3 ms·

What does “conversion” actually mean in this context? Does it mean bullshit “growth & engagement” aka the numbers of (mostly non-consensual) subscribers in the

What does “conversion” actually mean in this context? Does it mean bullshit “growth & engagement” aka the numbers of (mostly non-consensual) subscribers in the spam list going up, or does it mean actual profit? I could definitely see it working for the first case, which is all that your typical product/marketing person needs to justify their salary thus why the practice is popular, but I wonder if this actually ends up translating to actual profit (whether the spammed people end up buying stuff they wouldn’t have otherwise bought, and whether any prospective buyers that would’ve converted otherwise were driven away).

fishtoaster 3y ago
That's a pretty good question. Ideally you're measuring "paid us money" as conversion, and that was the case for the anecdote I had in mind in the above post: we had a checkout screen with a decent price tag at the end of the flow that we could measure against. We could track the impact of changes throughout that funnel on the bottom line. But I have seen other decisions made based on proxies to "paid us money." Eg we find that X% people who perform action Y wind up paying us money, and for really long funnels it's easier to get statistical significance for action Y than for "paid us money." And so we make some change, find that it increases the rate at which people do action Y, and declare victory. We try to keep in mind potential downstream impacts (like loss of trust), but it's hard to argue a vague, potential downside against a solid, measured number sitting in a google doc in front of you. I suspect the phenomenon you call out is somewhat common.
- naijaboiler 3y ago
  If this measurement was done by product or marketing people, my lived experience was that the experiment design was flawed, the conclusions they reach are likely not correct ones.

fishtoaster 3y ago

That's a pretty good question. Ideally you're measuring "paid us money" as conversion, and that was the case for the anecdote I had in mind in the above post: we had a checkout screen with a decent price tag at the end of the flow that we could measure against. We could track the impact of changes throughout that funnel on the bottom line. But I have seen other decisions made based on proxies to "paid us money." Eg we find that X% people who perform action Y wind up paying us money, and for really long funnels it's easier to get statistical significance for action Y than for "paid us money." And so we make some change, find that it increases the rate at which people do action Y, and declare victory. We try to keep in mind potential downstream impacts (like loss of trust), but it's hard to argue a vague, potential downside against a solid, measured number sitting in a google doc in front of you. I suspect the phenomenon you call out is somewhat common.

naijaboiler 3y ago
If this measurement was done by product or marketing people, my lived experience was that the experiment design was flawed, the conclusions they reach are likely not correct ones.