{"id":92,"date":"2005-03-11T14:50:27","date_gmt":"2005-03-11T19:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/?p=92"},"modified":"2005-03-11T17:26:07","modified_gmt":"2005-03-11T22:26:07","slug":"confessions-of-a-mail-order-rip-off-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/direct-marketing\/confessions-of-a-mail-order-rip-off-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Mail-Order Rip-Off Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hate to admit it, but I?m a mail order rip-off artist ? but as a consumer, not a marketer.<\/p>\n

And if you follow the advice I?m about to give you, you can get some of the greatest deals on Earth ? by ?ripping off? direct marketing companies.<\/p>\n

I don?t mean illegal or immoral rip-offs, such as ordering a product and then not paying the bill ? knowing full well the direct marketing company is unlikely to ever collect such a small debt from you.<\/p>\n

I mean taking advantage of direct response offers, keeping the premium, and then immediately canceling or returning the product ? just to get the premium!<\/p>\n

For instance, Gevalia Coffee <\/a>has the most incredible offer you can imagine in their print ads ? sign up for their monthly coffee service, and get the first shipment of two coffees for $10 ? plus a FREE coffee maker!<\/p>\n

We took the bait. Sure enough, you get two delicious gourmet flavored coffees ? well worth the $10 alone ? PLUS a beautiful coffee maker. <\/p>\n

We canceled the service as soon as we got the machine and our first two coffees, so the whole kit and caboodle cost us a grand total of ten bucks.<\/p>\n

What?s the lesson here? Direct marketing companies routinely make overly generous offers on the ?front end? to get you in as a customer ? because they know that a large number of people who take the bait will stay to buy more ? and so the offer becomes profitable.<\/p>\n

Another example is Easton Press<\/a>. I accepted their offer of a beautiful leather-bound edition of Moby Dick and paid just $5.95 (the average price of their leather bound classics is around $50.)<\/p>\n

I immediately opted out of the continuity program (“100 Greatest Books:), so you?d think I got something for (almost) nothing from them.<\/p>\n

But they kept sending me more mailings for other series and single books. And now there?s a pile of about $300 worth of handsome leather-bound books on the shelves of my home library ? and countless hours of enjoyable reading ahead for me.<\/p>\n

So, who?s really coming out ahead here?<\/p>\n

Well, I love the books. And Easton Press is making money.<\/p>\n

So I guess we BOTH are winners here, which is how good DM works. Right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate to admit it, but I?m a mail order rip-off artist ? but as a consumer, not a marketer. And if you follow the advice I?m about to give you, you can get some of the greatest deals on Earth ? by ?ripping off? direct marketing companies. I don?t mean illegal or immoral rip-offs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-direct-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}