Haren says a free tier beat a 7-day trial 12x on signups
Two near-identical products, same audience, same infrastructure, and a signup rate gap Haren blames on the offer rather than the copy.
Taylor Haren (@tharrowofapollo) says two nearly identical products went out to the same audience, on the same list and the same infrastructure, and the offer decided the outcome. RB2B, which had a free-forever tier, got one signup every 52 emails. The other company, running a 7-day trial, got one every 643. That is roughly a 12x gap in signups per email sent.
Haren's framing is aimed at people stuck in the copy loop. His post opens with a shot at rewriting your cold email for the 47th time and ends with the verdict that the difference is not a copy problem.
What the post does not say
This is one operator's comparison of two products, not a dataset. The post does not say how many emails went out in total, over what period, what either product cost, or who the buyer was. Two products being described as nearly identical is Haren's judgment, and the audience overlap is asserted rather than shown. A free-forever tier and a 7-day trial are not only different words, they are different commitments and different price points, so the gap could be price sensitivity as much as the pull of the word free. Signups are also not revenue. Nothing in the post tracks what either cohort did after the signup.
The supporting argument
Nick Abraham (@nickabraham12) made a related case the same cycle, calling the line that free offers attract tire kickers cope. He points at a Hormozi test across two gyms, where the one with a free front-end offer got 9x the leads and closed them at the same rate, which Abraham frames as 9x the revenue off the same ad spend. That is a secondhand account of someone else's test in a different channel, so treat it as the argument rather than the evidence.
For people sending, the practical read is narrow. If your reply rate is fine but your conversion to signup or call is not, more subject line variants will not move it, and the thing being asked for is the variable worth testing. That is a reason to test an entry point with a lower commitment on your own list, not a reason to assume 12x transfers to your market. The only hard number here is the ratio Haren reports, 52 emails per signup against 643, and it comes from the person who ran it.
That is not a copy problem.
Free offers attract tire kickers" is cope.
Know what is landing before you burn another domain
One email a day. Under three minutes. What the operators found out yesterday.