Why Free Stuff Sucks

I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately about ‘building your email list’. Rule # 1, they say, is to give something away. Okay, I suppose there is merit in that suggestion. But quantity is not equal to quality. If you want quality subscribers who are more likely to buy whatever you are going to sell in the future, you want people who have already demonstrated a willingness to buy from you.

Zombie sandwiches

I’ve been running booths at trade shows since the early 1980s. No matter what the focus of the show is, the aisles are filled with what I call “bag zombies.” Almost immediately after entering a show, they get a bag. Sometimes they are provided by one of the providers at check-in. Without thinking, open-mouthed and with a thousand-meter gaze, these people begin to walk back and forth through the corridors, turning their heads from side to side. While they distract booth staff with nonsensical questions like “So what exactly is make? “, their hands pick up anything that isn’t pinned. A lot of stall vendors give away free stuff, and I’ve seen bag zombies clear a table in seconds. Some have no shame, they will literally pull whatever they can out of their handbag.

Now here’s the sad part. These zombies will leave the show laden with full bags or perfectly good marketing materials that the vendors have paid good money for. They will take those bags to the office or home and put them in a corner. Other things pile up in the bags. Anytime from six months to several years later, these zombies discover the bags. They stick their heads out and look confused at a pile of trash they stole. Having no use for it, they throw it all away. All the time vendors spent planning their loot, perfecting their sales pitch … all the money they spent designing, producing, and shipping their marketing loot … gone. All wasted.

That is not worth it

I’ve talked to dozens of people who have gotten free downloads. Books, stories, white papers … it doesn’t matter. Less than 1% of them have actually read everything they got for free. Less than 10% read Some of your free downloads. The rest do not read anything. They collect things because it is free. And they treat it with exactly the care and consideration that a free download deserves – they ignore it. They don’t value what they get for free. Since it was free, they didn’t take the time to read it. The free stuff is not worth it to them, and any effort made by the donor is also wasted. Whether it’s an author giving away a sample chapter or a company giving away a comparison chart, these digital bag zombies suck it up and drop it on their hard drives, where it remains in the dark until at some point, the downloader removes it. .

What is the solution?

So if giving away free stuff works for building an email list, what can you do to turn a quantity list into a quality list? The elegant word is segmentation. That is, divide your list into people who are bag zombies and those who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. You sell them something.

Now, I’m not talking about something expensive. A line doesn’t have to be a mile wide to be a line, it just has to exist. One of my clients offers a service worth $ 600 for $ 49. Another client offers a complete book for $ 0.99. It’s what I call interest test. It’s a miniscule price, the goal of which is to get your wallet out. It takes them an extra step, the same step they would take if they paid you $ 100 or a thousand dollars. And define the fact that this person is interested enough in what you have to offer that they will pay something for it. After that, you just have to find the highest price they are willing to hit.

Yes, give away something for free to build your email list. Make sure they get that gift. But the next step you should take should be to offer them something that they have to pay for. Something small, at a low price. Don’t try to sell them extras or something expensive. Just have them take out their wallet. If they don’t buy item A, offer them another inexpensive product, item B. Create a range of small, inexpensive products. But once they buy, move their name to another list. Call it “Bought”, “Insights” or whatever. But give the zombies in the bag an inexpensive line to cross. Once they cross it, you have a much more interesting and lucrative problem on your hands.