Hey, I'm just going to post the same response I used in the IndieHackers comment section for someone with a similar concern. Here's what I said:
"Our subscribers are too important to us to ever sell their information to someone else. We never have and never will sell users information like that. Our only source of income is subscriptions and occasional advertisements in the free emails. Ruining our reputation to make a few extra bucks would be an extremely stupid decision on our end.
With that said, we do run promotions with partners where we give away awesome vacation packages (Mexico and Tokyo recently). If anyone signs up for one of these promotions they are agreeing to the terms and conditions, which clearly state that by signing up for the giveaway the email address will be distributed to all of the partners involved in the giveaway (typically 4-5 other companies)."
And their response:
"Thanks for the reply!
I looked through my emails and found that the emails started right after I entered a giveaway from you. So that explains it! You're right, it does say for the giveaway offer that you're signing up for emails.
Sorry that I jumped to conclusions. It's just that I get a lot of spam and it's very annoying. Also, your partner emails provided no value to me at all."
--
With that said, it looks like we could do a better job making it even more explicit (which we try to do in the emails announcing the giveaway). We'll work on this on our end and never intended to mislead anyone.
And these two comments (the parent and grandparent) capture the tension between money and principles. I don't know anything about the insides of your business but we dealt with this crap all the time at Blekko.
Realistically, how many of your customers are going to make a custom email for your giveaway promotions? Its going to be small, and they are 100% going to get spammed and abused by that part of the Internet industry that slams unwanted apps in your face or hijacks your search page for sideloads an advertising rootkit on to your phone. Because that is what they do, they get away with it and make a lot of money at it, and yes they offer you a small piece of the action and all you have to do is give them validated email addresses.
The local Taqueria had a jar that said "Put in your business card for a chance for free lunch, awarded monthly!" and the jar had dozens of business cards in it. I asked about it and the restaurant had nothing to do with it, except that the restaurant was paid by a local recruiter $100 a month to have that jar there.
So one of the Internet scumbags makes a deal with a web site, "Here is a contest you could run which is tangentially related to your web content, all you have to do is run the contest and we'll pay you $x." Free money right? No, it just makes you one of the Internet scumbags too, maybe you didn't know they were going to click jack Grandma's PC but at some level everyone who gets into these deals know there must be some catch otherwise they wouldn't be giving you all this money right?
If you are in the airport and someone says "Oh, are you on the flight to Chicago? My sister-in-law just left for there and forgot this bag, if you'll check it through to Chicago when you get there she will pay you for your trouble. How about $500 ?"
You have to ask; Why is it worth $500 for me to pretend this is my luggage when it would cost less than half that to go to FedEx and just ship it? Why is this person paying me to run a free lunch contest for them? Why is this internet company paying me to run a giveaway contest for them?
At Blekko we tried several times to find the people who weren't scumbags and were actually trying to provide a real service or value to our customers. They may be out there but if they are, they are outnumbered by scumbags at least 1000:1, maybe more.
The only winning strategy was to just not deal with them at all.
> The only winning strategy was to just not deal with them at all.
A pattern I've seen in business is similar: when there's a bad actor who is able to pay exorbitant amounts for user acquisition, but then offers a bad product/experience, it's a losing startup strategy to go compete by offering a better product/experience. Just avoid that particular market / niche / channel entirely.
The bad guys who are paying a super-high CAC and still successfully monetizing it are going to outspend you, and the customers who keep taking the bait from the bad guys have already signaled that they can't be reached.
So anytime you (as a startup) see the equivalent of "quick weight loss pills" being hawked successfully through some channel, and your product is "eat right and exercise," go around that trap and not through it. Otherwise the bad guys will drive you broke as you throw pearls before swine.
The major qualifier here might be that big incumbents, NGOs, or governments should not necessarily ignore these bad guys. Not what I'm saying. Just that if you are a good guy with limited money, attacking a profitable channel dominated by bad guys is a losing strategy.
I don't know if you've looked at what gets sent out, but the e-mails sent for the Giveaways are extremely spammy.
I get that you probably added it somewhere in the giveaway text, but from a post somewhere, it was indicated the giveaways were more to garner attention, not as a profit-making venture. It turned me off completely when I started getting those. It gave me a negative impression on both Scott's Cheap Flights and on any companies that started sending me cold emails.
Maybe you can be more selective in your partners, or perhaps work with the partners in what gets sent out. I'm very judicious in what I let get my attention, and seeing these kinds of random sales pitches with no actual value proposition was annoying.
I went back to the giveaway and found the e-mail consent in the tiny text under the consent checkmark for signing up, so I can give you that for having the warning there now. It was not noticed when I signed up, however.
Yeah I hear you. I really appreciate the feedback as well.
We only try to partner with high quality companies. For example this Tokyo one were running right now is with journy, ProductHunt, theSkimm, The Wirecutter, and Conde Nast Traveler. All legitimate companies. It's unfortunate that their emails are seen as spam because that's not good for anyone.
We'll keep this in mind moving forward. Thank you again :-)
I haven't gotten any spammy messages (or gmail has caught them). I've only gotten emails from theSkimm, which is not in my interests but it looks like they put a decent amount of effort in their email. This one guy's terrible terrible experience is not necessarily indicative of anything.
Again, sticking opposing thoughts into two consecutive sentences does not create a good impression of your business. "high quality companies" !== "legitimate companies".
If I want you to email me, I will give you my address. If I haven't done that, there's no legitimate reason to pay a third party for it. 100% of your partners are spammers.
You're confusing the email subscription terms with the giveaways terms. "ever have an never will" refers to the email subscription. You have to specifically sign up separately for giveaways, and they have different terms and conditions from the email subscription.
What an incredible response, have you not read it yourself?
"Our subscribers are too important to us to ever sell their information to someone else. We never have and never will sell users information like that. Our only source of income is subscriptions and occasional advertisements in the free emails. Ruining our reputation to make a few extra bucks would be an extremely stupid decision on our end."
Is at complete odds with:
"With that said, we do run promotions with partners where we give away awesome vacation packages (Mexico and Tokyo recently). If anyone signs up for one of these promotions they are agreeing to the terms and conditions, which clearly state that by signing up for the giveaway the email address will be distributed to all of the partners involved in the giveaway (typically 4-5 other companies)."
You literally sell their information to advertisers (oh no, sorry, your "partners") to make a buck. Acknowledge it, don't preface it with PR bull.
What do you see as the difference between the first and the second paragraph? The fact that you only do it with people entering your promotions? Because that's still your users information.
Yes it's in your TOS, you are still selling personal information to third parties and their unknown partners.
And their partners are extremely spammy at best. They're all trying to force engagement and word of mouth.
Here's an excerpt from one of the intro e-mails I got:
> Welcome to the #SkimmLife! Here's how it's going to work:
> We'll meet you back here, in your inbox, bright and early tomorrow morning (PS If it's Friday or a weekend,
> you'll get theSkimm on Monday). We're a company that respects brunch, so we won't be with you on Saturday and
> Sunday. Can't wait? Here's the most recent Skimm
> Also, download our new app theSkimm for iPhone. It has a service called Skimm Ahead that makes it easier to
> be smarter about the future. Never again will you miss moments like when you vote in a primary or when your
> favorite show is back on Netflix. Best Part? It can integrate directly into your calendar.
> Lastly, good things happen when you share theSkimm! (read: winning prizes, swag, being a Skimm'bassador).
> To get credit for sharing, use your unique link: http://www.theskimm.com/?r=3cbcb2df OR our fancy invite page
> to have friends sign up. See how many people listen to you by checking this page.
> Your morning just got better. Trust us.
Yeah further down they note: "We only try to partner with high quality companies. For example this Tokyo one were running right now is with journy, ProductHunt, theSkimm, The Wirecutter, and Conde Nast Traveler"
I looked at theSkimm and can't figure out how it's related either. Just seems like an email acquisition bartering scheme.
People who want to grow lists quickly all get together. The smaller lists pay for the prizes, the bigger lists pay with exposure. They all pitch a sweepstakes to their subscribers, all entrants end up subscribed to all lists.. everyone wins (allegedly).
I was talking with a younger relative this weekend who is in college and she mentioned TheSkimm and I immediately thought of this thread. Maybe the younger crowd who spends so much time with social apps and other noise find it highly valuable. There's probably a big distrust for mainstream sources which is not unwarranted.
FWIW theSkimm isn't outright spam - they're a fairly popular super-short newsletter that I think does a mix of world news and lifestyle / culture stuff, apparently marketed at women. I subscribe to Finimize (financial news) and Casual Spectator (sports), and theSkimm is often referenced as a similar newsletter.
Not to diminish the annoyance of being on surprise email lists. I agree it's frustrating, and it sounds like Scott's Cheap Flights should have been more clear with their users about the price of their contests.
The difference is that they're not selling people that sign up with them directly on SCF.
They're using a promotional strategy to solicit signups in exchange for a giveaway (people have been doing this for years). They partner with several sites to promote this so everyone grows. Users are explicitly signing up for the giveaway & those TOS state the email will be distributed to the partners.
They are not selling their current users information to partners.
In other words, you might not like the promotion strategy, but that's a one-off, easy-to-change thing. They are not selling email addresses that they got directly via scottscheapflights.com - which is what the GP was insinuating (a bit dishonestly too).
There's a big difference as what's actually happening can be a strategy that you dislike (and they might as well, depending on the outcome), but what the GP is insinuating is that SCF is actually SELLING the data, is completely incorrectly.
I'm not seeing how the two paragraphs are incongruous. The company is selling their brand, not the user info, when they run the promotions. If no-one signs up for the promotion, no user info gets shared. Ultimately it's the users who choose whether they want to sell themselves as a marketing lead in return for a slim chance at winning.
We have plenty of copycats out there (one of the downsides of us trying to share our learnings online haha). I'd just look at when the domains were purchased if you want to know who was first ;)
Also, we send deals from almost every continent (launching Africa by the end of the year).
Still looking forward to you having dedicated emails for international business class tickets. I know the tickets won't be cheap that the total cash savings on cheap seats can be significant. Here's hoping!
Wow, thanks for the feedback!
Almost every single deal we send out is roundtrip. This is actually why we put "normal roundtrip price" instead of just "normal price" to help clarify this.
Maybe instead we should do "Roundtrip NYC to Paris: $260" and then put "Normal Price: $900" to help clear this up.
Yes you should make it absolutely 100% unambiguous because a lot of sites use this ambiguity intentionally for a kind of bait-and-switch design, and I am extremely wary of it. I think a lot of other people would also be very wary. It's a well known trick to make the price look lower by quoting the one-way deal even though most people are looking for roundtrip.
So.. I'm glad to hear you do mean RT in both cases.
If it's a matter of wanting to avoid clunky long layout for the copy, you could consider using RT instead of roundtrip. With a tooltip on hover, or some other accomodation, for people who need to know what that means.
Redundancy and specificity are slippery slopes. Why not say "Normally $XXX roundtrip coach redeye" because someone might think you're comparing a coach fare to first-class prices?
I think the "$XXX roundtrip, normally $XXX" clarifies it enough without the redundancy. You wouldn't benefit from comparing a roundtrip price to a normal one-way fare.
I'd actually rather put "Past Roundtrip Deal" above the deal info just because of how big the word "Roundtrip" is. We have to keep design in mind... and if we just put RT that would likely lead to confusion as well.
"NYC to Paris and back: $260" is only one fewer letter but I feel it reads more clearly and you don't need to include the "and back" in other lines of the message to get the point across you're comparing RT to RT.
You're right. We do some A/B testing when we're running promotions (test headlines, CTAs, etc.) but that's about it. There is a lot that goes into correctly running split tests on the website and interpreting those results. We decided that once something is working good enough we'd focus on other areas of the business. However, now that the team is larger and we have resources to dedicate to testing and optimizing we will likely start doing this by the end of the year.
Like you said, moving buttons and changing colors is really just a waste of time. You have to spend the time to do the analytics research, get customer feedback, etc. to first understand the problem so you can come up with a solution. Changing the color of a button doesn't solve a problem. Rather than wasting resources on doing conversion optimization the wrong way, we've decided to hold off until we can do it the right way.
That's a great question. At a certain point... yes. But I think that number is much higher than a few hundred thousand users. If you think about departure cities X destination cities X available dates and times X number of seats, the number is huge. I'm not saying it won't happen, but I think we have a long ways to go before we reach that level.
"Our subscribers are too important to us to ever sell their information to someone else. We never have and never will sell users information like that. Our only source of income is subscriptions and occasional advertisements in the free emails. Ruining our reputation to make a few extra bucks would be an extremely stupid decision on our end. With that said, we do run promotions with partners where we give away awesome vacation packages (Mexico and Tokyo recently). If anyone signs up for one of these promotions they are agreeing to the terms and conditions, which clearly state that by signing up for the giveaway the email address will be distributed to all of the partners involved in the giveaway (typically 4-5 other companies)."
And their response:
"Thanks for the reply! I looked through my emails and found that the emails started right after I entered a giveaway from you. So that explains it! You're right, it does say for the giveaway offer that you're signing up for emails. Sorry that I jumped to conclusions. It's just that I get a lot of spam and it's very annoying. Also, your partner emails provided no value to me at all."
--
With that said, it looks like we could do a better job making it even more explicit (which we try to do in the emails announcing the giveaway). We'll work on this on our end and never intended to mislead anyone.