Fixing a $80 mistake with a $500 mistake
I fixed an $80 mistake with another $500 mistake. 🙃
Last month, I accidentally gave 20 users a 33-day free trial instead of 7 for PressPulse.ai. (It uses GPT4 so quite expensive to run)
To fix it, I decided to eat the cost to maintain trust.
This is where it went south:
❌I failed to explain the error.
❌The product seemed less valuable.
❌Interest died over time.
❌The fear of losing them became overwhelming.
The Result?
0 conversions. (My norm is >10%)
This error ended up costing me $500+ in LTV.
What I should have done instead:
✅Own up to the mistake openly.
✅ Revert to the 7-day trial.
✅Offer 95% off their first month instead.
Lesson learned: Mistakes happen. But the key is transparency.
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GPT-generated comments are getting out of hand here...
Get all them on my posts too. Its pointless. It leaves a bad image and it wont build you any valuable connections
Wow, owning up to your mistake openly and transparently is always the best approach. It shows integrity and builds trust with your users. Offering a revert to the 7-day trial and a discount for their first month was a smart way to rectify the situation. Mistakes happen, but it's how we handle them that truly matters. Keep up the great work!
This is quite an interesting point. Interested to know the conversion rate for the next 20 users from the same acquisition methods and also the current churn rate ?
Also do you have a quick survey in place on why they decided to cancel their plan?
The rest of that cohort is around 10% or more. I dont have any churns yet because it's only been 1.5 mo, so not worth the time to build a survey yet
I see, thanks. Love what you created by the way. Is there any chance that i could add info from this post to The Growth Archive with a link to your page
Sure thing :)
I am quite interested in the conversions part. You mentioned in general you witness >10% conversion, and yet here it was 0. Any idea why that was the case? I don't think the 33 day trial would necessarily lead users churning out if they are getting value out of the product.
Am I missing something?
It's mostly the perception of value here, if someone can give a 33 day free trial to everyone it means this thing isn't worth the money. However if it's only 7 days then it signals exclusiveness and give a sense of urgency. It's even more important for new products because trust isn't built yet.
Imagine this, someone say you can wear this diamond ring for 30 days and we'll charge you if you like it after 30 days, you probably aren't going to buy it right?
I am not so sure about that...Look at Firebase, Vercel, AWS (1 yr)... Perception of the value of product does not necessarily correlate to how soon and/or if the product is charging its customers... It is more about how soon is it delivering that first "intrinsic" value to be customer...
How soon can it get my website live.
How soon can it get my integration set up and working what it is supposed to do.
Do you have any data on what % of customers are getting their end goal met here? I would want to start there and see if that can be improved.
[However, I am totally with you on the 33 day trial not being a fiscally sound decision.]
Haha it's definitely not a fiscally sound decision
Those companies play a whole different game, I used to work for one of them. Their value isn't measured by revenue, but by the addition of revenue it brings to other areas of the company.
As indie founder focusing on being profitable from day 1 is much more important because we don't have millions of $$$ to burn.
Agree! You took an unfortunate situation and not only came out unscathed, but in a better place than you started. Way to turn it around for a win!
Learning from these kinds of incidents emphasises how crucial it is to maintain product value and customer trust by rectifying issues as soon as possible and communicating clearly.
Hey SolarFlare - how actually did you end up giving them 33 day access over 7?
Was that an typed entry error or a code level issue which assigned the higher access timeframe?
It was both... I had a duration calculation library that calculated an expiration time - current time. And the expiration time is set to a month earlier by mistake and somehow rather than throwing an error or say negative, it did the calculation anyways.
All that happened in an automated email so I couldn't undo it
I like that you measured the mistake by LTV instead of just the lost revenue up front!
Thanks!! It feels natural because free trial is part of CAC.
If I measured the cost of the momentum lost in an early startup that's definitely even more..