How to Leverage The WIFM Factor

For a society that has often shunned discount coupons as something distasteful, it’s somewhat surprising that the popularity of discount companies like Groupon, Living Social or RockBottom has reached such a feverish pitch.

But for those of us who are died-in-the-wool direct marketers, and who understand the power of the greed factor or the “What’s In It For Me?” (WIFM) factor, it makes complete business sense.

As any good marketer knows, there’s no point to sending out a 1:1 marketing message without a compelling offer. Offers are the reason you give your target to “act now,” while the rest of the message is crafted to present the most compelling reasons why the product/service is perfect for them.

Offers have often been treated with disdain by many marketers. But I was always taught to lead with your BEST offer — the offer the recipient won’t find anywhere else; An offer that is too good to refuse; And an offer that will compel the target to raise their hand and say “count me in!”

If positioned properly, a superior offer to the right audience will achieve dramatic results (fantastic email open, click through and conversion rates; superior direct mail response rates). No matter how you measure it, a marketing initiative with a superior offer will propel a sales program to a new level of success.

But in my experience, that’s not what companies do when putting together the offer.

Instead, they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince their organization that a paltry “10% off” is necessary for their initiative, and everyone is disappointed when the email open rate/direct mail result is dismal.

But now the “put forward your best offer” strategy has been proven to be true once again.

Take Groupon, for example. I got caught up in the excitement the first time my local golf course offered a round of golf for 4, 4 pull carts, and 4 tokens for a bucket of practice balls (a $118 value) for only $50. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to smell a deal because it seems over 400 people took advantage of this offer!

Now, let’s do the math together… that means this Groupon deal generated $20,000 of gross revenue. And, since Groupon keeps half, the golf course received $10,000 in revenue… up front… before the buyers even took advantage of the offer. Why is that good news?

It’s called C-A-S-H F-L-O-W. The golf course ran an offer, and got $10,000 in sales just like that. They don’t need to wait for the coupons to be redeemed (in fact, some folks will forget to redeem them).

But more importantly, it proved that a good offer — no, a GREAT offer — works. It drove their target to respond… immediately.

So, the next time you spend marketing dollars to put together an email or direct mail campaign, stop and spend some time on offers. Your goal should be to put together your BEST offer in order to get your BEST result.

And, if that particular golf course hadn’t used Groupon for distribution, they would have received $20,000 in cash instead of $10,000.

But this golf course has never asked me for my email address… or my mailing address, so they don’t seem to have a database. Which means they have no idea who their customers are… and that’s just shameful.