Its not all that bad…
February 5th, 2009 by Peter Stern · comments · http://blog.zenbe.com/delrbA Zenbe user blogged about how free customers aren’t necessarily the best customers when it comes to asking them to pay…
http://entresting.com/contracts-and-compliments
…but that doesn’t mean that free customers don’t add value. We learned a lot running a free service that 100,000 people or more signed up for. That expertise went into engineering a much better not-free service. While I am not sure the benefits justify all the expense of our free service right now, there are definitely benefits. So its not all that bad…
PS: don’t forget about this stuff..
http://www.zenbe.com/welcome/goodies
It’s unrealistic to expect any different, email involves no payment on the users behalf, it’s a common trait everywhere, so people take that as a default and gravitate towards the best after that. Which, of course, means wanting the best with all the features imaginable at no cost. “Cake” and “eating it” spring to mind though.
Adding a price suddenly means weighing those two up. Zenbe has 100,000 users, but there’s no way there’ll be 100,000 paying users within the first month of the commercial version. That doesn’t mean no one will be paying for it though, the vocal reaction is always going to come from those saying “I want this, why can’t I have it!”. Then there’s people like me, who are waiting for the actual product to see if I’ll be spending anything, since I can actually see a benefit to spending money on it. $20/50/100/200 a year is an insignificant part of my income if Zenbe can save me a few hours a month
I wouldn’t mind paying for email if there were truly advantages. But why pay for something if another provider gives it away for free? Give me something truly amazing and I will give you my money.
I think the unique selling proposition here is the design of Zenbe, rather than its feature set. Google will always have more features, but Google will always be ugly and cumbersome. That being said, Zenbe still manages to include a ton of features in its clean design. It’s elegant, innovative and a pleasure to use. Can cool design win out over feature sets in Business? Talk to Apple.
I was hoping for a subscription option for personal Zenbe, rather than business Zenbe. I’d pay for that, hoping that a combination of subscription fees and advertising on the free service would make Zenbe profitable. I’d also like a pony.
Personal Zenbe sounds right. Business Zenbe sounds like an oxymoron. Still, I wish you good success. You deserve it. And our ugly world needs it.
THE MARKETING PERSPECTIVE:
Nowadays even a good product/service needs proper marketing strategy else it is belittled by the strategies of the rival products/services. To overcome this, the basic need is strong marketing network. A strong marketing network helps to develop a pipeline to supply whatever strategies we develop, it does not matter what less effective strategies we supply through that pipeline, it will definitely reach the target. For instance, you have a strong network of people as a basic requirement, you contract to market a particular service/product. When you apply it all at a time through the network, no matter what strategy you develop, you will definitely succeed reaching the target through the pipeline i.e, the marketing network that you have developed over days, months and years.
Many companies do the mistake of hire and fire the marketing executives/managers when they fail in their targets. They fail to realize the network they have to build. You can analyze any successful company, you will see the strong marketing network they have for their product/service to use at the right time.
e.g. Google – Whatever they advertise through their strong marketing network pipeline (website), it has got a value and it reaches the target all over.
I have seen in my own eyes in my country a television network which started its telecast just for 4 hours initially and now in 10 years’ time they have got the whole media network of the State under their control. Whatever they advertise or telecast, it has got a value because of the strong network they built over the years.
If Zenbe goes non-free….I’m outtie.