwanted push notifications, that if clicked open the app. If a user opens the app even for 1 second in a month, they are counted as a silly metric "Monthly active user." Through chains of management and obsession over charts and bad metrics (like MAU) it's been my experience that the whole intent of building a great product usually gets lost by persistent opt-out messaging. And it's a situation where everybody loses out (because I uninstall the app, don't recommend it) and I get interruptions I don't want. Now I recognize this article is specifically talking about pushes that do deliver some form of value, but what I don't see is any follow up research on whether ultimately these users are glad they got these notifications (or whether they feel stressed by them, or nagged, or whether they uninstall)

rubenugarte 10y ago
Good points. Messaging has become super easy to set up so the natural tendency is to just do more of everything. Send every message through all available channels which means you might get one email, 1 sms and 1 push notification. Looking at whether users like these kind of messages would be interesting. I personally turn off the push notifications but I enjoy getting the emails from Mint. I really dislike when companies don't give you an option for what kind of notifications you want to receive. I would imagine this is pretty similar for all consumers.

devgutt 10y ago

This is a depressing way to see the value delivered by a startup to their users. Instead of making awesome things to their user, they are using messages to "engage" users to not abandon their product. I want to believe that they were doing the former. Believe or not, some of us are not trying to trick users or do anything to show growth, but actually trying to help our users.

lyricwai 10y ago
Totally agree with you. Instead of providing better products, too many apps and services abuse the approaches to "engage" their users.

shostack 10y ago

They'd get a lot more retention if they just updated the app to be closer to the web version. Half the charts and views are missing with no way to access things like net worth, change time frames for longer than 6 mo, filter to only chart things with certain accounts, etc. It's all there on the web, but mobile has languished while they rush to get bill pay added. I'd heard rumors they were winding down the team but it has been over a year like this.

knz 10y ago
> It's all there on the web, but mobile has languished I've used mint for many years but have just about given up on the web UI. At least half of the time it pulls up the wrong account when I click on transactions or a chart doesn't load. The experience went downhill for me after their last major update and it's reached the point where I'm actively looking for a replacement. I'd also argue that Intuit has focused too much on monetizing it instead of adding more value to the customer.
- shostack 10y ago
  Yeah--it has a lot of potential, but the reality is it may never be the revenue driver they needed it to be in order to allocate more resources to improve it. Kind of a chicken and the egg problem--you can't get a better product without resources, and you need to monetize to get those resources (or at least be confident that the returns will be there down the line). So what resources you do have inevitably go towards monetization since it is a lot easier to measure impact on growth than with many product improvements.

AznHisoka 10y ago

I stopped using Mint when they continued to insist i needed to fix login issues to my banks. then citibank locked me out because they saw mint was continully trying to log in. i am bearish on Mint because of this. they dont own the banks. sooner or later all the banks are going to block Mint

sg47 10y ago
Ran into the same issue with Citibank and Chase as well. I've stopped using Mint because of this. Are there good alternatives?
- uptown 10y ago
  Haven't tried it yet - but Banktivity looks promising. https://www.iggsoftware.com/banktivity/ https://www.iggsoftware.com/banktivity/
chimeracoder 10y ago
> then citibank locked me out because they saw mint was continully trying to log in. It gets better: if you have two-factor authentication turned on with your bank, you'll get text messages or phone calls every day in the wee hours of the morning, because Mint is trying to log in and update your account. > sooner or later all the banks are going to block Mint I don't think so - first of all, because I don't think the banks really want to block Mint. But even if they did, they couldn't. Intuit (the parent company of Mint) makes Quicken, which is very popular, and which already uses the well-support OFX protocol for synchronizing bank information. The real problem is that, eventually, banks will try to start charging users to allow software like Mint to access their accounts (some already do this with OFX).
- astrodust 10y ago
  OAuth might be annoying but at least it's an understandable and implementable way of conveying to the user what access will be granted to external applications. No standard will ever exist in the banking world because banks. They're their own worst enemy.

vanattab 10y ago

I used to use Mint but they always lost connection to my accounts. I just got one of these emails. Unfortunately for them I was cleaning my inbox of "subscriptions" at the time and promptly hit unsubscribe.

travisjeffery 10y ago

http://stash.cool/ http://stash.cool/ - Personal finance tool I'm working on that's what Mint would have been if they hadn't sold to Intuit, had all that ad garbage and tacked on features.

travisjeffery 10y ago

http://stash.cool/ http://stash.cool/ - Personal finance tool I'm working on that's what Mint would have been if they hadn't sold to Intuit, had all that ad garbage and tacked on features.

douche 10y ago

Mint lost me, because it's too much of a PITA to keep the credentials managed for their screenscrapers. Also it seems like all my banks redid their websites in Angular or React over the past year, and Mint really hasn't handled that well

qasderfcxs 10y ago

I use Geltbox Money. No need to use online financial aggregators, which are limited to certain financial institutions. Record your own downloaders and have them run automatically in your device. Can work in most countries in the world. Data and credentials are stored and encrypted locally. No need to give away your user names and passwords. No need to store your personal financial information online