The best response rates I ever garnered on a marketing campaign was 58%. Even better, 38% of those who saw any part of the campaign, whether it be email, direct mail, display posters, info pamphlets, counter cards…etc., converted.
I was running a boutique marketing agency with another woman at the time this campaign was done. When she introduced the idea, I knew it was evil. It would cost our target market, mainly low-income Latino airline workers, way more than they were currently paying on their car loans.
I designed a comp (a visual of the projected campaign) and my partner presented it. Campaign tagline: “Get lower monthly car payments, or get $250 cash!”
“You’ll never have to pay a penny on the marketing promise if you just extend the timeline of the loan to lower your borrowers’ monthly rates,” my partner explained to our client. “And while it’ll take them longer to pay off their loans, it’s additional interest for you, and a nice little boost in profits,” she assured the CEO.
The client loved the idea and gave it her go-ahead.
My partner was the front woman. Sales. I was the firm’s creative director and it was my job to create the campaigns for the clients she brought in. We handled a lot of DTC campaigns for banks and credit unions, and some emerging tech too. Most of our stuff was pretty straightforward — marketing banking ‘products,’ policy changes and mergers that screwed the customers but profited the corps. Tech was the cleanest, morally speaking, as it was just coming online. We introduced Stac Electronics to the world (then Microsoft ripped them off).
Fast forward 30+ years to last week. I need a new phone, my old cell so cracked I couldn’t read texts anymore. Hate AT&T which I’ve been with since I got my own landline at 14 (way before cellphones). If you’ve ever been with them, you’ll know why I hate AT&T. Decided to go with Verizon after our daughter transferred her number to them. (As a college grad now, she gets to be responsible for her own bills.) Plus Verizon had a FREE iPhone 15 with sign up.
Verizon signed our daughter up for $45 a month including all the data she needed. My husband and I were paying AT&T $184 for our two phones, and mine had NO data on it as it’s not, and never will be online.
My husband and I visited Verizon last week to get FREE iPhones, a cheaper phone plan similar to our daughter’s, and away from AT&T.
Except the iPhone wasn’t actually FREE.
There was tax on the phone for its inflated value of $999. And the cheapest plan we could get for just our two ‘FREE’ iPhones was over $79 each monthly, or $158 a month before taxes. And the new iPhones would be ‘LOCKED’ to Verizon, meaning if we wanted to go to another carrier, Verizon makes it impossible to unlock your phone from them if you get it ‘FREE’ through them.
Clearly Verizon, and all the other phone carriers are scamming us with their ‘FREE’ phone offers.
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile…etc, phone carriers are doing to most of us exactly what my biz partner and I did to the low-income Latino airline workers that belonged to our credit union client. It was evil then.* It’s evil now.
How to Avoid Getting Screwed by your Cellphone Carrier
Our daughter got her $45 rate from Verizon, including taxes, because a week earlier we’d given her an iPhone 15, purchased at an Apple store for her college graduation. We bought it UNLOCKED, so it did not belong to any carrier. She was able to choose the cheapest phone plan with Verizon because she did not have to PAY for their ‘FREE’ [locked] iPhone that she could not take to another carrier if she was unhappy with Verizon.
So, my husband and I went looking for UNLOCKED cellphones. We didn’t want to spend an additional 2gs for iPhones, so we were trying to find some inexpensive Androids. Except we couldn’t find hardly any, except on Amazon, which has destroyed retail and I don’t shop on it anymore.
Walking into Best Buy. The store was vacant of customers and their shelves empty of most products. Who else besides Amazon has the largest selection of phones available? The phone carriers, since, according to the sales rep at Verizon, most everyone gets their cellphones from these days, “because of our great FREE offers!”
While Verizon offered us $79 per phone with their ‘FREE’ iPhone offer, and wanted to charge us tax on almost a grand, I could get the larger display iPhone 15 from Apple for $899. Further, Verizon wanted a 3 yr contract at the higher rate to “cover the FREE phone.” Apple wants $37.45 a month for only 2 years.
In every possible way, Verizon’s ‘FREE’ iPhone deal is a SCAM, and most everyone is buying into them with any phone carrier these days.
Do you even know how long your contract is with your new ‘FREE’ phone that you cannot take with you to a new carrier? Most people don’t. They blindly, robotically pay their bills.
Let’s bring into this portrait of corporate corruption AUTO-PAY. When I first heard of it I said to my husband, “What kind of idiot would agree to something like that?” Paying vendors for services automatically through your credit card allows these companies to make their screw-ups YOUR PROBLEM while they just keep billing you. No lights? PG&E will still AUTO-charge you. No cable. Comcast will still AUTO-charge you. Problem with your bill? They will still charge you, and now it’s on YOU to get them to give you your money back.
The old way, I simply would not pay them until they cleared up the issue. Not paying them gave them incentive to fix it.
AUTO-PAY also lets these corps raise their rates at will, and so what if your cable bill used to be $140 for the year, and now you’re paying $284 a month. You hardly even notice the slow creep up adding $10 — $30 to your credit card every few months.
My daughter swears by the ‘convenience’ of these financial apps. Well, honey, convenience is hella costly!
So is buying into Verizon’s (or any other phone carriers’) marketing! Like my campaign to the Latino airline workers in the early 1990s, you can bet Verizon’s conversion rates are great from their ‘FREE’ iPhone campaigns with every Apple upgrade…
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