Do Trial Offers Work All That Well?

I though I should share about my personal experience with using trial offers to market your products. I’m sure you know what they’re all about.

Instead of paying a full price for a product from the get-go, with a trial offer a customer gets to test a product for certain number of days for a knockdown price. Once the trial offer period finishes and he decides to keep the product, he then gets billed full amount as per normal. If not, he simply cancels the trial and he won’t be billed again.

This model’s been used with great success by many businesses. Two examples I can think of – the first one is Derek Gehl’s Insider Secrets. The full price of the program is $197 but you get to trial the entire thing for 30 days for just $2.95(!). I’m sure it works great for them because they’ve probably done all the testing there is to be done and they’re still sticking to this model to market Insider Secrets.

The other ultra-successful one is David de Angelo’s Double Your Dating ebook. I think he charges what, $27 for his ebook but he let’s you download the thing for FREE for 7 days. If you like the book, he then bills you the full amount after the week is up. If not, you simply cancel the trial and he won’t bill you a cent (and you still get to keep the book). Again, I’m sure he’s tested his sales process to no end and it probably works very well for his business. I mean, $20million a year in revenue ain’t too shabby at all, right?

So seeing these fine examples online, I thought I should give it a shot, run a little experiment to see how successful this trial offer model could work for my products.

One of my products online goes for $147 – pretty hefty for some people. So I decided to offer a 30-day trial for $4.95 to my list for a limited time and see how well the promotion would pan out.

The pitch was simple – instead of forking $147 up front immediately, for $4.95 you get to download and use the entire product for 30 full days. After 30 days, if you like what you see, do nothing and I’ll bill you the remaining $142.05. If you think it’s not for you, then simply cancel the trial and you practically get to keep the product for a miserly $4.95! (I can’t get anyone to un-download a digital product anyway, can I?)

So I ran the promo. In about a two weeks, we sold over a hundred copies of the product at this trial price. Which I think is pretty decent. Because if you take it to the full amount, in 30 days if no one cancels, you’ll be netting a very neat 15 grand in sales.

But right… you’d be silly to think that no one cancels their trial offers. Over the next few weeks, I received emails every single day asking for a cancellation of their trial offer. Sometimes this could be an indication that your product is utter crap, but I’m pretty that wasn’t the case for me – I’ve been selling the product for close to two years now with a very low refund rate. So I know the product delivers what it promises.

The kicker’s that some people even ask for a cancellation just 24 hours after purchasing the product! How the heck can you actually test and use the entire product in 24 hours and know that it won’t benefit you?

So here’s what I found out. If you decide to use a trial offer, expect some people who just want to get a free ride. They purchase your trial with the intention of canceling it even if they ultimately find that your product is helpful and useful. So expect to get an increase in those kinds of customers.

I guess if you’re selling a physical product, things could a lot more different. Someone is going to be a lot less willing to cancel his trial and spend money to have to ship the product back to the company (plus he also paid for shipping for the product to reach him!). So if you’re marketing a physical product, this could work out pretty well for you (kinda like Insider Secrets).

All in all, the MAJORITY of customers I got were good ones. They genuinely wanted to test the product out and they paid the full price when they discovered that the product actually helped them. So yes the promo was a success for me – I sold copies to customers who otherwise may not have purchased my product without the trial offer. Just note that along the way, you’ll get your fair share of freebie seekers taking advantage of your trial offers as well.