The email that did get me to start using Flightfox was another one sent to you a few days later after you had signed up, looked around, but didn't end-up launching any contest.
In that email Flightfox said they noticed that I didn't launch any contest and gave me a coupon that covered 50% of any contest just to try it out.
So that's how I started using their service.
On the other hand I also learned there are other things to take into consideration when launching a contest. The most important one, knowing you have to buy the ticket as soon as possible. My contest was a tricky one (involving a toddler, timing international connections in the US, etc) so after 3 days there was only one decent result, and it was gone by the time I wanted to purchase it :(
So I guess that was the reason why the longest duration of the contests is of just 3 days. Which reminds me, I still need to go back there and do it all again.
They are experimenting with a number of different campaigns and are of course continually A/B testing the one I mention in the post but this is a nice snapshot for a certain point in time!
Hopefully we can cover more of their tests in the future as it's great stuff.
I'll make sure they see this comment too, in case they have any feedback.
It doubled, or in this case, increased by 1.6%. That's nice, but how can you know that a 1.6% increase is a direct result of these tweaks, instead of just natural ups and downs in email response? Maybe 1.6% of recipients were having an unnaturally good day and decided to click that month? That's only 1 in 98 people after all. If it had been 10% or something like that then that's an obvious difference, but 1.6%?
Typically A/B tests are run until they reach a statistically significant result. The article doesn't include the sample size, but with a sample size as small as 500 users for each test an increase from 1.6% to 3.2% would be a change larger than 1 standard deviation, and thus can be assumed to be more than just random noise.
We currently do a lot of this stuff internally using our own system. But I must confess that we don't have great analytics on it...so it's tough to know if it's effective. Will check this out as an alternative.
Out of curiosity, how's this compare to using something like Intercom.io?
Definitely a common problem. Awesome to hear you have something setup though, that's a step ahead of most!
Tracking metrics properly would help you take it every further.
Intercom is (in my opinion) more closely related to a CRM. It's messaging features are quite powerful and give you the ability to do support and in-app messaging really easily.
In contrast, our focus is squarely on email right now. We make it easy to setup sophisticated campaigns, use custom HTML templates and do A/B testing - all the good stuff you'd expect when dealing with emails. On top of that we want to make it easier to send better campaigns by building out tools that really help you drive your conversions higher. Reporting is a big part of that, as is sharing real-world examples!
You're not alone in cobbling together a solution, there are a ton of people in that bucket. We want to make Vero the tool that not only helps people save time building their own solutions but allows them to send better campaigns (i.e. better reporting and internal smarts).
The blog posts with examples are hopefully helpful even if you're not using our system!
In that email Flightfox said they noticed that I didn't launch any contest and gave me a coupon that covered 50% of any contest just to try it out.
So that's how I started using their service.
On the other hand I also learned there are other things to take into consideration when launching a contest. The most important one, knowing you have to buy the ticket as soon as possible. My contest was a tricky one (involving a toddler, timing international connections in the US, etc) so after 3 days there was only one decent result, and it was gone by the time I wanted to purchase it :(
So I guess that was the reason why the longest duration of the contests is of just 3 days. Which reminds me, I still need to go back there and do it all again.