

Ask HN: Why do people worry about scaling before they actually scale? - lenkendall

I've asked countless entrepreneurs the following question: "Would you rather send 1000 generic emails to prospects to get 10 responses or send 10 personalized emails to get 1 response. Consistently the answer is the first option. This strikes me as arrogant and mathematically flawed, but the counterpoint is that it takes too much time to personalize marketing when attention needs to be paid to the product.<p>What are your thoughts? I feel like personalization cannot in fact scale, but in the early days it may be the one thing that actually helps you get bigger.
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justhw
I'm fully with you on this. In the early days you're scrapping, ziging where
others are zagging because you have to differentiate your're self to justify
switching costs for your customers, if you're in a competitive environment.

But once you reach scale your goals shift and you're priorities change. I
don't think one can fully ignore or embrace customization even at scale, there
will be some sense of it present but not as much. There are other factors such
as how large your customers are and what business you're in that can affect
your decision. But generally we're more lenient towards increasing
productivity and efficiency at scale.

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neogodless
This can and should vary depending on the product or service and the goals for
the company and any particular campaign. If you're selling complex, personal
consulting services, you might find your 10 responses from 1000 generic emails
to ultimately lead to zero useful, qualified opportunities. But if you are
testing a social, interactive service, you may find that having 10 active
users on a given day much more useful than having just 1 person look at your
static, deserted interface.

Perhaps, in my examples above, are you trying to land a customer, or are you,
in fact, trying to scale something?

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briholt
No one could argue that sending 10 personalized emails with a high conversion
rate is bad, but consider that, depending on the pricing model and
aspirations, a business may not be viable unless you can find a way to get
customers from mass marketing. If your goal is $100M in revenue (which may or
may not be a worthwhile goal, that's a different question) and your price
point is $10, that's a lot of personalized emails to write.

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andrewcooke
your "more inside" isn't quite what i expected. to answer that, i suspect you
need to understand what how many targets are available and how much effort is
required in each case. if there are "unlimited" targets then the approach that
gets most response for a given amount of effort seems logical - and that might
be the 1000/10 case (if it's the same amount of effort as the 10/1 case and
delivers more responses).

but if you are talking about scaling in terms of technical implementation that
i suspect the answer is that it is more fun.

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orangethirty
Because they are idiots. Follow your reasoning, it's the correct route.

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petervandijck
It's more fun than building the product.

