On the topic of emails and account cancellations: When I started sending out "Your Tarsnap account will be deleted soon" emails, the account attrition rate dropped by 50%. The change wasn't from people who didn't realize their account was going to be deleted -- they had received two emails already, 1 week and 2 weeks earlier -- but getting that last prompt seems to have shifted people's default action from "do nothing" to "pay some money to make the account stay around".

Some time later, I cut Tarsnap's account attrition rate by another ~50% by adding a line to the "account will be deleted soon" email: "If you've decided to stop using Tarsnap, I'd love to know why." This wasn't deliberate -- I added it for the simple reason that I really do want to get that information -- but it seems to be causing people to stop and say "hmm, I can't think of any good reason to not use Tarsnap, so maybe I should keep using it after all".

Regarding that last bit:

I wonder if they feel a bit of social pressure to stay. Basically when you say "I'd love to know why" all of a sudden there is an actual person who would be clearly harmed by their decision to leave.

Would like to see some A/B testing with "I'd love to know why" vs. "We'd love to know why."

Fortunately, the number of people who let their Tarsnap accounts expire is small enough that unless there was a huge signal it would take a very long time to get a statistically significant result.

Thanks for the kind words, Patrick.

Your writing and approach (viz. "engineer who thinks like a marketer") has changed how I look at what I do from "write code" to "scalably reach profitable customers so they'll pay me for a technological solution to a painful problem."

And agree re: email engagement!

Thanks, glad to know I've helped someone.

Thanks for writing. Now, how hard was it to ask the gym for their customer's email addresses. I would assume the instant answer would be "sorry no, privacy policy", but since you pulled this off, would love to know how!

Thanks.

As someone who goes to a crosscut gym, I'm guessing privacy is the least of their concerns. Most are focused on user retention and renewal rates. Sadly many if these gyms get sucked into groupon cycles

I never understood why CrossFit gyms were so much more expensive then mass market gyms -- the mas market gyms had more equipment, more expensive equipment, and larger, more expensive spaces. I also know that the big gyms depend on people not using their memberships for a large portion of their profits, but that couldn't be everything, could it?

I understand a premium, but a mass market gym could be 40 to 60 dollars, and a crossfit gym was 140 to 200 dollars.

Crossfit gyms are very labour-intensive compared to normal gyms. You're getting something that's close to training with a personal trainer every time you show up.

As a CrossFitter, I can tell you that I compared the price to personal training. I feel like I get the results of a personal trainer + a community feeling -- and it costs $7/session instead of $30 or more (since I go 5 days/week). After a year, I feel like the results justified this decision.

Yes, as the owner of a CrossFit gym, I can verify that the trainer pay is the main difference in costs and the reason why CrossFit is more expensive.

Crossfit gyms properly have more people who actually show up, and they may also have license fees to pay.

As the owner of a CrossFit gym, I can also verify this. Our business model is built around getting people to show up to the classes, and in any given week we have around 90% of members showing up. In one of the larger gyms (24hr, Lifetime, Gold's, etc.), you're looking at closer to 10%. The main difference in costs is the trainers though, since every class is closely coaches and led by experienced instructors.

Cross fit branded ones pay a license fee of several k a year (3 if I recall ) to the crossfit brand owner.

We just asked, and gave them the stats as to why ("Gyms who use this feature have X% more athletes claim").

Worst they could do was say "no".