
How Mint.com Uses Messages (Email, SMS, Push, Etc) to Improve Retention - rubenugarte
https://practicoanalytics.com/mint-uses-messages-retention/
======
shostack
They'd get a lot more retention if they just updated the app to be closer to
the web version.

Half the charts and views are missing with no way to access things like net
worth, change time frames for longer than 6 mo, filter to only chart things
with certain accounts, etc.

It's all there on the web, but mobile has languished while they rush to get
bill pay added. I'd heard rumors they were winding down the team but it has
been over a year like this.

~~~
knz
> It's all there on the web, but mobile has languished

I've used mint for many years but have just about given up on the web UI. At
least half of the time it pulls up the wrong account when I click on
transactions or a chart doesn't load. The experience went downhill for me
after their last major update and it's reached the point where I'm actively
looking for a replacement.

I'd also argue that Intuit has focused too much on monetizing it instead of
adding more value to the customer.

~~~
shostack
Yeah--it has a lot of potential, but the reality is it may never be the
revenue driver they needed it to be in order to allocate more resources to
improve it.

Kind of a chicken and the egg problem--you can't get a better product without
resources, and you need to monetize to get those resources (or at least be
confident that the returns will be there down the line). So what resources you
do have inevitably go towards monetization since it is a lot easier to measure
impact on growth than with many product improvements.

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AznHisoka
I stopped using Mint when they continued to insist i needed to fix login
issues to my banks.

then citibank locked me out because they saw mint was continully trying to log
in.

i am bearish on Mint because of this. they dont own the banks. sooner or later
all the banks are going to block Mint

~~~
chimeracoder
> then citibank locked me out because they saw mint was continully trying to
> log in.

It gets better: if you have two-factor authentication turned on with your
bank, you'll get text messages or phone calls every day in the wee hours of
the morning, because Mint is trying to log in and update your account.

> sooner or later all the banks are going to block Mint

I don't think so - first of all, because I don't think the banks really _want_
to block Mint. But even if they did, they couldn't. Intuit (the parent company
of Mint) makes Quicken, which is very popular, and which already uses the
well-support OFX protocol for synchronizing bank information.

The real problem is that, eventually, banks will try to start charging users
to allow software like Mint to access their accounts (some already do this
with OFX).

~~~
astrodust
OAuth might be annoying but at least it's an understandable and implementable
way of conveying to the user what access will be granted to external
applications.

No standard will ever exist in the banking world because banks. They're their
own worst enemy.

~~~
koolba
> No standard will ever exist in the banking world because banks. They're
> their own worst enemy.

On the contrary, there will be many competing "standards" because banks.

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alexandercrohde
Now I'm not specifically criticizing mints usage here, because I'm not a mint
user. But it's been my experience on both sides (as a dev and an app-user)
that it seems companies regularly send unwanted push notifications, that if
clicked open the app. If a user opens the app even for 1 second in a month,
they are counted as a silly metric "Monthly active user."

Through chains of management and obsession over charts and bad metrics (like
MAU) it's been my experience that the whole intent of building a great product
usually gets lost by persistent opt-out messaging. And it's a situation where
everybody loses out (because I uninstall the app, don't recommend it) and I
get interruptions I don't want.

Now I recognize this article is specifically talking about pushes that do
deliver some form of value, but what I don't see is any follow up research on
whether ultimately these users are glad they got these notifications (or
whether they feel stressed by them, or nagged, or whether they uninstall)

~~~
rubenugarte
Good points. Messaging has become super easy to set up so the natural tendency
is to just do more of everything. Send every message through all available
channels which means you might get one email, 1 sms and 1 push notification.

Looking at whether users like these kind of messages would be interesting. I
personally turn off the push notifications but I enjoy getting the emails from
Mint. I really dislike when companies don't give you an option for what kind
of notifications you want to receive. I would imagine this is pretty similar
for all consumers.

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devgutt
This is a depressing way to see the value delivered by a startup to their
users. Instead of making awesome things to their user, they are using messages
to "engage" users to not abandon their product. I want to believe that they
were doing the former. Believe or not, some of us are not trying to trick
users or do anything to show growth, but actually trying to help our users.

~~~
lyricwai
Totally agree with you. Instead of providing better products, too many apps
and services abuse the approaches to "engage" their users.

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travisjeffery
[http://stash.cool/](http://stash.cool/) \- Personal finance tool I'm working
on that's what Mint would have been if they hadn't sold to Intuit, had all
that ad garbage and tacked on features.

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qasderfcxs
I use Geltbox Money.

No need to use online financial aggregators, which are limited to certain
financial institutions. Record your own downloaders and have them run
automatically in your device. Can work in most countries in the world. Data
and credentials are stored and encrypted locally. No need to give away your
user names and passwords. No need to store your personal financial information
online

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douche
Mint lost me, because it's too much of a PITA to keep the credentials managed
for their screenscrapers. Also it seems like all my banks redid their websites
in Angular or React over the past year, and Mint really hasn't handled that
well

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vanattab
I used to use Mint but they always lost connection to my accounts. I just got
one of these emails. Unfortunately for them I was cleaning my inbox of
"subscriptions" at the time and promptly hit unsubscribe.

