Question about this line in the email:
"To make it a little sweeter, we are giving away a second setup to the members of the Audiophile Community as well - this automatically gives you two chances at the upgrade."
So anyone who's ever bought something from the Audiophile section? Or people who jumped on previous Massdrop custom products? People who set Audiophile as their fave section?
ZALHERANah so basically, there's two groups. One is everyone who joins this drop, and one is everyone joins this drop who has previously participated in a drop for an Audiophile Custom Product (M9XX, K7XX, TH-X00, etc). The second group is a subset of the first group.
If you're in the second group (joined this drop, and purchased a custom product previously) you're in for both dice rolls/wheel spins (the 1/~2000 chance for everyone in the drop, and the 1/<2000 chance for everyone who's in the drop that previously joined a custom product).
WillSweet! Can't complain having twice the chance having gotten in both x00 drops. The only question remaining would be if the person that wins can still get the purpleheart (and the low serial) by paying for it.
WillWill. The email says "the setup will ship immediately". So, if I win, do I get a chance to change shipping destination before you ship it out? The taxman is going to have a field day if you send me $2000+ worth of audio equipment!
WillHi Will, how will the lucky chaps be notified? For some reason, I haven't been receiving any emails from MD since January. (Only chanced upon this marvelous drop thanks to my diligence in checking MD every other day.) Not even in my junk mail, which I check everyday as well.
WillWill:
You wrote, "there's two groups. One is everyone who joins this drop, and the other is everyone who joins this drop and has previously participated in a drop for an audiophile custom product (M9XX, K7XX, TH-X00, etc.). The second group is a subset of the first group."
Isn't this a way of offering a VIP-style reward to frequent purchasers without excluding first-time purchasers from enjoying a potential benefit?
This seems to be a far better fit for MD than the subscription and privilege models, which I think would anger a lot of long-term members.
The stratified raffle that's now built into in this drop follows the third (and, in your view, the safest) model in your interesting response to the community's discussion.
Personally, I think that two-tier contests based on past purchases are about as far as your VIP model should go. I don't welcome the idea of exclusivity in a collaborative group-buy environment.
VarholiaglimpYup, this is what I was referencing at the very end of my post when I talked about trying an experiment.
The main concern associated with some kind of formalized VIP program based on behavior is accidentally encouraging the wrong thing. It's really hard to design good incentive structures. Famous example, an english archeological expedition goes to China in the 1800s looking for fossils. They find some in a field outside a village so they offer the villagers a deal. Come to the field, dig up fossils, give them to us, we'll pay you $5 (or w/e currency it was) for every fossil. Villagers are psyched, go out to the field, start digging up fossils, start turning them in, start getting that $$$.
Everything's great until the villagers realize, it's $5 per fossil, doesn't matter how big or small. So what do they do? Take the biggest most perfect fossil specimens, and smash them into tiny fragments, turning in each fragment for $5.
I don't want people smashing perfect fossils.
So anyone who's ever bought something from the Audiophile section? Or people who jumped on previous Massdrop custom products? People who set Audiophile as their fave section?