I’ll start by saying that I like to do things in 3s or 5s, but couldn’t think of a 3rd (I’m sure someone will). I also wanted to limit this to marketing. So here they are:
1. Magazine subscription or renewal offers that get cheaper over time. Most business magazines and many consumer magazines are guilty of this. The first offer comes in at $29.99/year. The next one, about 6 months before your subscription ends, is for $24.99. The third one, comes in something meant to resemble a telegram (remember those?), and has an urgent offer for $19.99. Sold! My guess is that each mailing costs about a dollar (postage, fulfillment company, etc.). In addition, most subscribers are now trained to wait (or to buy their subscriptions from Amazon where the price is pretty consistent and reasonably low). This game also cheapens the magazine’s brand. Finally, the magazine runs the risk of a subscriber, waiting for the best deal, forgetting to renew. A better way to do this is to offer the cheapest price first or, even better, guarantee that the price will never be lower and keep it at one price. (Before you ask, because NY Report is a controlled subscription publication – which means it’s free for qualified people, all we need to worry about is getting our subscribers to renew. You can renew at nyreport.com/renew. And no, it will never be cheaper than free).
2. “For new customers only” is one of the dumbest concepts I have seen. Let me get this straight… you will give a new customer a better price than an existing, perhaps loyal customer? What kind of message are you giving to the existing customer? From a financial perspective, you have already spent time and money to get a customer. If anything, you can charge them less since you can spend less on marketing to them going forward. What do you tell the existing customer when they call and say they saw your offer for “new customers only?”
Who has another stupid business trick?
1. Calling a company's customer service phone number, having to enter your customer account number as part of the long and tortuous process to finally speak to a customer service rep, and then having that customer service rep ask you for your customer account number.
2. Calling the same tortuous customer service number, and having the automated service ask you to enter a fixed number of digits such as your 10 digit phone number, and asking you to press # after your entry. Pray tell, why must you enter # after your entry if your entry consisted of a fixed number of digits?
Posted by: David Leffler | May 02, 2010 at 01:43 PM