Interesting Tactic to Increase Attendance

Subjects: Residual Value of a Customer
Principle: Investment to acquire a Customer
Potential Worth: Your average sale per customer x the new acquired customers

It is very interesting what we receive thru email these days: I am always fascinated by the opportunity to study what other marketers use as techniques, in order to learn and redeploy them in other businesses.

Case in point: yesterday I got an email soliciting my participation to a conference call. The body of it said the following:

“The Ticket Price is set at $1,295 per person - but I've arranged a very, very special deal just for you. Instead of paying $1,295 per ticket, you just have to 'reserve your seat' with a $100 'seat deposit'.

And the best news is - that $100 is refundable once you show up -- making the event totally free!!”

So, the final objective of the initiative is not to make money in the short term, obviously: they want to get people to participate to the conference call. I like the fact they point out the “commercial” value of the conference call ($1,295) and that the price for this time is a rock-bottom $100. Great deal. But wait, there is more! We will get the money back.

So, where are they going to make money? I can already hear your answers… Residual Value of the Customer (sure, "Customer": they paid already $100…).

They know that, statistically, maybe 3% of the participants will purchase books, classes, courses, seminars whatever they will propose, and they know statistically, how much each one will purchase. So, it makes good business sense to invest the cost of the email offer (zero $), of the phone conference call (some hundreds of $) to reap the statistically quasi-certain benefits.

Till next time,

M in USA