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Interesting idea, Noah. But there are two questions in my mind: a) How are you going to monetize this? (You say on website it is free for companies using it, b

Interesting idea, Noah. But there are two questions in my mind: a) How are you going to monetize this? (You say on website it is free for companies using it, but you must have thought of some monetization strategy) b) You incentivizing users signup for a service just to get that exclusive offer under the signup box. Aren't those users going to be no better than "no-users"? I mean, if the only (or part-of) reason for a user signing up for a service is because he wanted to get that exclusive offer, chances of him becoming a long term customer are pretty low. Right?

noahkagan 16y ago
Great questions Paras. A) We make money on some of the rewards which will be paid. We are seeing good conversions on the "customers" (the people who opt-in to receive the rewards) we send to the companies. For the next few weeks we are giving tons of credit for people to add their companies / products as rewards. B) Yea, it's hard to say whether the users are "good" customers or not. The data is showing they are. We look it more as a bonus for the person to try out your service. Think of it as a free bonus that makes you more likely to try a product (ie. free toothpaste w/ toothbrush purchase)
ktsmith 16y ago
After three years of working with an affiliate marketing, lead generation and advertising company I would say that incentivized traffic is the worst kind of traffic. This is after seeing thousands of offers and processing millions of leads. The problem with any type of incentive on a signup form (not checkout, that's different) is that it changes intent. You end up with two groups of people: those interested in your product and those looking for a reward. Differentiating those two groups can be very expensive. If you are sending out a news letter or other marketing material you also should expect to see higher unsubscribe rates and spam complaints from incentivized sign ups. These people will often not remember where they signed up or what it was for and that leaves you dealing with problems at your ESP or wasting money on increased numbers of mailings. I've seen offers for services where an agent calls the person signing up to complete the process and those are even more fun. Then you have to deal with people that are pissed they are receiving a call from a "telemarketer" even though they signed up to receive a call. There are also other factors working against incentivized forms such as forums set up for the sole purpose of detailing places you can sign up for something for free and receive a tangible reward in return. Other types of incentives for the check out page of a pay service or store selling goods can work really well. The best example are check out pages that have free shipping thresholds. If you prompt the user "Hey, spend $X more and you get free shipping." You have a great opportunity to upsell or to push smaller items that might have more markup. Additionally a reward like this site seems to be offering might push people to finish the check out process if the reward is good enough. Having been down this road I would be very skeptical of the quality of the signups as a publisher in this system and as an advertiser I'd want good terms on what qualifies as a conversion as well as well defined return policies on leads. It doesn't look like advertiser information is available yet (did I miss it?) so hard to say what terms they are getting.

noahkagan 16y ago

Great questions Paras. A) We make money on some of the rewards which will be paid. We are seeing good conversions on the "customers" (the people who opt-in to receive the rewards) we send to the companies. For the next few weeks we are giving tons of credit for people to add their companies / products as rewards. B) Yea, it's hard to say whether the users are "good" customers or not. The data is showing they are. We look it more as a bonus for the person to try out your service. Think of it as a free bonus that makes you more likely to try a product (ie. free toothpaste w/ toothbrush purchase)

ktsmith 16y ago

After three years of working with an affiliate marketing, lead generation and advertising company I would say that incentivized traffic is the worst kind of traffic. This is after seeing thousands of offers and processing millions of leads. The problem with any type of incentive on a signup form (not checkout, that's different) is that it changes intent. You end up with two groups of people: those interested in your product and those looking for a reward. Differentiating those two groups can be very expensive. If you are sending out a news letter or other marketing material you also should expect to see higher unsubscribe rates and spam complaints from incentivized sign ups. These people will often not remember where they signed up or what it was for and that leaves you dealing with problems at your ESP or wasting money on increased numbers of mailings. I've seen offers for services where an agent calls the person signing up to complete the process and those are even more fun. Then you have to deal with people that are pissed they are receiving a call from a "telemarketer" even though they signed up to receive a call. There are also other factors working against incentivized forms such as forums set up for the sole purpose of detailing places you can sign up for something for free and receive a tangible reward in return. Other types of incentives for the check out page of a pay service or store selling goods can work really well. The best example are check out pages that have free shipping thresholds. If you prompt the user "Hey, spend $X more and you get free shipping." You have a great opportunity to upsell or to push smaller items that might have more markup. Additionally a reward like this site seems to be offering might push people to finish the check out process if the reward is good enough. Having been down this road I would be very skeptical of the quality of the signups as a publisher in this system and as an advertiser I'd want good terms on what qualifies as a conversion as well as well defined return policies on leads. It doesn't look like advertiser information is available yet (did I miss it?) so hard to say what terms they are getting.