Free Samples?
Product giveaway comes with a price tag: users’ personal information TIRED OF FINDING your mailbox cluttered with those tiny samples of shampoo that you’ll never use?
So are the packaged goods companies that market those products. One Web entrepreneur has come up with a system to deliver free product samples to people who want them – in exchange for some personal and demographic information.
Freesamples.com, in business since midsummer, has been partnering with packaged goods companies with the help of direct response trade ads in publications like Adweek, Brandweek, and The Industry Standard.
Potential users have been attracted by DR space ads in eight Conde Nast magazines including Vogue, Glamour, Bon Appetit and other titles, says Jeff Malkin, CEO of the San Francisco-based firm.
More ads will run in January and a number of co-branding deals Malkin declines to elaborate on will be finalized.
Freesamples used another tactic to attract registrants in a sweepstakes promotion last summer. To play, participants had to refer others, helping build the file of potential users. And the company has gotten a number of registrations from further references and other viral marketing efforts.
These initiatives have lined up about 500,000 site registrants and such packaged goods marketers as Dole, Kellogg, Planters, PowerBar and S.C. Johnson, giving the site 65 different brands to work with.
To get free samples, users must give their name, address and basic demographic information like year of birth, number of people in the household, and income level (an optional category).
But there’s a catch. Those who withhold personal information are ineligible to participate in the sampling program and other activities such as sweepstakes and promotions.
Malkin stresses that Freesamples won’t rent its lists, and will only contact users with their permission. The company does ask participants how frequently they wish to be contacted. This data, Malkin says, may be used by some of the packaged goods firms to determine who to send coupons or other promotions to.
Product samples are being offered in categories such as automotive, beauty and spa, candy and gum, entertainment and others.
“Not every site registrant is going to be offered the same products,” says Malkin.
