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Show HN: Appnu, a win-win marketing solution for iOS developers and users

5 points by ianterrell ↗ HN
http://www.appnu.com/

Appnu is an opt-in mailing list focused on new iOS apps, where the subscribers can win free apps just by being subscribed.

Once a week I'll mail out customized promotional emails containing apps in just the categories each subscriber selects. The intention is for app developers to "buy into" the mailings by giving away their Apple-supplied promotional codes, which I will raffle off to the subscribers. If a developer would like to reach additional users, more slots could be purchased.

What do you think of the model?

6 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 28.0 ms ] thread
alanfalcon
Do you simply mail out the promo codes, or allow users to opt in on an app by app basis? I wouldn't want people receiving codes and letting them rot in their mailbox.
ianterrell
That's a good point. I'm building up the mailing list before making it available to developers for self-serve, but when I get to that point I'll have an expiration date of 24 hours on each code and the user will need to claim it before then -- if unclaimed after 24 hours, it will be re-raffled to another user. A user can also "decline" immediately if uninterested.
mikeknoop
"And I'll tell all my friends" is unlikely to happen. If I were to signup, it would benefit me for your service to remain obscure (and thus I have a higher chance of "winning" apps).
ianterrell
I thought of that, and I tried to incentivize it by offering an extra entry into the raffles for every friend you refer. So if you refer 10 friends, you have 11 entries (1 for you, 10 for the referrals). While if it were only you and your friends, you'd be worse off (52% chance instead of 100%), if there are many other players (say 1000 entries), you're much better off (1% chance instead of 0.1%).

Do you think that changes things? Can you think of a better way to incentivize referrals?

bmelton
I recently had something VERY similar.

I billed it as a 'Woot for Mobile Apps'. You give me your email address, I send you a daily email with a highly discounted app or an app that is free.

It's probably not anything that couldn't have been overcome with a massive marketing effort, or with a sizeable marketing budget, but after split-testing a variety of slogans, taglines etc., our cost-per-acquisition proved to be too high to be sustainable, so we shuttered the service.

My guess is that the acquisition cost goes down after you've reached a tipping point, but we weren't able to identify when that might be, and the acquisition rate was slow enough that we didn't deem it feasible enough to pursue.

Good luck though.