Marketing is happening all around you.  In today's Vlog, I discuss my experience at Chick-fil-a and what we can learn from them that we can apply to our email marketing — specifically eMail Opt-Ins.

[transcript:]

I’m in line at Chik-fil-A on my way home from work and I saw a marketing thing that I wanted to point out to you. My wife really likes Diet Coke from Chik-fil-A, so a lot of times when I’m on my way home from work I’ll pick her up a Diet Coke. I noticed this was going on at Chik-fil-A – check this out. ]

I’m not sure if you can see that, but that is a sign that says “Chik-fil-A is offering free breakfast sandwich from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM once a week,” and it’s every Thursday in April, every Tuesday in May, and every Wednesday in June.

Now, why in the world would they want to do that?

Well, there’s probably at least a couple of things to think about here that are both pretty obvious to you. First of all, it’s a loss leader; they’re giving the sandwich away and they probably will sell a cup of coffee and maybe some side potatoes, maybe they’ll sell another sandwich because there are two people in the car. They’ll probably break even on the free sandwich. They won’t make a profit, but they won’t lose that much money either.

The real thing is that they’re creating this reciprocity thing. They’re also getting their product out there. You give something to somebody, they feel like they owe you something. The other thing is someone tries your product, they love it, and guess what? They come back and they tell their friends. Before you know it you’ve created some kind of buzz marketing and you have people coming back on the strength of what you gave them.

When I taste that Chik-fil-A chicken biscuit breakfast sandwich and I find out that it’s really fantastic, I’m going to come back and get another one even if it’s not free. Who knows, I might come by once or twice a week and all of a sudden I’m a regular Chik-fil-A customer and I weigh 30 pounds more than I did when this all started. Of course, that’s a whole other thing.

You’re trying to do the same thing when you create an email newsletter opt-in. You want to get people to opt-in, to give you permission so that you can overwhelm them with fantastic content that causes them to know, like, and trust you, and then they can trust you for whatever purposes that you want to do down the road to market to them in an ethical way.

So that’s what I thought I’d talk to you about Chik-fil-A because I’m out vlogging.