If you move ahead with this project, I’d urge you to try asking different things. It’d be easy to turn this into an experiment. I’d suggest testing out High (e.g. Take a pledge), Medium (e.g. Watch Peter Singer’s TED Talk), and Low (e.g. Check out the EA forum) asks.
More generally, this seems like an interesting idea though I don’t find the logic of the post all that compelling. Tyler, you seem to be conflating two arguments: 1) conversions are extremely valuable and require low conversion rates and 2) building this list and sending cold emails is our best conversion opportunity. I agree with 1 (and have made similar arguments here) but 2 seems to require a pretty big leap of faith.
I’d argue for using TLYCS’s pledge for the high ask for three reasons, two of which seem pretty compelling:
1) I work for TLYCS
2) TLYCS has a lower minimum pledge than GWWC, so it’ll give a richer, more informative, data set. Our baseline assumption is presumably that cold-emailing people doesn’t get a lot of pledges. If we get that result with a high minimum pledge, we won’t know if a lower minimum would do better. Conversely, if we use TLYCS’s pledge and see a bunch of people pledging 3%, that’s valuable info. (If we see a lot of pledges, we can/should test TLYCS vs. GWWC pledges directly against each other.)
3) This would directly inform TLYCS strategy. Our working assumption is that pledging is too big an initial ask. We’d be very interested in this data point.
If you move ahead with this project, I’d urge you to try asking different things. It’d be easy to turn this into an experiment. I’d suggest testing out High (e.g. Take a pledge), Medium (e.g. Watch Peter Singer’s TED Talk), and Low (e.g. Check out the EA forum) asks.
More generally, this seems like an interesting idea though I don’t find the logic of the post all that compelling. Tyler, you seem to be conflating two arguments: 1) conversions are extremely valuable and require low conversion rates and 2) building this list and sending cold emails is our best conversion opportunity. I agree with 1 (and have made similar arguments here) but 2 seems to require a pretty big leap of faith.
Good idea. Indeed, doesn’t taking the Life You Can Save pledge seems like a pretty good candidate for a High ask?
I’d argue for using TLYCS’s pledge for the high ask for three reasons, two of which seem pretty compelling:
1) I work for TLYCS 2) TLYCS has a lower minimum pledge than GWWC, so it’ll give a richer, more informative, data set. Our baseline assumption is presumably that cold-emailing people doesn’t get a lot of pledges. If we get that result with a high minimum pledge, we won’t know if a lower minimum would do better. Conversely, if we use TLYCS’s pledge and see a bunch of people pledging 3%, that’s valuable info. (If we see a lot of pledges, we can/should test TLYCS vs. GWWC pledges directly against each other.) 3) This would directly inform TLYCS strategy. Our working assumption is that pledging is too big an initial ask. We’d be very interested in this data point.
Seems sensible to me. What do you think tyleralterman, if you’re reading this?