6 ms·

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 almos

by chaz 13y ago

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 not always the right solution.

cooperadymas 13y ago
I've seen this in a training subscription product I have worked with. Customers sign up because it's a free trial, then don't come back until they're warned it's almost over. The customers that don't use it in the first 30 days aren't likely to use it in the next 30 anyway. The solution for the provider is to better engage the users during the 30 day trial. If the only email they get during that trial is the warning that it's almost over then you're probably doing it wrong.
- kintamanimatt 13y ago
  The more email I get from a service during a trial period the more pissed off I get; it feels as bad as someone nagging at me. I hate receiving email and trying to "engage me" by email is about as bad as a sales person calling me every few days to "see if I need some help" or to "offer a few helpful tips" etc.
  - cooperadymas 13y ago
    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 emails to those who aren't engaged at all, or not emailing someone who is fully engaged.
    - kintamanimatt 13y ago
      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 unsubscribe link; if I can't find that, I'm hitting the spam button which (for a service like gmail) will in some small way affect deliverability for other users. Nagging me about abandoned tasks is really irritating and it would teach me that using the service "improperly" is likely to lead to my inbox filling up with no-shit-sherlock emails, and would make me want to avoid using the service at all just to avoid this fate. If I abandoned a task, I did it deliberately and really don't want to be punished with email. Begging me to come back because I haven't logged in in x days is likely to piss me off too. If I haven't used a service in x days it's because it wasn't useful to me and an email isn't going to magic it into the opposite. If anything, you might actually be offering me social proof from (my past self, not others) that the service isn't useful! When I'm evaluating an app during the free trial I've likely made up my mind within the first 30 minutes, if that. I'm looking to see if it's usable, useful, and beautiful, and if I can't determine that from experiencing the app, email isn't going to save the day. If I abandon it within 24 hours I'm almost certainly never coming back, except to cancel the trial if I've already entered my credit card details. If there's a high abandonment rate, emailing people after a trial is over to ask them what pissed them off (giving them the option to submit anonymous comments) is more likely to lead to useful information that will increase retention by improving the quality of the app. But nobody is ever going to say they abandoned a service because they didn't get enough email! Email has never persuaded me to use an app I've abandoned, but I begrudgingly accept my fate of more email whenever I sign up for a free trial as non-monetary price I must pay to experience the app. If irritation is a currency, apparently I'm broke.
      - tgrass 13y ago
        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?
Moto7451 13y ago
One thing we do at work is offer a single 30 day extension to trials that haven't converted. Definitely helps conversions.
crazygringo 13y ago
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.
- jimmaswell 13y ago
  This is how the video game service Steam does it, as far as I remember.
- gsharma 13y ago
  Here is an idea - Pause/freeze the trial period. Initially give a 14 day trial period. If the user does not come back after 2-3 days, send them an email that you have paused their trial for now and it will start running again when they login next time.
  - jevanish 13y ago
    The problem with this is that we're all in the business of making money. You want to put constraints on your customers to give them urgency to complete their trial, so they can then become paying customers...thus keeping you in business. With any business that requires configuration (like setting up tracking on your site or entering candidates in a CRM), you need to push your users to get over that initial hurdle. A short time constraint forces them to act quickly to try to get value out of your product. They can always sign up for the trial at another time if they're not ready to really commit to setting it up and using it right now. The added benefit of all of this is your sales team then works with more qualified leads and spends less time talking to people that would fit into your "paused" category, which can often become a deadpool of unactivated users.
monkeyspaw 13y ago
I often sign up because something seems neat, or because it solves a problem I know I have. It would be great if the 30 day trial started the first time I really start using the software. A great alternative is for a company to offer a newsletter. Then I can get reminders about what they do, learn about how great they are, and sign up when I'm ready to use the software. I'm bad at estimating time frames. I often think I need something (e.g., KissMetrics) next week. In reality, I won't start using it for months.

by chaz 13y ago

cooperadymas 13y ago

I've seen this in a training subscription product I have worked with. Customers sign up because it's a free trial, then don't come back until they're warned it's almost over. The customers that don't use it in the first 30 days aren't likely to use it in the next 30 anyway. The solution for the provider is to better engage the users during the 30 day trial. If the only email they get during that trial is the warning that it's almost over then you're probably doing it wrong.

kintamanimatt 13y ago
The more email I get from a service during a trial period the more pissed off I get; it feels as bad as someone nagging at me. I hate receiving email and trying to "engage me" by email is about as bad as a sales person calling me every few days to "see if I need some help" or to "offer a few helpful tips" etc.
- cooperadymas 13y ago
  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 emails to those who aren't engaged at all, or not emailing someone who is fully engaged.
  - kintamanimatt 13y ago
    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 unsubscribe link; if I can't find that, I'm hitting the spam button which (for a service like gmail) will in some small way affect deliverability for other users. Nagging me about abandoned tasks is really irritating and it would teach me that using the service "improperly" is likely to lead to my inbox filling up with no-shit-sherlock emails, and would make me want to avoid using the service at all just to avoid this fate. If I abandoned a task, I did it deliberately and really don't want to be punished with email. Begging me to come back because I haven't logged in in x days is likely to piss me off too. If I haven't used a service in x days it's because it wasn't useful to me and an email isn't going to magic it into the opposite. If anything, you might actually be offering me social proof from (my past self, not others) that the service isn't useful! When I'm evaluating an app during the free trial I've likely made up my mind within the first 30 minutes, if that. I'm looking to see if it's usable, useful, and beautiful, and if I can't determine that from experiencing the app, email isn't going to save the day. If I abandon it within 24 hours I'm almost certainly never coming back, except to cancel the trial if I've already entered my credit card details. If there's a high abandonment rate, emailing people after a trial is over to ask them what pissed them off (giving them the option to submit anonymous comments) is more likely to lead to useful information that will increase retention by improving the quality of the app. But nobody is ever going to say they abandoned a service because they didn't get enough email! Email has never persuaded me to use an app I've abandoned, but I begrudgingly accept my fate of more email whenever I sign up for a free trial as non-monetary price I must pay to experience the app. If irritation is a currency, apparently I'm broke.
    - tgrass 13y ago
      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?

Moto7451 13y ago

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

crazygringo 13y ago

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.

jimmaswell 13y ago
This is how the video game service Steam does it, as far as I remember.
gsharma 13y ago
Here is an idea - Pause/freeze the trial period. Initially give a 14 day trial period. If the user does not come back after 2-3 days, send them an email that you have paused their trial for now and it will start running again when they login next time.
- jevanish 13y ago
  The problem with this is that we're all in the business of making money. You want to put constraints on your customers to give them urgency to complete their trial, so they can then become paying customers...thus keeping you in business. With any business that requires configuration (like setting up tracking on your site or entering candidates in a CRM), you need to push your users to get over that initial hurdle. A short time constraint forces them to act quickly to try to get value out of your product. They can always sign up for the trial at another time if they're not ready to really commit to setting it up and using it right now. The added benefit of all of this is your sales team then works with more qualified leads and spends less time talking to people that would fit into your "paused" category, which can often become a deadpool of unactivated users.

monkeyspaw 13y ago

I often sign up because something seems neat, or because it solves a problem I know I have. It would be great if the 30 day trial started the first time I really start using the software. A great alternative is for a company to offer a newsletter. Then I can get reminders about what they do, learn about how great they are, and sign up when I'm ready to use the software. I'm bad at estimating time frames. I often think I need something (e.g., KissMetrics) next week. In reality, I won't start using it for months.