Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling | Hacker News Reader

Improving sales with 3 characters and a misspelling

maxklein.posterous.com

This thread is funny and depressing at the same time. So a guy found a way to improve his sales be significant number. Tons of people respond with "yeah, but it wouldn't work for me - I hate it". How is this even relevant? Clearly you are not his target audience. He has data to back up his approach, while you have a precious little of an opinion.

It's not about you, it's about customers.

It is relevant because you are annoying some possible customers if you do this. It is worth knowing that it is not universally good advice.

It could be that his software was mis-priced and poorly marketed (just added a link on download.com). Publishing his price may have hurt him if he was way over or under (making his stuff look cheap) other vendors. Getting sales leads certainly helped him, but there are other many ways to do that AND publish the price of the software. Price discrimination can be effective (see automobile sales), but it isn't exactly an endearing strategy.

For business to business sales (especially the more expensive stuff), that is almost always how it's done. Call the vendor for a quote, they'll either tell you or send out a sales/marketing rep, lots of hand wringing, then maybe a deal of some sort.

This is a good point.

I think many people here have at least thought of a startup, and often a startup idea is to solve some problem they are facing, or a way to make something better. So the natural way of thinking about customer service is "what would I like?"

Of course, not everyone is alike (otherwise there would not be such a word as "geek" :) So what actually works in sales may seem counterintuitive.

Which means that being able to see things from a customer's point of view is both hard and a valuable skill.

Nice email trick. I personally hate when I can't easily find pricing online though.

To me, a quote request form says the company isn't really serious about this whole Internet thing :) I associate it with a site someone put up in 1995 and hasn't touched since. Probably just me.

But, in this case this may actually be a win, since the product isn't mass market. Whoever goes through the trouble of filling out a request is likely already sold on the product, so less time spent on sales.

This is the typical model for enterprise software that is sold through a sales team. The price of the product is determined by how much the customer is willing to pay and can vary widely from one sale to the next. Sales made this way usually yield a higher price at the expense of speed/volume. You can only sell as fast as your sales team works.

Just because it's typical doesn't mean it's efficient or useful.

There's a new generation of people with purchase authority rising up. I'd rather go with a slightly more expensive company with open pricing rather than a closed company where I constantly have to negotiate small discounts off of a "retail price" nobody ever actually pays (except the government, of course).

This is what I meant. These developer tools aren't really aimed at developers (most of whom would probably pick a tool with a nice tutorial over the one with a quote request form).

So it doesn't really matter if most hackers would hate this sales tactic. What matters in this case is it works on salespeople :)

Agreed, when searching for some kind of library that might potentially be of use to me, it's extremely annoying to have to fill in a form requiring name, position, phone, address, fax number and whatnot; or to go through a lengthy registration and email address confirmation to download a library sample version.

I don't think that is the Market being discussed though. We sell tools at a similar level (more expensive and specialist though) and putting prices on a site is actually a turn off.

The best hack you can do is put a phone number on there. So long as it is the right Market your conversion rate will shoot up.

If someone misspelled something in an email reply, I would just assume they had a misspelling in their automated response form letter. That would make me think much less of the company. I'm glad it converted better for you, but I'm guessing that another variable changed at the same time that actually made the difference.

Even if a company misspelled a word in an email that I assumed was hand written, I would think less of that company- especially, if it was a product such as software, where precision in spelling counts.

I agree with the idea that another variable changed near the same time. But I am still interested in hearing more stories like this, since it is an interesting concept in what I guess could be called 'sociology of marketing'.

I agree. Maybe you should reply asking them do they want to buy a spell checker.

the thing that would tip me off is the usage of the full name.

"Hey John Doe, I saw taht you..." = still feels automatic

"Hey John, I saw taht you..." = feels more personal, misspelling or no

is tihs just a hook for gaze fixation - the eyes of many are drawn to spelling errors (this seems particularly big in the geek/programming community) and so in order to get people to notice your writing in some speling errors can be a good.

˙(sǝɯǝɯ lɐɹǝʌǝs ɟo ǝuo ɹo) odʎʇ ɐ ǝʞɐɯ oʇ ǝq oʇ sɹɐǝddɐ sʇuǝpuodsǝɹ ɟo sʇol oʇ ʎɐʍ ʇsǝq ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝuo ʇıppǝɹ uo ʎluıɐʇɹǝɔ

The idea behind it was to let the people know that I actually wrote the email to them, and this was not a form email or a machine sending it to them.

I know my opinion generally runs counter to general thinking here at hn, but I find this technique unacceptable. There are plenty of ways to be successful while being totally forthright and honest with your customers that you should never have to resort to tricks like this. If I found out a vendor did this to me, I would never do business with them again.

When I was younger and more foolish, I once did something like to this. I made 1000 perforated postcards to send to local businesses with a simple "anonymous" survey on the tear-off asking about their software. Except the tear-offs were not anonymous at all. Every single postcard had a slightly different return address. By slightly altering the positioning of 6 different items and recording it in the data base, I had enough permutations to uniquely identify who returned the card. I could then call on those who needed what I had.

I thought it was pretty slick until my partner refused to participate. He said that my hack wasn't worth the hit to our reputation if anyone found out. He also thought we should earn our business without any tricks and establish excellent relationships with our customers.

It took me a while, but I understood his lesson. This hack seems eerily similar.

But he _did_ actually write the email. His technique was not convincing people of something that wasn't true.

>Previously I had

>Subject: About your pricelist request for Klein SDK

>Body: Dear John Doe, I saw that you...

>I changed it to

>Subject: Re: Klein SDK pricelist request

>Body: Hey John Doe, I saw taht you...

Without the "Re:" the second subject line is still much better than the first.

Without the misspelling, the "Hey" gives a very different tone to the "Dear".

The first title puts the relevant information in the 6th word.

The second title promotes that to the 2nd (first to most people since they ignore RE:)

Ok... maybe he's right, but I'm suspicious about his methods. He's writing about his tools that they're "going for between $200 and $500.", then "This technique raised my sales from about $400 a month to $900 a month" and then that it raised the sales to $1500.

So basically he went from ~1.3 to ~2.6 then to ~4.3 sales a month. If he really measured the response, he should take the samples from at least one year (otherwise it would be season-dependant). He made changes in 2 steps - that means at least 2 years. So to me it looks like either:

- he improved the software over that time, his tools got more recognition among developers, standard business growth occurred, or

- he did nothing about his business or software, crisis and other events affecting sales didn't happen, world has been a controlled environment for a couple of years and 4 sales per month are statistically significant...

- or... Am I missing some option?

The changes affected responses to the emails, which are a lot more than actual sales. Sales increased with more responses/communication with leads.

Wow. So, I didn't send you an email, and then you send me an email with the indicator "Re:" which traditionally (well, in the last few years of email history) means that you are responding to my email... which I didn't send.

Sorry to be a purist, but I consider that a misleading subject line, which is one of the indicators of spam.

Yes, traditionally, RE: meant "in regards to" and was a standard header on memos to denote the subject (watch Mad Men if you don't recall memos). But we all know that nowadays it is the changed subject line of an email response in a thread... which is why it gets the attention the author mentions.

Sure, we all have to do whatever we can to get noticed. But maybe I'm the only one here who thinks that there are ways to do this without "overloading" the RE. And please don't say "ah, but his is Re, while Outlook uses RE, totally different!". Because it's not.

As a test, try something other than RE: Try using "Subj:" or Oh, one more thing re: price list or any of the other countless ways one can get attention in a subject without "fooling" the user.

The mispelling, though, is not a bad touch.

"But we all know that nowadays it is the changed subject line of an email response in a thread... which is why it gets the attention the author mentions."

No, I think many people are aware of the broader definition. Reading this and other comments here, I was expecting this to be a spamming tactic...but the email in question is sent in response to an active request for information. "Re: Klein SDK pricelist request" is a perfectly honest and understandable subject line.

Perhaps I do have a dated perception. Think of when we had to filter our own spam with rules, and articles like http://www.pcworld.com/article/111193/stupid_spam_tricks.htm... were in vogue (link from 2003, 1st link in the search). Note that the first 2 "tricks" this PCWorld article mentions are misspellings and the "bogus" use of "Re:". Maybe I'm still stuck in those days, but I still associate these tricks with spammy mail.

If you filled out the contact form, then you did send an email of sorts, and he is responding to your email, that you did send.

Especially as many of those forms simply email someone.

If a form was used, Re: makes sense. If not, I agree with the spam-indicator. If it was in the spam box, I'd probably gloss right over it, as I hadn't contacted anyone with that subject line.

I think it's odd that you have such a problem with co-opting the use of "Re:" (even though you admit he is using it in the original sense), but you don't have an issue with him co-opting the English language by intentionally misspelling words.

Besides, when a customer requests pricing, many systems will send an e-mail to the salesperson who can hit "reply" to send an e-mail to the customer.

The issue is around legitimacy, or even honesty (well, I need a better word, I mean honesty as in "an honest mistake").

1) As a reader of the email, the misspelling could have occurred honestly as a mistake, or be a manipulation. I don't know, as a reader, which is which. One one hand, it's sloppy, but on the other, adds an air of humanity (this all starts to smack of a mini Turing test). I don't really see it as "co-opting the language"; did he mispell the product "BoBos" as "Boobs" to capture my attention? He didn't really create a new word, as much as use a style designed to draw attention. I see it similarly to caps in The Wrong Place, for example.

Vs.

2) The Re:, on the other hand, as a user, _cannot_ happen honestly, since AFAIK, I didn't send a mail. You excuse the Re: by assuming some implementation details "not in evidence". When I request the price list, I entered info into a cloud, and an price list appears in my mail. I didn't send an email, I entered a form. If it sends a mail to a rep vs. entering a db record vs. passing a tweet, that's all just server stuff hidden from me... and if it does send a mail "on my behalf", that's no excuse to put the Re:, since the developer _knows_ the user didn't send the mail, the system used it as a messaging queue.

Things evolve. Before twitter, people didn't litter their text with hashtags. Now, those have new meaning. And if we feel that adding "Re:" to a subject line no longer means "I'm responding to a direct email I was included on", that's interesting to learn. It would be even more interesting to see, perhaps via a broader survey, if most recipients actually find it misleading, while others find it clever enough that it enhances their odds of buying the software. The author only gives us the "positive impact" side; we don't know if he's scaring away potential customers who would have purchased by use of this tactic. That is, it's not necessarily "incremental" sales, it's a different group of people who are responding (and perhaps larger than the group responding to the original version, since sales are up).

I always walk away from "request price" sites. Somewhere online is a site that respects my time enough to tell me what they charge without demanding my personal info, and I'll search a bit and find there instead.

So you will spend more time searching for a different site, because on this site it takes time to fill out the form? How does this make sense?

If the site I'm looking at is a guaranteed dead end to today's research, then my only option is to look elsewhere.

Whether I fill in the sales form or go to another site, there's no way I'm going to get the information I need immediately. As a result, going elsewhere saves me time, while filling in forms in the hope somebody replies is a waste.

Add in a history of bad experiences with companies using similar sales processes, and it's nearly 100% that I'll leave and never come back.

Two reasons, potentially: 1. Principles. 2. If you find another site that gives immediate pricing, you can use it for any subsequent purchases in a similar domain, or they may also be more respectful of your time in other respects (e.g. support), saving time in the long run.

Besides, it stands to reason that googling around for a few more minutes is less time and hassle than waiting for one or more e-mail round trips with humans in the loop for the quote process.

Not really more time. When someone wants to force me into a price quote I know that they are trying to monopolize my time with a sales call or the very least a lengthy e-mail chain. That's a lot of time.

Meanwhile companies like Fog creek (Fog Bugz), Zen Desk, Atlassian, and a host of others just sell me the damn software that I want without a huge sales hassle.

They also happen to be the companies that I actually use.

I prefer to conduct my business dealings with non-nitwits.

An increase in sales from $400 to $900 a month is compelling evidence that these annoying tactics produce good results? Color me unconvinced.

Requesting a price quote is a deal-breaker for me. And if I got that email, I would just assume that he couldn't take the time to spell things correctly in whatever he used to generate the mass emailed "reply" - not that he typed it by hand himself. Why would that make more people want to buy software he had developed?

More than 100% increase in sales and you're unconvinced? What kind of numbers would convince you?

The percentage increase is only part of the data. If his sales went from $10K to $20K per month for 4+ months on a $300 product, that would be a lot more compelling.

A sample size of more than a handful of sales per month (since the software cost "between $200 and $500") would make it more convincing. A randomized experiment would also be more convincing, and not hard to do.

Not very convinced either. Could be a 1000 other reasons why sales increased.

Perhaps not having an easy way to purchase your software lead to more people buying it, in 2002 (thought I find it hard to believe). I find it even harder to believe, though, in 2010.

$200-$500 is not a lot of money for a developer tool, or for a business purchasing said tool. So putting an obstacle in front of someone seems rather pointless. Of course, I suppose it depends on the tool. But if I didn't think it was worth the money I wouldn't buy it anyway. And if its nature leads to lock-in--well, once someone's gotten over the hurdle of "Is this tool/company worth sticking with?" I wouldn't exactly want to give them another chance to reconsider.

"1. Do not put your price on your website. Put a "pricelist request" page, and let your customers fill out a bit of information about themselves."

What? Does that really work? As a developer whenever I encounter something like this I'll immediately leave the website and never come back.

For large purchases, and for large corporate purchases, it's nearly essential. If a price is on the website, many higher-ups relegate it to the "home user" side of the market, rather than the over-engineered nastiness they usually buy. I've personally seen it a few times, and have heard it "straight from the horse's mouth" from one of my higher-ups (on a university campus, under a relatively prominent (state-wide) IT-like manager).

It depends on the amount of competition in the area. There are developer tools where you have 2-3 companies and they all do this.

I personally like the approach that JetBrains takes. There products are also developer-targeted and not-necessarily cheap.

They handle this by showing the price, allowing you to download a 30-day trial, and then sending out an email soliciting feedback once your trial is about to expire. The email comes from an account that is easily recognized as jetbrains, but instead of 'sales@jetbrains.com' or something similar, it actually appears to come from a person (i.e. john_smith@jetbrains.com). This email could still be autogenerated for all I know, but I certainly felt a more personal connection than the usual "do not reply, this email was autogenerated" stuff that I normally get.

Max, I usually like your stuff, but I disagree 100% with this one.

I'm currently evaluating software DRM wrappers for a client. They're ready to spend 5 figures on the software, so it qualifies as an expensive developer tool. I've spoken with 15 vendors in the past 2 weeks.

Any vendor with no pricing was immediately tossed out. No pricing listed says to me that you're price discriminating, and nothing pisses me off more than being overcharged because my client is a big fish.

The only exceptions were companies like Flexera, who have to be included in any such report. But if you're a no-name vendor that I Googled into? Forget it.

Also, a misspelling in the email subject says you didn't take the email seriously. I already don't like you. Maybe you can overcome this, but its an uphill climb.

Comparing this to an automated response is silly. If I got an automated response from a vendor selling expensive software, after I've taken the time to fill out their form, forget it.

I know you have data which appears to support your conclusion, but correlation != causation. Its equally possible your site rose in Google rankings, word of mouth spread, or you got lucky that month. $1500/month (3-5 sales at the price you stated) isn't a large enough sample to be drawing conclusions from, and an automated letter is the wrong control group.

Summation: you're sacrificing a good first impression to account for a non-issue. Don't send automated emails, and don't do this either.

This sales strategy works for higher-end (read: pricier) stuff. It will not work too well for less-pricy stuff, impulse buys, or purchases where the buyer is looking to make a quick decision.

Usually when I see a "contact us for a quote" I already know that they are trying to price their product (to me) based on how much they think they can get out of me. Meaning, if I am rich, the same product is more expensive to me than if I was a poor bloke. It's a form of market segmentation, pricing is definitely more of an art than science.

Either way, this means it's a "high-touch" purchasing decision; meaning I probably have to go and and forth with some sales guy to reach some price. If I'm not in the mood for the hassle and I'm looking for an impulse buy, I'll immediately forget this site and move on.

We often do something similar -- I usually try to find at least one detail about a site that wouldn't work in a form letter and work that into a personal follow-up. On sign-up people first get an automated mail, but then we (for paid accounts) always do a personal follow-up.

Okay, so the "RE:" was a very very nice addition. Did you ever get metrics without teh mispelling?

Yes, roughly in the middle of both of them. I don't do the misspelling anymore, just for sake of proper grammar, but it was always the best converter with.

So you let grammar trump your profit?

The income stream from new customers in this business is not so high anymore (I think maybe $700 or a bit less a month), and I firmly believe that even though it's okay to play dirty when breaking into something new, afterwards go back and clean up your act.

I have a long list of customers now, and I don't want them rerequesting the pricelist and seeing that same mistake. It's obvious then - and when your client list is long enough it is more profitable to target old clients instead of new ones. Upgrades, customisations, etc.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply to my snarky comment.

Had the same thought, 'taht' would make me _less_ likely to buy.

You sure about that? Imagine there are 6 or 7 vendors selling a component you need for your software. Most are sending you form replies. With one you are talking to a real person who emails you and answers your questions promptly, and speaks in a normal way and made a spelling mistake in his rush to email you, but otherwise spellt correctly.

Would you not feel reassured that someone will fix your problems when you have them? Would that spelling mistake be so critical in your choice?

It might be to me, but I can be somewhat pedantic.

Professional correspondence should be just that: professional. It doesn't need to be rushed. Get rid of the red squiggly underlines. It's so easy to spot mistakes when typing on a computer that it seems extremely lazy not to correct them.

While your theory makes sense, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't statistically significant.

Positive. Max, you're selling developer tools, right? My instinct would be "how good could your tools be if you can't be bothered to spell-check?" To me, it just shows a lack of attention to detail which puts any detail-oriented product like the one you're selling in a poor light.

However, let me add that the 'Re:' business is an excellent idea IMHO.

Think about this: If the email ended with something like "Sent from my iPhone", I would probably overlook certain spelling errors and assume that the mail was a real message from a real person, not a form letter.

The real goal, to make the message seem personal and trick the receiver into seeing it as a positive interaction, is surprisingly easy to achieve.

I'd be really careful with this. If I can't easily get the price of the product, I assume it's a few million dollars and find another product. The only way I would ever fill out a form to get information is if it was the only game in town.

He's not saying he's going to try it, he's tried it, for his market it worked for him.

I'm aware of that. Just because it works for him doesn't mean it's likely to work for anyone else.

Not a form letter, eh? I recall a persuasion course that intoned (as one of its 3 main tenets), "People sometimes believe what they are told, but never doubt what they conclude."

Read your spam folder on gmail sometimes - there are lot of tricks. Re: or even Re:Re:, female's names, ridiculous names, and unimaginable subjects. They're trying really hard.. =)

Another quite obvious thing - put misspellings in your ad-words list.

I find that writing an email is a good way to let people know you wrote an email.

Several unethical sales tricks.

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