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How to Use Give-Aways To Double Your Sales

Use Free Demos And Samples To Make Customers Come Back For More and See Your Sales Shoot Up by as Much as 90%

Have you ever wanted to try out a product before you purchased it? Most people would say yes. Before forking over the cash, customers want to make sure that what they are getting:

1. works
2. adds value
3. is worth the price.

The quickest way to a sale may be to initially avoid one! Instead of focusing on getting your visitors to 'buy' you could focus on getting them to 'subscribe' to a trial version of your product.

Many ecommerce merchants have started offering free sneak previews of their products. Examples include a free trial version of a software application, a free online course or, as in the case of this book, offering several chapters for free.

The idea behind this strategy of delayed consumption is to introduce customers to the features and benefits of your product, and to get them excited and curious enough so that they will eventually purchase it. For many merchants this technique works better than the traditional model of selling 'now or never.'

Why Ask for an Email Address?

Even on top sites, up to 95% of visitors will not make a purchase on their first visit. Rather than lose those visitors forever it's usually a good idea to develop a relationship with them so that you can bring them back to your site in the future.

This is most easily accomplished by asking for their email address in exchange for valuable free information - usually in the form of a sample of your product delivered via email.

Selling is often about trust and relationship building. The late internet marketer Corey Rudl said that he had to connect with a customer at least 7 times via email before they were willing to purchase his online marketing courses.

This process of relationship building is essential to getting the customer to trust you, to try out your product without the pressure of a tough sell, and to form a marketing relationship that will allow you to later sell to your customers.

Case Study - www.GoldmanMethod.com

Burt Goldman is a writer of fiction and non-fiction books based in Los Angeles, California. Burt is also a highly regarded speaker and trainer on the subject of meditation and self-improvement.

In his 70s, Burt decided to create a self-improvement program based on his 50 years of knowledge studying NLP, hypnotism, meditation, healing and various eastern disciplines. He called his new program the The Goldman Method and decided to sell it online as a series of 14 CDs and a 300 page book.

The problem is that Burt did not have the funding nor marketing budget of the large organizations that promote self-improvement authors like Tony Robbins or Deepak Chopra - but Burt strongly believed he had a better system.

Burt's strategy was to sell his system online on the site www.GoldmanMethod.com.

The entire course was priced at $137.90 but sales were slow. Burt did not have an established brand name and creating trust was therefore hard for him.

Then Burt changed his strategy. Rather than attempting to sell the course online, Burt created a mini-course, a free version of his Goldman Method course that included 2 CDs worth of audio recordings and 5 of the 30 chapters from his book.

Burt allowed visitors to sign up on his site and receive his mini-course for free. Upon subscribing, the visitor would receive a welcome email and a second email containing the first lesson of the course. Every 2 days the subscriber would receive another email with yet another lesson. Some of the lessons would contain downloadable audio training in MP3 format.

Since Burt's lessons were fully digital, he incurred no cost in giving them away for free. Burt soon found that 20% of visitors who came to his site were signing up for the free lessons (a 20% signup rate is considered very good in ecommerce).

At the end of the free lessons, the visitors would receive a polite email from Burt asking them if they liked the lessons and if they would like to invest in the full course. He found that the response was good. By allowing people to 'test' out his lessons first and ask them for the sale later - his conversion rates shot up.

Burt's website began selling more and more units of his course with this simple strategy. Since adopting this strategy sales have doubled and Burt is now refining his strategy to further grow his business into a million dollar entity.

Will Offering a Free Course Cannibalize Your Sales?

One of the biggest fears people have about offering a free course or free sample chapters of their online product is that this will cannibalize their actual sales.

This was certainly our fear too when we first started adopting this strategy. But we soon found that the free course increased sales and signups by close to 100%!

The graph below shows signups and sales on a test site we implemented for a client.

We first attempted to go directly for the sale. This experiment lasted 6 weeks. Signups hovered around 200 per week while sales were around 100 units. People signed up not to receive a free course but to get on a mailing list for special offers.

We later started offering a free course. Visitors on the main page of the site could no longer sign up for special offers. Instead, they could sign up for a free online course spanning 3 weeks. At the end of the course they would receive an email promoting a special offer.

The results were dramatic. The graph below shows the difference in signups (the blue line) and sales (the yellow line) before and after we started offering the free course. The point at which we offered the free course is marked with a red line.

8 weeks after offering the free course, total signups had more than doubled! The total increase was 105%. Sales too, shot up - by 96%.

Rather than cannibalizing sales, offering the free course had actually doubled them.

So don't worry about losing sales by offering a free course or free information. Anything you can do to put yourself in further contact with your visitors can boost sales. And if your product is good - a free course will inevitably result in more sales.

So how do you design your free course?

Designing Your Free Course

When designing your free course, follow these 2 rules:

Rule 1: Give Away Just Enough to Create Desire

The first thing you need to do is decide what bits of information you're going to give away. You want to give away just enough to entice the reader to purchase your full product.

Try to craft your free offer so that it allows you to email the subscriber with free information at least 7 times.

Rule 2: Give it Away Slowly

Second, you must spread out the information over several days. Let's say you're selling a book on competitive rock climbing. Your book contains 29 chapters. You decide to give out 7 chapters for free. You DO NOT want to let the subscriber download ALL 7 chapters in one go. Let them sign up to receive one chapter every 2 - 3 days.

By spreading it out this way, you allow yourself more time to form a relationship with the reader. You also make it easier for them to consume the 7 free chapters by spreading them out rather than handing it to them in one go. Remember - you need to contact the subscriber around 7 times on average before generating a sale.

If your free course is a software product, then you can let the subscriber download a limited version of the product (with some features turned off). You should always require subscribers to provide an email address before downloading and you should email them a friendly tip or suggestion every few days. The purpose of the email is to remind them to consume the product and to create a bond with them.

Simply allowing your subscribers to download a software product and then forgetting about them is not a smart thing to do. Create a relationship!

Setting Up the Course

Your free course should start with a welcome email followed by Lesson 1.

Every 2-3 days the subscriber should receive another lesson or nugget of information. We recommend at least 7 lessons in total.

At the end of the 7th lesson, the subscriber should receive a promotional email offering them a reason to buy your product immediately.

Here's an example scenario:

Cyril runs a site on competitive fishing. His major product is "The Reeler," his patented decoy hook that sells for $97.

On his website, Cyril offers visitors a chance to subscribe to an 8 part email course on the "Art of Competitive Fishing." On the day the visitor subscribes, they receive two emails. The first is a welcome email congratulating them for subscribing and reminding them what they're going to receive. The second email is the first lesson of Cyril's course.

The very next day, the subscriber receives Lesson 2. Two days later (now on day 4 the subscriber receives Lesson 3). Lesson 4 is sent out on day 8 - exactly one week after the subscriber signed up. The subscriber continues to receive 4 more lessons until day 22 when they receive the final lesson.

It's now been exactly 3 weeks since they signed up. Cyril has used this time frame to avoid making his subscriber feel pressured into a sale The lessons create a bond and drive visitors back to his site over and over again to read the lessons and tips.

2 days after receiving the final lesson the subscriber receives a special promotional offer. If they purchase the Reeler within 5 days, they will receive a free bait & tackle box worth $30. (Cyril purchases the box for $10 wholesale).

Cyril finds that 3% of subscribers respond to the offer and purchase the Reeler. One day before the promotion ends, Cyril sends out another email reminding his subscriber base of the pending promotion's deadline in 24 hours. He manages to get another 2% of subscribers to make a purchase.

But that still leaves 95% of his subscriber base as non-buyers. So 14 days after the first promo Cyril offers another promo. This time, there is no bonus gift, but he offers the subscribers (that have not yet made a purchase) a chance to buy the Reeler for 2 installments of $48 each. (He's experimenting with pricing here to see how price sensitive his customers are.) They only have 5 days to take him up on his offer. Again, just before the offer ends, he sends a reminder email. He manages to get another 4% of subscribers to make a purchase.

At the end of the promotional period, Cyril has now generated $8,730 from 1,000 subscribers. That's a pretty impressive conversion rate. He's earning close to $8.73 every time someone subscribes to his free offer.

Below is a chart showing how Cyril times his email messages.

Day	Email
1	Welcome Email and Lesson 1
2	Lesson 2
4	Lesson 3
8	Lesson 4
11	Lesson 5
15	Lesson 6
18	Lesson 7
22	Lesson 8 - Final Lesson
24	Promotional Offer - 5 Days to Respond
28	Reminder that Promo Ends Tomorrow
42	Backup Promo
46	Reminder that Backup Promo Ends Tomorrow

What Should Your Lessons Look Like?

There are 2 ways to present the information in your free course. The first is to simply include the entire lesson within the email. The second is to create a short message designed to SELL the reader on reading the full message, which would be in the form of a PDF or on the Web.

Method 1: Include the Entire Lesson within the Email

This is ideal for shorter lessons. Here is an example from Dearl Miller's free course, Trafficology. We have removed the bulk of the lesson for simplicity and have simply included the header and footer.

Hello John,

Welcome to Part 6 of the 7 Most Powerful Web Traffic Creation & Conversion Techniques Period.

Today you will learn:

1. What is 'Web Usability' and why should you care?
2. What are your visitors really doing on your website?
3. How can you use usability to improve your conversion?

Usability is the study of how people use things. Therefore, web usability is the study of how people use the web.

Boring you say...well, yeah, a little. But in reality there is a lot of good information that can be gathered. I am going to quote these three statistics again to drive an important lesson home:

..... Rest of Lesson Follows Here........

In your next lesson of the 7 Most Powerful Web Traffic Creation & Conversion Techniques, you will learn the single most valuable technique available.

Thank you and until next time,

Amy & Dearl

Nitro Marketing,

Editors, Trafficology.com

If you found this information useful, we would like to hear from you. Please email us: feedback@trafficology.com

Can't wait? Ready for Advanced Trafficology?

Join our Exclusive Members Only Area: http://www.trafficology.com/membersarea.html

Notice a couple of things about the email lesson above - you can adopt these best practices in your own lessons.

1. First, the email starts with the receiver's first name. This personalization level is important for boosting readership and creating a better bond with the reader. In a moment we'll show you how this is done.
2. Next, the lesson starts with some teaser copy designed to excite the reader and arouse interest. The authors tell the reader what they are going to cover and why it's important.
3. The email is chatty and informal. Note the line "Boring you say...well, yeah, a little." This type of personal one-to-one writing can help build trust between you and the potential buyer (more on building trust in another tactic).
4. The lesson ends with a small sales pitch that's not too pushy - the simple line "Can't Wait? Ready for Advanced Trafficology" followed by a link to the purchase page of their site.

Method 2: Use a 'Teaser' and Keep the Lesson Separate

This method is good if your lesson is too long and cannot be properly read in an email. Longer lessons that require images, use of fonts, or multimedia elements like audio and video are better served up on the web.

Here is an example of a 'teaser' style email from www.GoldmanMethod.com

Hi Eric,

Welcome to the Most Important Lesson of My Online Training Program!

Imagine if you could re-program your mind - just like a computer - to get rid of bad habits or unwanted behavior. Imagine how much more successful and in control of your life you would be.

What if I told you that everyone has this ability but only a few of us learn to use it!

In this lesson, I'm going to teach you one of the most versatile and powerful techniques, The Golden Image, to use the power of visualization to alter your behavior.

The Golden Image can help you:

• Kick a habit. Do you want to quit smoking? Or perhaps eat or drink less?
• Overcome a fear. Do you want to overcome your fear of heights? Or maybe a fear of commitment or public speaking?
• Enhance your desire. Do you want to be more motivated to succeed at your chosen career? Or to excel at writing, acting, a sport or a non-profit cause you're working for?

Since this is such a powerful exercise, I'm going to provide you with The Goldman Image audio from the Goldman Method Field Kit for free so that I can guide you through the exercise.

Click on the Link below to download the audio now:

http://www.goldmanmethod.com/online/lessons/5-healthy-habit.php

All the Best,
Burt Goldman
www.GoldmanMethod.com

The thing to notice about Method 2 is that it's fairly salesy. But this is perfectly fine. The goal of the email in Method 2 is to sell the reader on the idea of taking the time to click on a link and read the lesson on the web.

If you go ahead and click on the link, you'll see how the actual product is now positioned within the lesson.

Which Method Should You Use?

The method to use really depends on the style and type of your message. As a rule of thumb, if your lesson is longer than 2 pages, do not put the entire lesson in the email. Create a short teaser and drive the reader to click on a link that opens up the lesson in a new window.

If your lesson is a short tip and does not require graphics or lengthy text, you can include the entire lesson within the body of the email.

Each lesson should provide well-formatted, quality information that will be relevant and of interest to your target audience. If your content does not have any perceived value, your readers may unsubscribe.

Your lessons should identify a problem, discuss possible courses of action, and then solve the problem using your product or service. Remember to use your lessons to teach and inform rather than blatantly push for sales. You can, however, include unobtrusive links to your product pages in the event that a reader does wish to purchase. You don't miss out on any opportunity to capture a sale.

The final email in your course should be a sales letter about the product or service you offer that is related to the course you just gave. We will discuss how to craft this sales letter in a moment.

A Collection of Sample Free Courses

The following sites are known to have particularly well constructed and high converting free courses. Sign up for their course and learn from their examples.

www.DoubleYourDating.com - Free course on Dating Strategies

www.SilvaUltraMindSystem.com - Free course on Meditation

www.FreeAuctionCourse.com - Free course on eBay Selling Strategies

www.e-Filtrate.com - Free course on Email Marketing

www.MindValleyLabs.com - Free course on Ecommerce and Website Conversion Strategies

Crafting the Final Email and Closing the Sale

Once your subscribers have enjoyed your free course, how do you get them to buy your product or service?

The last email in your free course should be a sales letter. It should relate your product or service to the course content and compel customers to buy. This can be done by offering special incentives and pricing, and by including case studies and real customer testimonials.

A good sales letter will:

• Thank the customer for subscribing to the course
• Address the customer's needs and concerns
• Show how your product or service will satisfy those needs and concerns
• Emphasize the benefits of your product or service (e.g. more time, save money, better health)
• Have actual case studies and/or glowing customer testimonials
• Offer additional incentives in the final call to action
• Reiterate your sales pitch
• Allow customers to complete the purchase by linking to an order page
• Create trust and have a guarantee
• Provide your company contact name, email, phone, and website address for additional support
• Give unsubscribe instructions

The important thing to remember is that the promotional sales letter should NEVER contain the entire sales copy. The sales copy itself should remain on a page on your website.

The sales letter should instead focus on exciting the reader and arousing curiosity to make the reader want to click on a link and visit the actual sales letter.

Why should you never include copy within your final email promotion?

There are 2 reasons for this:

1. If you include sales copy in an email, the email will often get blocked by spam filters. Even innocent words like 'guarantee' or 'discount' may be enough to get your letter blacklisted and hurled into a spam folder like an unwanted piece of junkmail (we'll take a deeper look at spam filters and how to get around them in another tactic).

2. Your readers will likely ignore an email that they perceive to be salesy, or they may save it for later reading (and then never get back to it). You don't want this to happen.

Here is an example of a sales promotion that works by arousing curiosity and attempting to get the reader to click on a link to see the actual sales copy.

Hi Julia,

On March 21 you received the last lesson of our complimentary Stretch-and-Slim Training Program.

I hope you have enjoyed our program and that it helped you shape up in a fun and easy way.

Yet, what you've just been working with is only a fraction of what 'The Ultimate Body' has to offer.

Top model Cindy Crawford has used her lifelong experience with a large range of personal trainers to compile a training program that will get you the body of your dreams in no time.

And we want you to Fully Master It - After all, don't you deserve to look your very best?

So we have a Special Offer for you...

How would you like to gain all the benefits of 'The Ultimate Body' for your entire family for a mere fraction of the price of one of our work-out camps, while remaining in the comfort of your own home?

Visit the link below to see full details of this offer...

Full Details Here:

http://www.TheUltimateBody.com/SalesLetter

This offer is only valid until Sunday, March 26, 2006

Go Ahead, View the Special Offer.. And email me if you have any questions. I'd be happy to help.

Nancy Clarkson

Nancy@theultimatebody.com
Manager of Online Programs
www.theultimatebody.com

Note the sales letter above uses a timed guarantee. It tells the reader that they have 5 days to act on the offer. The reason for this is two-fold.

First, a timed guarantee creates a sense of urgency and increases the odds that the reader will read the letter and click on the link ASAP.

Second, it allows you the send a 'reminder' email a few days later, just before the promo ends. You can remind the reader about the promo and remind them it ends in 24 hours. This type of email may further boost your promotional sales by 50%.

The Backup Sales Letter

What if the reader does not respond to your promo? Don't worry, you'll get another chance. Wait 1 - 2 weeks and send another letter to the subscribers who have yet to buy.

In this letter you can offer a further discount, a free bonus gift or even a payment plan.

In our experiments we found that a backup sales letter offering nothing more than a 2 payment plan could boost sales of one product by 18%.

Automating Your Course Using an Autoresponder

If you have just 50 people signing up to your 7 part course daily - pretty soon you'll need to be sending out close to 350 emails a day. There is no way you would be able to keep track of which subscribers are supposed to get which email and when.

To do this right you would need an efficient emailing system - called an autoresponder.

With the help of an email autoresponder, you can automate your marketing messages and course lessons, as well as program the frequency of delivery.

Without getting into the technical details, an autoresponder works by sending a pre-programmed message that you create to your customer's email address. Depending on your communication goals, your message can go out immediately upon the receipt of a customer's email, or after predetermined intervals once you get a customer's email address.

You will most definitely need an autoresponder to be successful in ecommerce.

We have tested a wide range of autoresponder software programs including GetResponse, Aweber, MailLoop and AutoresponsePlus.

Our recommendation is to start with GetResponse.com but then to expand to a more powerful self-hosted system like AutoResponsePlus once you have a mailing list of over 10,000 names.

Summary

Offering your visitors a free sample of your product through an online subscription can easily double your sales. If you do it the smart way that is.

In this tactic we've shown you how to use a free online course to create a relationship with your visitors, make them come back to your site over and over again and how to finally close the sale.

Once you've designed your free training and created the accompanying emails and promotions, your job is as good as done. Autoresponders will automatically send your course and emails to your subscribers, and sales will start to roll in.

As with every new tactic, testing is key. Test different bonus offers and email formats to see what works best with your subscribers.