The Price of Pagers
Pagers have been the best-selling electronic item in the U.S. for the last four years, topping cellular phones, personal communications systems, and other wireless devices. With beepers so popular and commanding between $80 and $100 dollars a pop, how can mass marketers afford to give away thousands of them as premiums?
It works like this. Rather than pay for the pagers, promoters simply project how many will be distributed, then give the supplier, such as PageMaster, a refundable deposit starting at about $1 per unit. When a purchase is made, consumers interested in signing on need only call the toll-free number prominently featured on all marketing materials prepared by the sponsoring company. To get activated, they prepay for a year’s worth of service (around $10 per month for local coverage) plus shipping and handling charges. Beepers are delivered within 48 hours.
PageMaster manages the paging inventory and provides fulfillment via a Dallas-based customer service center manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that can field over six million calls monthly. This comes at no cost to the client company offering the promotion. In fact, the company’s only technical responsibility is to create its own marketing and advertising. PageMaster, meanwhile, makes its money from the pager activations.
