Give Your Customers What They Want: Free Stuff!

“Yes,” Marka said. “Admittedly, giveaways like these are harder to connect with sales. So we should also consider intelligent discounting—perhaps offering a limited-time discount on a loss-leader product. Then, of course, it’s easy to connect that discount with more sales—and higher profits—on that specific product.”

“Let’s not go overboard with discounting,” Zoot said. “We don’t want to become known as the ‘we always discount’ shop.”

“Of course not,” Marka said. “The main takeaway: let’s focus less on whether our promotions look absolutely gorgeous, and more on the tangible value they provide to customers. Remember the 40/40/20 rule—we should put twice as much thought and energy into the offer as the creative. Any promotion with the FEI brand on it has to meet a baseline of commercial acceptability, of course. Besides that, our focus should be on making sure these communications can answer the question ‘what’s in it for our customers?’”

“I agree!” said Zoot.

For FEI’s next postcard promotion, they offered every customer a free $5 gift card to Gerta’s Grog Shop in West Olympus. This postcard brought in three new leads, the most of any FEI promotion so far!

Next week: Marka and Zoot discuss creating an effective branding document.

Today’s FIRE! Point
A basic, text-only broadcast e-mail will stand out from the dozens of graphic- and text-heavy e-mail promotions your customers receive every day.

FIRE! In Action: Nitto Tire Uses Giveaways to Build Consumer Demand
The tire manufacturer gave away a branded poster through a variety of online forums. The posts achieved click-through rates of 83 percent and led to increased sales for one of their products.