“Try the new ___ Risk Free for 30 days! Keep the ____even if you return the _____ for a full refund”
That’s the template for the ad.
Fill in the blanks.
How about ;
“Try our new 8 pound upright vacuum cleaner Risk Free for 30 days! Keep the $69 Air Purifier even if you return the vacuum cleaner for a full refund”
“Try the new Salad Mixer Risk Free for 30 days! Keep the bottle opener even if you return the Salad Mixer for a full refund”
This kind of Risk Free offer works. It works better than a straight offer to sell your product. The net sales are always higher, even after refunds & lost free gifts.
Why does this appeal work? Because it takes the major objection away “What if I don’t like it?”
The big key here is the free gift that they get to keep anyway. The customer must want the gift. The gift can’t be a part of the original offer.
For example, you can’t offer a vacuum cleaner & say that they can keep the bags even if they return the vacuum. The bags are worthless without the vacuum. The free gift must have value all by itself.
Most importantly….
The offer must be able to be sold without the “30 day trial”. The offer must be good enough by itself.
The reason this “guarantee” headline works soooo well is this:
The customer feels that they are only “trying” the product. They don’t feel a commitment to keep it.
The customer’s brain keeps telling them that the free gift is really free.
The feeling is that they own the free gift and are only trying out the main product.
Here’s why they don’t return the main product……..
1) The find that they really REALLY like the product they bought.
2) You send them a free gift right after they buy to make them feel “warm & fuzzy” toward keeping the product. And this additional gift confuses what they have to return (in the customer’s mind)
3) It actually takes an effort to return something & get a refund.
4) 30 days is long enough so that they aren’t thinking every day about how much time they have left to return it.
This type of headline and offer only work if the core product makes the customer completely happy. You can’t use this technique to sell junk.
Retail stores that use this appeal almost have no more refunds than normal.
The first time you use this, you’ll think that you’ll get lots of refunds. But you can depend on human nature to keep your refunds to a few percent, it that.
We ran the ad once. We noticed two things;
1) We didn’t get that many more people in the store . and
2) We had no refunds at all.
The biggest benefit we’ve seen is that it gets the reader to read the rest of the ad, because it’s such a good deal.
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