Original Article:
Paperless Post by Valerie Kaplan
https:\/\/www.hbs.edu\/openforum\/openforum.hbs.org\/goto\/challenge\/understand-digital-transformation-of-business\/paperless-post.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPaperless Post is an e-commerce company that sells online greeting cards, invitations, and stationary.\u00a0 Their value proposition is to combine the modern convenience of online communication with the same personal touch and beauty of a traditional invitation.\u00a0 Users can choose from over 11,000 cards and upgrade features to create a completely custom and personalized message for their guests\u2026 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In an interesting twist, Paperless Post went from digital to analog when they began to offer physical cards and invitations 2012\u2026 Paperless Post earns revenue by selling both its digital and physical products.\u00a0 It has zero advertising and instead uses a freemium pricing model to attract and then upgrade its consumers\u2026 As of today, the platform offers approximately 750 free pieces that include an assortment of simply-designed invitations and cards.\u00a0 These complimentary items attract first-time users to the platform and help grow future usage in two ways.\u00a0 First, it requires the user to create an account with Paperless. Once they do, it stores contact information for all of their guests\/recipients.\u00a0 Each time you send an invite from Paperless Post, it becomes increasingly convenient to do it again, helping to turn people into repeat users.\u00a0 Second, it also encourages the recipient of any item to create an account.\u00a0 The free Paperless product in essence provides its own viral marketing engine\u2026 The freemium model is an effective pricing strategy for Paperless Post for a number of reasons.\u00a0 First, their digital products have an extremely low marginal cost to produce.\u00a0 Secondly, they have built a system with both direct and indirect network effects.\u00a0 Having more users on the platform makes it more valuable to guests and hosts. It also makes it more attractive to design and product partners\u2026 The freemium model is an effective pricing strategy for Paperless Post for a number of reasons.\u00a0 First, their digital products have an extremely low marginal cost to produce.\u00a0 Secondly, they have built a system with both direct and indirect network effects.\u00a0 Having more users on the platform makes it more valuable to guests and hosts. It also makes it more attractive to design and product partners\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article on Paperless Post was insightful as it introduced me to this concept of \u201cfreemium.\u201d It also got me thinking about the process of marketing to others and encouraging users to purchase \u201cpremium\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Original Article:Paperless Post by Valerie Kaplanhttps:\/\/www.hbs.edu\/openforum\/openforum.hbs.org\/goto\/challenge\/understand-digital-transformation-of-business\/paperless-post.html \u201cPaperless Post is an e-commerce company that sells online greeting cards, invitations, and stationary.\u00a0 Their value proposition is to combine the modern convenience of online communication with the same personal touch and beauty of a traditional invitation.\u00a0 Users can choose from over 11,000 cards and upgrade features to create […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[163,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-1069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business-featured","7":"tag-businessmodel","8":"tag-freemium"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1070,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions\/1070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}