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Show HN: Retention Booster – Increase your users' retention rate in seconds (retentionbooster.com)
47 points by makyol 4300 days ago
8 comments

I dont understand what you are offering, it seems like a more limited version of Google Analytics! Also theres mixpanel and tons of other analytics services. You need to explain your product a lot better and explain how you are different than all the other analytics platforms.

Perhaps consider working with a marketer?

The presentation is not the best, I agree.

This service allows you to auto-send emails based on tracking pixel hits (which is something GA can't do).

They are focusing on tracking and taking action for a special type of event (login). A retention email ("Hey, we haven't seen you for a while") is a great strategy to convert idle users into active customers.
Why would you need a third party to handle that? Just analyze your logs and spam the inactive users for free.
Yes but the copy on the site doesnt explain this, why should anyone sign up for vagueries?

Additionally, most other analytics tools do this, but this one seems to have a similar price and limited functionality.

Not saying it wont work, just that the messaging needs a lot of improvement.

Isn't it somewhat problematic (with regards to privacy) to just send over users' email addresses this way?

Other than that, I like the idea. Good for site owners who can't code something like this themselves.

Yes, anything that sends information in the URL is obviously visible to anyone who cares to look at it, and would breach most privacy legislation.

This is a good idea in principle but the execution isn't really viable in its current form. They need to re-think how they get the e-mail addresses and how they keep track of users.

In addition they offer no privacy policy. That means they have complete freedom to aggregate all of the information you send to them, via your app, and sell it.
The copy on this website needs work. Ditch the smiley faces.
Great job. You need to fix a couple of things

- https

- http://retentionbooster.com/site/api_addaction?action_name=l... should return a pixel not a text/html 1

- the response when a returning user logs in is currently a 500 error (insert into rb_retentions fails because of duplicate email)

- anyone can login to dashboard with a non registered email or non-email http://retentionbooster.com/site/adduser?email={random}&pass...

- make sure the retention email doesn't end up in spam folder

> - anyone can login to dashboard with a non registered email or non-email http://retentionbooster.com/site/adduser?email={random}&pass....

Does not seem to happen, here (shows the home page). Maybe you're cookied/logged in?

> - make sure the retention email doesn't end up in spam folder

That's not really up to him (except, of course, for basic sender stuff like SPF and DKIM).

- login (use something like http://retentionbooster.com/site/adduser?email=a43abe&passwo...)

- choosing a good transactional email service might be helpful.

That's a pretty good idea (as long as these are considered "transactional" by the provider).

edit: Can confirm the authentication behavior now.

edit 2: In fact, the username is printed without any escaping.

You have a page "Company". If you are a registered company, indicate its name and place of registration. That would add credibility.
Thanks. We are not cooperated yet but that would definitely be a good idea.
How is this different from intercom.io or customer.io
[Founder here]: Retention Booster focuses on increasing retention and let you to create automated responses to re-activate your idle users.
Intercom c0-founder here. We've had that since 2012 http://insideintercom.io/automated-emails-customer-respect/
This is a good idea, but I wonder about the shelf life. As more sites start to use email responses and follow ups it increases the chances that people start flagging this as spam or ignoring it altogether. Email is a valuable but delicate channel.
I wasn't sure what you were offering, so I clicked on "How it Works" where I learned how to signup by entering an email and password. Thanks for this useful information, I'm not sure how I managed up until now without knowing how to signup to websites :-)

Joke apart, I do think that it's a good idea but you really need to make it clearer. The first page is very vague: A dashboard that allows you to see what's going on in your operation? Are there any other types of dashboards?

You need to explain right from the beginning that you're product will help with sending emails to increase retention.

Great service, good job!