[idunno246]

The people who won’t put in an email address probably wouldn’t pay. It is a barrier, but it’s pretty low, and you’re better off spending time making the site more convincing the product is awesome than playing with collecting emails or not. Most times I’ve seen experiments run on this, more often on create an account, you increase the install rate and decrease conversion proportionally. So it’s a question of whether a bunch more nonpaying users provides value to you or not. Though every product is different so ymmv.

[Nextgrid]

> The people who won’t put in an email address probably wouldn’t pay.

Do you have any sources or stats for this?

I don't understand the logic here, how is "not wanting to receive spam" related with "willing to pay for software"? If anything I'd say it would be the opposite - someone who doesn't want to deal with spam is often busy and/or values their time and would be more willing to pay for software that saves them time.

[idunno246]

Not that I can share, just have had this conversation with product and run experiments at a couple places. And the conversation was me saying won’t increasing the top of the funnel increase the bottom since that seems most logical, and being wrong. The ymmv at the end was a weak way of saying this is anecdata so you’re right to question it.

I don’t think not wanting to receive spam is the right comparison. It’s more didn’t see value in the program by the website, therefore won’t see the value running it. They’ll try it for five minutes then forget about it. Assuming the emails are causing more engagement, whatever is getting them to use the program from emails should be in the website. To me this is the problem that is worth solving.