Giving a gift to sweated a potential customer is extremely powerful. It is better than a discount and is usually cheaper. Consider the loyalty card in coffee shops. For every 10 cups you get one free. You have spent between thirty and forty pounds for a reward of something that cost a few pennies to make. A return on investment of thousands of percent.
People love getting something for nothing and even if the thing they get has no value what so ever. Two for the price of one is better than 75 pence off. At a subconscious level we know it is not free but has been allowed for in a marketing budget. However we still want it. Reality has no place in our emotional response and we will continue to crave the free gift even if we don’t really want it.
In order to make the gift have even more attraction make it difficult to get. Time date it or only offer it to the first ten that come forward. Make it conditional on selling our soul to a perverse algorithm. If you can make the offer a prize for some competition then you will have your customers beating a track to the door. The return on the free gift is out of proportion to the investment.
Peter Bull ( Author of Get In Touch With Your Mas Market)