4 ms·

Ask HN: What's your stance on this method for poaching potential customers

7 points by sdesol 16y ago

To make the long story short, my future competitor's issues are online. That is, their bugs, feature request, etc. are viewable by all. And because of this, I can easily see what their customers/evaluators are saying about their product. These customers/evaluators also make their e-mail address freely available. The question that I pose to you is, how would you feel if somebody contacted you about a problem that you had raised? Note before contacting the user, I would obviously have to believe that my product would be able to address the issues that they raised. Would this be crossing the line or is this just how business is done?

spooneybarger 16y ago
If the information is freely available then I don't see that as ethically wrong. It is like being in a bar and overhearing someone who has an issue with your competitor and approaching them.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  Not an ethical problem. But I wonder if the customers might feel a bit spied upon. I would keep the communication generic, wouldn't mention how you got their address and not refer to just the problem that they mentioned.
  - flashgordon 16y ago
    Actually I would have thought the customer (after getting over being spied on) would have felt angry at Wonka corp for making it so easy for other parties to track them. That could be something you could capitalise on without being obvious :D.
    - user24 16y ago
      Many people don't think like that; if your house gets broken into, you don't generally complain to the locksmith who fitted cheap locks.
  - spooneybarger 16y ago
    I would want to know how you got my info like... 'Hi there, I was checking out Wonka Corps website for what issues their customers were having so we could address them in our product and say your issue and thought...' etc etc.
LeBlanc 16y ago
Whatever you do, don't reference specific issues the customer had or statements they made. Most people will find this very creepy and stay away from your service. That said, you can tailor your pitch to whatever pain points that customer has. So "I saw that you have a problem with X at wonka corp" is a no-no, but "My service is way better at X than wonka corp" should be fine. In general, keep it general.
- bigiain 16y ago
  How about "My service is way better at X than wonka corp, - also, we value our customers privacy highly and wouldn't dream of publishing your email address in a publicly available support forum."?
  - lsc 16y ago
    Well, for instance, if oracle contacted me 'cause i was on RedHat boards, I'd find it pretty creepy and irritating, especially if they started going off about redhat not respecting my privacy; I put my email on there myself. for someone else to go and assume that I didn't actually mean to put up my email would be kinda insulting. But then, i'm not the sort of person who responds to sales solicitations. (In fact, I do my very best to avoid buying products that require negotiating with a salesperson- it's usually the mark of a higher price.) so you might not want to listen to me. However, if you are poaching from a semi-open-source support form, you might want to keep what I say in mind.
ohashi 16y ago
I say try it and see what happens. See what works, what doesn't, customize each contact and improve based on results.
staunch 16y ago
I believe you're 100% in the clear ethically.
fookyong 16y ago
I think it's fair game. However, instead of building a feature and then pitching it directly to the user, I would create a landing page for it. Something clearly laid out e.g. "(big text) Having Problems with X? -> describe the pain-point feature -> describe the app -> pricing / call to action" This is better for a few reasons, I think: 1) It's less in-your-face. You don't want to be a sales douchebag and make the customer feel obligated to use your app because you've solved a competitor's pain-point. So instead of direct emailing them the pitch, you say "hey our app solves this problem - here's a page explaining why." 2) It's scalable, since you can just send other people to the same page without having to pitch them all the time. You could even set up some adwords campaigns for the specific phrase "XYZ app with ABC feature" and see what happens. You never know - people might be googling for a solution. 3) It's less creepy as it implies that the feature was built for the benefit of everyone (which it was) rather than the few customers that you've stalked :)
postfuturist 16y ago
I contribute bug reports to open source projects. If somebody contacted me through contact information leaked in a place like that about a 'competing product', I would be angry and probably blog about it. Fortunately, nobody reads my blog. Unfortunately, it is indexed by Google.
mahmud 16y ago
Legal, fair and ethical. You're offering a potentially better product to exactly the people that need it. However, before you hawk your brand and wares, try to imagine yourself a good Samaritan and introduce yourself. You might get more information about their needs and wants than you can ever glean from a bug report. This stuff is called Solution Selling and it's a more conversational approach to sales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_selling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_selling N.B: the references in that page contain wacky commercial products. A better sales advice might be "just be human and be honest". Commercial SS includes variable pricing stuff you don't need.
codingthewheel 16y ago
Well allow me to be the lone dissenting opinion. (Edit: what follows should be interpreted as a rant against this practice, not against you personally, or your business idea :) Harvesting user's emails from a 3rd-party site that you plan to compete against is unequivocally and unambiguously a shitty, low, underhanded practice. Not to put too fine a point on it. You didn't put in the footwork or the dollars necessary to get those customers yourself. You didn't get the customer's permission to contact them (and NO, just because a customer posts his email address in plainview does NOT mean he's implicitly given you his permission.) You didn't achieve a real and meaningful relationship with your customers or your competitors. You just harvested some emails that were left in plainview, no different than any other 2nd-rate spammer on the net. Ethics aside, any business that depends on the glomming of email addresses/discussions from 3rd-party competitors is...the best word I can find is "uninspired". If you don't have a problem with this business model, you don't have a problem with targeted spam.

7 points by sdesol 16y ago

spooneybarger 16y ago

If the information is freely available then I don't see that as ethically wrong. It is like being in a bar and overhearing someone who has an issue with your competitor and approaching them.

stretchwithme 16y ago
Not an ethical problem. But I wonder if the customers might feel a bit spied upon. I would keep the communication generic, wouldn't mention how you got their address and not refer to just the problem that they mentioned.
- flashgordon 16y ago
  Actually I would have thought the customer (after getting over being spied on) would have felt angry at Wonka corp for making it so easy for other parties to track them. That could be something you could capitalise on without being obvious :D.
  - user24 16y ago
    Many people don't think like that; if your house gets broken into, you don't generally complain to the locksmith who fitted cheap locks.
- spooneybarger 16y ago
  I would want to know how you got my info like... 'Hi there, I was checking out Wonka Corps website for what issues their customers were having so we could address them in our product and say your issue and thought...' etc etc.

LeBlanc 16y ago

Whatever you do, don't reference specific issues the customer had or statements they made. Most people will find this very creepy and stay away from your service. That said, you can tailor your pitch to whatever pain points that customer has. So "I saw that you have a problem with X at wonka corp" is a no-no, but "My service is way better at X than wonka corp" should be fine. In general, keep it general.

bigiain 16y ago
How about "My service is way better at X than wonka corp, - also, we value our customers privacy highly and wouldn't dream of publishing your email address in a publicly available support forum."?
- lsc 16y ago
  Well, for instance, if oracle contacted me 'cause i was on RedHat boards, I'd find it pretty creepy and irritating, especially if they started going off about redhat not respecting my privacy; I put my email on there myself. for someone else to go and assume that I didn't actually mean to put up my email would be kinda insulting. But then, i'm not the sort of person who responds to sales solicitations. (In fact, I do my very best to avoid buying products that require negotiating with a salesperson- it's usually the mark of a higher price.) so you might not want to listen to me. However, if you are poaching from a semi-open-source support form, you might want to keep what I say in mind.

ohashi 16y ago

I say try it and see what happens. See what works, what doesn't, customize each contact and improve based on results.

staunch 16y ago

I believe you're 100% in the clear ethically.

fookyong 16y ago

I think it's fair game. However, instead of building a feature and then pitching it directly to the user, I would create a landing page for it. Something clearly laid out e.g. "(big text) Having Problems with X? -> describe the pain-point feature -> describe the app -> pricing / call to action" This is better for a few reasons, I think: 1) It's less in-your-face. You don't want to be a sales douchebag and make the customer feel obligated to use your app because you've solved a competitor's pain-point. So instead of direct emailing them the pitch, you say "hey our app solves this problem - here's a page explaining why." 2) It's scalable, since you can just send other people to the same page without having to pitch them all the time. You could even set up some adwords campaigns for the specific phrase "XYZ app with ABC feature" and see what happens. You never know - people might be googling for a solution. 3) It's less creepy as it implies that the feature was built for the benefit of everyone (which it was) rather than the few customers that you've stalked :)

postfuturist 16y ago

I contribute bug reports to open source projects. If somebody contacted me through contact information leaked in a place like that about a 'competing product', I would be angry and probably blog about it. Fortunately, nobody reads my blog. Unfortunately, it is indexed by Google.

mahmud 16y ago

Legal, fair and ethical. You're offering a potentially better product to exactly the people that need it. However, before you hawk your brand and wares, try to imagine yourself a good Samaritan and introduce yourself. You might get more information about their needs and wants than you can ever glean from a bug report. This stuff is called Solution Selling and it's a more conversational approach to sales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_selling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_selling N.B: the references in that page contain wacky commercial products. A better sales advice might be "just be human and be honest". Commercial SS includes variable pricing stuff you don't need.

codingthewheel 16y ago

Well allow me to be the lone dissenting opinion. (Edit: what follows should be interpreted as a rant against this practice, not against you personally, or your business idea :) Harvesting user's emails from a 3rd-party site that you plan to compete against is unequivocally and unambiguously a shitty, low, underhanded practice. Not to put too fine a point on it. You didn't put in the footwork or the dollars necessary to get those customers yourself. You didn't get the customer's permission to contact them (and NO, just because a customer posts his email address in plainview does NOT mean he's implicitly given you his permission.) You didn't achieve a real and meaningful relationship with your customers or your competitors. You just harvested some emails that were left in plainview, no different than any other 2nd-rate spammer on the net. Ethics aside, any business that depends on the glomming of email addresses/discussions from 3rd-party competitors is...the best word I can find is "uninspired". If you don't have a problem with this business model, you don't have a problem with targeted spam.