96 Hours Later, My Test Results Thicken
If you missed my 48 hour lean startup experiment results, the idea was that 20 people who answered 7 questions about what they would do online to support a cause or social issue would then vote for 1 of 3 non-profits in the first WTIM, WeThinkItMatters beta campaign to receive funding from the sponsor.
In summary I was able to get 10 people to take the survey and out of those 1 took the action and voted afterwards for 10% conversion.
If you read my 48 hour results you would also know that I was in a experimental accelerator that funds startups doing customer development based on lean startup principles and was competing to win a pass to the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco.
Well I am excited to say I won a silver pass to the event. Now I just got to get there! The following are the next steps I took in my experiment.
Now to what has happened since I reported the 48 hour results. In a attempt to get more people to take the (What Matter to Them survey) I sponsored 2 Facebook post for 2 days. I spent $18 total which generated 1379 Impressions, it Reached 1031 people, 19 of those people took an action. The posts got 17 likes, 6 shares, 7 clicked the link to the survey, and 1 liked the Facebook page.
The target demographic was people who liked WeThinkItMatters pages and their friends. Men 35 to 54 were the most engaged, with women 25 to 54 close behind. The campaign was not as successful as hoped and only generated one vote to date.
The next thing I did was hitch a ride down to Portland with my little sister. She was on a boot run to get more supply.
She has a upcyling startup where she takes used cowboy boots and turns them into one of a kind gypsy cowgirl boots. Check them out here, custom order a pair. She is shipping them all over now.
I needed to get more in-person interviews done, and since the first WeThinkItMatters campaign is focused on ending homelessness in the Northwest and two of the non-profits taking part in it are from Portland my assumption was since the campaign would impact their community the most they would be more likely to be motivated to vote for 1 of the 3 charities to receive funding.
One thing I was taking into account though was unlike the online survey where someone is taken to a landing page that offers the chance to vote and receives an email afterwards asking them to take action, with in-person interviews I was now going to have to rely on the person visiting WeThinkItMatters.com when they got online sometime.
I completed 18 customer interviews in Portland. I met some cool people and learned some things. Most importantly relating to WTIM I learned people were already doing things like signing petitions, sharing cause stories, and donating online. All of them said they would be willing to vote for causes to receive funding if it was something they cared about.
I learned some were willing to watch videos and take surveys far longer than I thought, one person even said they would watch a whole movie. The average though was a few minutes for video and about 10 survey questions. But all of this was largely dependent on how much they cared about the issue.
Another thing that came up a few times was if it was a friend or someone they trust asking them to support the cause they were much more likely to engage.
So far out of the 18 people I interviewed in person none have voted in our WeThinkItMatters beta campaign. And only 9 of those were willing to provide contact info, so I will just have to hope that the others someday have a desire to visit WeThinkItMatters.com.
All the rest who completed the survey online or that provided an email during the interviews I will follow up with an email asking them to vote again, share it with their friends, and if I could have 15 minutes of their time to learn more about how they want to support cause they care about online.
One of the most insightful things I learned was not so much about WTIM, but about me. After finishing the interviews my little sister and I were getting some coffee for the trip back north and I mentioned how nervous I get to start the interviews and anxiety I felt about them until I got started. And her response was quick and right to the point.
