FREE, FREE, FREE

Yesterday I started a "FREE shipping" special on one of the web sites we own and manage. Sales went through the roof. They usually do.

It's a fact that people don't like paying shipping charges for purchases. It's been our experience that women shoppers especially are far happier to buy when shipping charges are low or removed.

But that's not the point of this story.

We had a customer miss out of the free shipping special by about 30 minutes. He emailed us to ask if he could have the free shipping as well.

Of course he could!

That got us thinking.

We then went back over that days orders and identified previous customers who had ordered and missed out of the free shipping. We emailed them all to tell them we were refunding them the shipping charge. We had a couple of reasons for this:

• These people have helped us grow our business and we want to give them as much as we can,
• The value this year alone of one of the customers was $950 (on a $38 product) - over a lifetime that customer could be worth (easily) $50,000. We want that customer (like all our customers) to get great value,
• It was the right thing to do.

Business isn't about getting as much as you can off your customers. It's about giving your customers as much as you possibly can so they return again and again and again. And again.

Our free shipping special gave us the opportunity to show our customers that we do care about them. And that's worth a whole lot more than $5.50.

Have a good day.

Brendon Sinclair