HACKER Q&A
📣 rozenmd

Do you send free trial abandonment emails?


Every day I get a few folks that sign up for an account with a free trial, and do... absolutely nothing.

I want to send an automatic "No really, what were you expecting from OnlineOrNot?" email to these folks that did absolutely nothing.

Is this a thing other folks do, and if so, how long before you consider a free trial abandoned?


  👤 ano-ther Accepted Answer ✓
Good question.

From a user perspective it seems like you give people who want to look around the option to either sign up, or… sign up. That may lead to empty sign-ups.

I would take it as an opportunity to send a friendly email to learn about their motivations and why they didn’t continue.

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👤 nusl
Websites that nag me almost entirely get removed for consideration. Since “everyone else does it” your average user receives a lot of them, and a lot of them means people either gloss over them or start disliking them

👤 anenefan
There are obvious things like, they signed expecting options / functionality, or the email service they use is binning any service / activation emails.

What's less obvious is possibilities such as your sign up html / web code is more robust ... but your service is only compatible with the latest and greatest browsers ... cough Netscape 11 issues, which I have witnessed frequently having an older system. Amazingly I don't cry and look to see how much money is in my wallet to upgrade so I can be part of the jet set ... actually not amazing, I'm just lazy and comfortable.