Speaking of which, I had a very pleasant account cancelation experience recently. I used to subscribe to SEOMoz but didn't get much use out of it in the last year and decided to cancel. They sent me to a very nice rescue page which combined a good last-effort attempt to save the relationship with an honest, upfront, easy click here to cancel workflow. Major points from me on both counts. The last stage of the cancel workflow was "You account is canceled but will run until $ANNIVERSARY?_DATE. We'll give you a last week totally free if you take our exit survey." (They also had some language to make clear they were not pulling an AOL on you and that you'd be canceled after the week ws up.)
That was so brilliant that if I had a service which could be canceled I would have implemented the minimum version of it in the spot.
I'd like to second this, my account cancellation with SEOMoz was handled wonderfully as well. In my case, I simply sent them an email, and got a very nice response back within minutes letting me know everything was taken care of and I wouldn't be billed again.
Its really important to me how a company handles parting ways. Because their cancellation experience was so easy I am more likely to reopen my account again in the future.
Note: SEOMoz's Pro service is a great deal if you need the tools it provides. I canceled simply because our workload shifted, but would re-up in the future.
There's nothing I love more than having fun with something most companies try to convolute and make impossible. Great, honest mechanisms that in some cases reverse the negative process.
Must be a odd discussion to have in the office... "servers went down due to an over-welling demand for our unsubscribe page -- subscriptions are up 3000%"
"Derrek" wanted you to read the newsletter. Because you didn't want to, you now have the chance to "Punish" him. Clicking on the "punish" button leads to a video of Derrek receiving a hot coffee to the face and sinking off the chair.
After your punishment, they asked you if you wanted to make up for being mean by resubscribing.
It's really that the message they want to send? "If you unsubscribe, it's like you kicked that guy in the nuts! Hope you're happy now (jerk)!" Even being satire, that has some creepy connotations of emotional blackmail.
I don't understand this big hold up about advertising. He's making a living. As long as he provides excellent content, what do you care? I have advertising on my blog as well and it pays a lot of my bills right now and helps me work on my startup more, but none of my readers have mentioned that the ads annoy them because I always have good content. For example I live-blogged Startup Riot 2010 on wednesday http://paulstamatiou.com/live-blogging-startup-riot-2010
Agreed. The ads are really relevant too: Wufoo, grasshopper, and shopify are all very useful resources for entrepreneurs. I actually want more ads, because I trust the services + recs that Andrew puts up.
As long as I'm not being sold on "how to get ripped in 1 week" or have ads shoved down my throat I think it's fine. The interview starts off with 10-20 seconds of ads and there it is.
Did you guys notice Andrew monetized the site now? With a "how much would you pay model" where the users can choose what to pay per month.
See that I appreciate. Much better than hear the same message about the same company every time. We all know about shopify. It's all the buzz. I don't need a shopify, i have paypal. I don't need woofoo. I have skype already.
Let the companies create a video and submit it to play and pay $20 for the spot. Spice it up. Make the advertising entertaining.
Does he even really need the advertising? Why not use the time to talk about a startup in his community?
It's not that he is advertising, it is the delivery of the message. I would prefer to see a demo of the product or some screen shots, rather than someone telling me I should go check it out because he wants us to and they give him money for the plug. It's the opposite of compelling.
I would imagine after the 10th demo of Grasshopper, you would be pretty tired of seeing it. The 10-15 second commercial is a small price to pay for 30-60 minutes of content.
That was so brilliant that if I had a service which could be canceled I would have implemented the minimum version of it in the spot.