These are some of the questions I asked myself this week after receiving an email from an internet marketing company. The email itself wasn’t offensive. It was what happened after I clicked on the email. Actually, it was what happened after I signed up for the FREE seminar that made my blood curdle.

The first email of the campaign was short, simple and enticing…

Debra,

Want a chance to win $30,000??

We’ve given away iPads, trips to Costa Rica, and all sorts of stuff.

Yes, I’m a bit CRAZY, but I guess you can say I’m in love with marketing.

To find out how you can win $30,000:

CLICK HERE!!!!

Of course, I’d love to win $30,000, who wouldn’t? So I click. The sales letter page then promises me the following:

three of the top marketing powerhouses from the Infusionsoft community (Ultimate Marketer: Bob Britton, SEO Expert: Grant James, and Internet Guru: Micah Mitchell) have now joined forces and developed the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT thing a business owner needs to triple their sales and profits in 12 months or less,

The landing page goes on to claim:

“We have decided to host a special “FREE Sneak Peak, Live Event“  for the first 100 people to register.”

“you can attend WITHOUT shelling out your hard earned cash for a plane ticket, a hotel room or ANYTHING else,”

“YES! I Want To Be One Of Only 100 People To Attend This FREE Live Sneak Peek Event Into How Your Guys Systems Can Stuff An EXTRA $100,000+ Dollars This Year Into My Wallet! YES! I Also Want To Learn How I Can Win The $30,000 Cash”

Notice the use of the word free everywhere.

There was also a line that said this:

“having a one in 50 chance of winning $30,000”

If they are accepting 100 registrations, how do your odds become 1 in 50? There are no contest terms listed. No legalese at all anywhere.

Here’s the worst part…

Once you type in your name and email, they send you to a new page that says this…

“Your registration request for the “Infusion Elite Mastermind Sneak Peek Live Event” has been received, but before I can register you I first need you to pay a seat deposit of $97.”

“IMPORTANT!!: If you DO NOT pay the seat deposit, you WILL NOT receive a link for this event and you’re spot WILL NOT be reserved.”

And there is a video of the Infusionsoft Ultimate Marketing Award Winner (he makes this claim in the video) telling everyone why they need to pay $97 and they only get it back if they actually attend the event.

So they entice people with a $30,000 prize. They offer no terms and conditions regarding the contest rules. They play upon their relationship with Infusionsoft and their authority as the Ultimate Marketer of the Year. They tell you its free to join. Then after you sign up they say that you can’t complete the registration until you pay them $97.

I found this to be the type of campaign that gives internet marketers a slimy reputation. I found it to be borderline ethical and legal (deceptive advertising).

I now ask you, my readers,

What would you do?

Do you find this to be ethical?

Is this the type of role model we should be emulating?

Here’s a link if you want to check it out. PLEASE DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY!

Have you ever tried to sell something to a customer online and wondered how to get them to buy more from you?

Here’s how…

The way you implement an upsell depends on the type of online selling you are doing. Here are 4 ways to get more sales now…

1. Script
2. Related Items
3. People who bought this also bought
4. Confirmation Page

So, when do you use these?

A phone script is used when you have a custom product or service and your customer usually places a phone call to get help making a selection or placing the order. When they place the order by phone, you want to have a script ready or you need to train your sales associate on what to offer. It can be a simple question like “Do you need a blouse to match that skirts?”

If you have an online shopping cart system with a catalog of products, you can implement the “related items feature”. What this does is once the customer selects a product either on the product detail page or in the shopping cart, the customer sees suggested or related items that complement the product they have chosen.

A similar feature is for the product detail page or the shopping cart itself to display a list that shows “people who bought this also bought”. Amazon.com was one of the pioneers of this upselling technique.

When you are selling from a squeeze page and there is no shopping cart, just an order form, you can still provide an upsell to the customer. Once the order is placed, you can direct that client to a new order confirmation page that confirms their order AND has an additional offer on it. Some systems allow you to create a funnel where you can offer a sequence of upsells and down-sells that changes based on the response of the individual customer.

These four techniques can be very effective at increasing your sales immediately. Once implemented, these techniques invoke the psychologically triggered behavior of commitment and consistency to increase your average order size.

Do you have any other techniques you like to use to upsell your customer?

The best time to get your customer to buy more is at the time of sale.

That’s right, offering your customer an immediate up-sell is going to get you better results than waiting until later. There’s a reason that an immediate up-sell is going to get your better results than one that is offered at a later time. The reason is rooted in psychology.

You see, there’s a behavior called “Commitment and consistency” that says that we as humans have an overwhelming need to behave consistently once we make a public commitment. So when we finally pull the trigger and make a purchase, we have this innate desire to behave consistently with that decision or commitment that we just made. So, when I decide to become a customer of yours, there’s an innate drive to stay a customer of yours. Therefore if you present me with an offer, I have a higher likelihood of buying more while I’m still feeling this commitment. This behavior drives us to purchase again.

Have you applied this to your business?

One form of social validation used in marketing is called “social proof”. You will see this in the form testimonials and case studies. When we see that someone else like us is using the product or service and is happy with it, we have a strong desire to join them. The more people participating, the stronger the desire to participate.

You will see marketers using social validation when they broadcast that an event has sold out (or is about to), or that they have surpassed their goals. You see, that means that more people liked what they are offering than even they expected and the implication is that you will like it too.

When you add in some validation from authority, you up the ante. You see, when people perceive someone as an authority figure, they have a higher tendency to do what that person says. Think “4 out of 5 doctors prefer”. That is an example of a marketer using the perception of authority to promote their product.

So, when you go to the movies this weekend to see Avatar, let me know if you liked it. Then let me know WHY you liked it. did you like it because it was a great story line? Did you like it because the graphics were amazing? Did you like it becauase everyone else did (social validation)? Or, did you like it because it got good reviews (authority)?

Why do I think this is great?

First, I had no knowledge of the movie before being directed here. Even after landing here, I simply watched a couple of videos and could pretty much guess that the movie was about a family fighting to save their kids. The nature of the contest was inline with the theme of the movie. It completely supported the plot. And, even better, it attracted the kind of people who are likely to want to watch the movie; people who know people who are living under extraordinary circumstances.

Can you see the viral effect? All you have to do is notify a couple of charities about the contest and it spreads like wildfire. They notify everyone in their organization, who notify all their friends and family, who notify theirs. Who wouldn’t want to win some money for the cause they are championing? Who wouldn’t want to support their friends in contributing to their cause? Of course we are going to spread the word.

It also helps that the site makes it easy to spread the word. They integrate Twitter, Facebook and other social networking tools right into the site to make it easy for people to spread the word.

This is a great way to build community because it engages your customers, gets them involved in a way that supports the product. It attracts their ideal customer to them and creates awareness virally. People are committed to the movie because they are committed to their cause (or that of their friends). If they make a video or vote for a video there is a part of them that wants to act consistently with that choice and actually see the movie. The movie is supporting them, why shouldn’t they support the movie?

There is a lot of goodwill generated with this contest. You get a warm, fuzzy feeling from the movie because they are supporting their customers. Here is where the psychological trigger of reciprocity kicks in. They do something to help us, so we want to do something to help them.

So, take a look at the Extraordinary Matters Quilt and let me know what you think. What do you like or dislike about it as a method of building community? What other examples of great community building would you like to share?

Why do people line up at 5 am, 3am or even 1 am to get the Black Friday Deals? What possesses people to stay up all night and wait in line in 30 degree weather? I personally classify this as insanity. Yet people all over America do it. Why?

When I was at Microsoft, we were able to create that same frenzy around a product launch. There was always a big launch event every time a new product or service was released. And, people would wait in line for that item, and frenzy was created.

I had colleagues that used to say, “We don’t do sustaining marketing. We launch products!” but what did they mean by this? What does Black Friday have in common with these “Product launches”?

Let’s take a look…

It all begins with the psychology of scarcity. People have some sort of innate reaction to the fear of losing access to something they desire. As an item or opportunity becomes less available, we lose our personal control over that item. The desire to preserve our freedom of choice and maintain control makes us desire that item even more than before.

So, if we limit the quantity, have a time deadline, or create a perceived competition for the item, that item becomes more attractive to us because we think we can’t have it. Our need for control takes over and we wait in line in zero degree weather at 5 in the morning to get it. And there you have one of the primary driving forces behind Black Friday.

Scarcity: Specific Deadline

To apply this in your own business you need to create a compelling reason why a customer can only have access to a particular item by a specific deadline or they will lose the opportunity. This is often portrayed as “Act Now while supplies last.” And “Offer ends Dec. 23rd”. Black Friday Deals are usually only available one day only.

Scarcity: Lost Advantages

A second method of creating a Black Friday-like scarcity is to point out what people will lose if they don’t take advantage of an opportunity. To do this you would identify for them their “lost advantages”, rather than focusing on the benefits they gain. What are they going to lose out on?

Scarcity: Competition

A third method of using scarcity to drive sales in your business would be to create the perception that if you doesn’t do this thing then someone else will and one will lose their chance of doing it. For example, “we only take the first 50 people”, or “Limited supplies available”. This suggests that their will be competition to get those spots and if you don’t act quickly, you will lose your chance to participate. Again, these are common techniques used to create a Black Friday Sales Frenzy.

Scarcity is a powerful tool of persuasion. Once you are aware of it, you can use it to improve your sales in your own business and even create your own version of a Black Friday Sales Frenzy.