Many, if not all of the current platforms have a lack of active hosts and a huge supply of “dead” profiles where users haven’t logged in, hosted, or stayed with anyone in the three years or more. What are some of the ways we can ensure that the Couchers community doesn’t suffer from this problem? Should we make sure only active profiles appear in searches? What about deleting inactive users from the database after a certain amount of warnings?
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I think disabling profiles or preventing them from appearing in search if they haven’t logged in in the past month (2 months?). I know I always used the “last login” filter when searching on CS!
Maybe also combining that with a prominent “Last Hosted: One month ago” on search and profile would be good - it would give some weight and importance to regular hosting.
Actual deleting is a bit far, in my opinion. Just disabling and sending a notification email is enough. Plus the email could link to a re-enabling page which asks to confirm your current hosting ability. ("You haven’t hosted in 5 months. Do you want to switch to “Wants to meet up”?)
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the email could link to a re-enabling page which asks to confirm your current hosting ability. ("You haven’t hosted in 5 months. Do you want to switch to “Wants to meet up”?)
I think this is genius - sending reminder emails is a great way to keep people engaged. “Last hosted” is a great idea, too. Thanks Lucas 
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I think this is another place we can be smarter about filtering. We want people to be able to fully control their search filters, save their filter settings, but also just have reasonable default settings. By default, maybe results should only show people active in the last month?
I think it’s important to not have the search results full of inactive people. But at the same time, it’s also important that those users who might’ve signed up once and then didn’t have much interaction but displayed interest are encouraged to come back and have another interaction. I guess those people would rarely go straight to advertising as hosts though, I’m not sure.
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There are a few existing platforms out there that do marketing automations very well (and we could integrate a 3rd party marketing product vs building these sorts of things in-house). For example, in HubSpot we could setup a re-engagement campaign for hosts who have been inactive for a certain timeframe.
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Hey Nate, welcome to the forum! 
What would that re-engagement campaign look like? Something like “hey, come back to Couchers and get x”? If so, what can we offer them?
how do we plan to classify, someone doesn’t accept any of the requests and someone doesn’t receive any request? Two people one hasn’t received any request for 5 months so they seem like inactive/not hosting but there is another one receives requests but rejecting them all. Second group look like the same as the first group. Last 5 months inactive/not hosting.
Is there any methodology considered to make this classification ?
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Good points Husso! I think it’s best if we classify them according to what percentage of requests they have actually accepted. But then again, we all know that sometimes you could get like 20 requests per week and only accept one, right?
I guess we’d have to blend the two, but mainly nowadays in the search you see tons of host who haven’t logged in months and obviously aren’t active. We could start there.
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yeap you got the point 
IT should not be how often they host , it should be based on their activities, log in time etc…
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Still, I hate the way some people say “accepting guests” and literally have never accepted a guest. I wish we could have a way of actually verifying that the person is hosting, like they should have recent references to get that status, or something to that effect.
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A post was split to a new topic: References Should Be Mandatory
It’s a little bit of an art vs a science. When I was working in public media we would try all sorts of messaging to find what resonated the most with our audience, and get them to become “members” (donating on recurring basis). This involved segmenting the audience and doing some basic multivariate testing where we would change the copy, graphics, and CTAs. It was trial and error for a bit until you recognize patterns.
Here are some examples from HubSpot:
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Yup, to give a better picture, it’s a bit like those ‘abandoned cart’ emails 
Perhaps rather than offering them something, we can remind them of activities in their vicinity. Something like…
SUBJECT: Hey Keni, we haven’t seen you in a while!
CONTENT: [List of recent events nearby]
CTA: See More/ RSVP
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I love this and think it would work well!
Do you think, “Hey Emily, here are some people you missed!” is too sad? They could be people who requested their couch or messaged them? And it could trigger after, say, three missed messages?
Also, I’d like to provide another perspective regarding not having enough active users/hosters.
Please take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%_rule_(Internet_culture)
In marketing for platforms based on community contributions, there is always an understanding that only a VERY SMALL percentage of users will contribute valuable content. Even for LinkedIn, which is a huge and very established platform, only 1% of users post content weekly (this is an actual statistic).
That’s not saying I disagree with providing an option to filter by activity level, but other than it being a feature, I don’t think that’s the solution to this ‘problem’. The solution is to get more users and grow a userbase of quality. Of course, that’s easier said that done, but I’m just providing my two cents’ worth here 
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That’s a very good idea and should definitely be on the roster of re-engagement emails!!
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I agree it’s annoying when people seem available but then all their references come from being a surfer, however I don’t think it’s necessary to verify if people are hosting because a lot of people (myself included) host arbitrarily based on availability and less hosting references = less requests. And a search system that just favours people who host a LOT (who are still obviously great) will push the “super host” effect and keep directing requests just to those people in each city.
Also as there’s no tangible benefit to having “accepting guests” on your profile I think most people with it are willing to accept guests (at least on very particular dates) and I think this is where a personalised calendar of availability (mentioned by @Emily on another thread) comes in, which people would be more inclined to update if the app, um, worked 
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It’s an issue I haven’t found so detrimental; the last login filter pretty much solved it for me.
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I agree with the 2 month setting. I often used CS to find pen pals to send/receive postcard to/from, so I was messaging folks pretty often. And I never had anyone that whose “last login” was more than one month.