Our free newsletter/marketing tool – the Rose of Sharon Jewelry Birthday Club – was a small success its first year. When several freebie sites posted a link 3 weeks ago, we were hit with over 2,000 subscribers in 3 days! Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would be “mined” and shared like this.
The Birthday Club was created to encourage interested Rose of Sharon Jewelry blog readers and handmade jewelry lovers to keep in touch. Our web site is clear about what the club is – a marketing newsletter.
As a thank you to members, we give you a free (shipping included) pair of handmade earrings or, if you prefer, a generous jewelry discount coupon during your birthday month. The only requirement is you must return to the site, “buy” the earrings (the coupon covers all costs) and provide us with a mailing address. This is pretty standard practice for any type of email marketing. We do not sell, share or otherwise use the info provided except for our basic marketing emails and you can unsubscribe immediately at any time.
We are a small partnership of women working together to market our handmade jewelry so supplying over 2,000 pairs of earrings will be beyond our budget. However, I decided that we are honorable so we should do our best to fulfill our promise. But after this weekend, I’m having some serious second thoughts.
Traffic – Yes. Marketing Value – No?
While I do love having the traffic and many people sent thanks and wonderful comments about our jewelry, there is a dark side to this goodwill marketing effort.You see I have several Google alerts which forward me whenever Rose of Sharon Jewelry is mentioned. That’s when I started reading less than positive messages about our club and free jewelry offering. I also started noticing that a mathematically impossible number of April birthdays were supplied by subscribers.
The word of mouth in freebie forums has been a bit ugly. I have read posts where people set up fathers and brothers and anyone else so they could get free jewelry every month. Many people thought this offer was a scam and would only receive the earring after a purchase or would require expensive postage – all untrue if they had actually read our Birthday Club enrollment message.
I’m a freebie participant too but I think I will rethink this as frankly, I’m really conflicted and upset. I am proceeding with setting up the subscriber base. There is some significant manual data entry required as our Constant Contact form was not fully implemented.
The purpose of this post is to share the important lesson of “be careful what you wish for.” Hopefully, you’ll be able to avoid the pitfalls of offering freebies as a marketing incentive.
Any thoughts? I’d love to hear some feedback.
