If you bought Matt Bacaks Retirement package for $1 recently you may have been mislead by his sales page…
here’s why and also a lesson in marketing using trial offers for everyone (including Matt)
It’s not the product – I still believe the product is good – it is the way the product was sold – the sales system which I’m apologizing about endorsing…here’s why…
First of all, I’d like to offer a public apology for endorsing Matt Bacak’s retirement package for $1 yesterday without checking his sales page more thoroughly as I should have and usually do before sending an endorsement email out for a product.
I’m usually very careful about fully reviewing products as well as the sales process before endorsing things. In fact sometimes I spend all day just reviewing one product to make sure it does what is claims, is not too hypey or overpriced for what they get and will help someone with their business.
I get asked to endorse products daily so we usually have to politely decline many products, even if they are good just because we cannot fit them into our schedule (our own business comes first always).
Many times people have so-so products so we give them a few pointers to improve on them and send them on their way as well.
And then we have the ones that just get deleted as they basically are no good or their approach was off for us.
So let’s back up and do a rewind here…
About a week ago Matt showed me a private login area showing all the videos from his seminars that would be in the $1 for everyone. The videos worked fine then and I watched a few of them and decided they could probably help people out – and at just $1 it is almost free.
Matt also told me that the $1 would go to charity – the Habitat for Humanity - I considered this a very noble thing of him to do as well so it made me more willing to help also.
He explained he’s have a OTO set up for people to get some of his other products also which is quite normal in online marketing for free and low cost offers. The customer can easily just say NO, I only want the free or low cost offer etc, so no problem there.
I’d also met him in person about a year ago in Atlanta and we had talked for a few hours over drinks so I felt good about him.
So I told Matt I’d help him get the word out and wished him the best on his launch. Things got busy as usual around our offices and I forgot about it until yesterday when it was time to send out the mail. The mail was set to go already so figured all was okay and was busy doing things on our business…
when suddenly I get an alarming email from a good friend of mine.
He asked me if I had promoted Matt’s offer said he was very upset with him. I asked why and found out quickly as soon as I saw the sales page that was posted for this $1 offer.
(Click Here to view the sales page and see for yourself)
First of all, it starts out a little too hypey for me, but hey, I just ignore those things anyways and skip on to the meat of the offer. So I scrolled down the page to find the order area and I was shocked at what I found.
It was asking everyone to put in their credit card details to get the $1 offer access and then had a ‘bonus’ of his newsletter for free – that’s it. No mention of rebilling on the order form area until AFTER the person has paid and they have you on autorebill.
This is quite shocking for most consumers and I imagine quite a few were pretty angry, in fact I know a few were angry as the emails from our members started coming soon after asking if we were aware of this etc etc.
So I reread the sales letter about 3 times and then I finally saw where it was mentioned, around the middle of the sales page it says included as a Bonus:
“A Free issue of the Internet Marketing DIRT Print Newsletter. The Internet Marketing Dirt is the newsletter I just started publishing a few months ago, and it is already being praised at the “best of its kind”, “better than any other newsletter on marketing.” And you get to try that out for free… if you don’t want to continue receiving it it’s simple and easy to cancel your $29.97 monthly subscription (you’re crazy if you cancel… but it’s easy to do, and up to you!).”
It was mentioned after the headline: “So Here’s Everything You Get For Just $1″
However, many people (if they read through the sales page) may have read over that and it should have been right on the order form as well.
Not to mention the sales page goes over and over again how they get this great seminar for $1 and how much money they can make etc etc.
In any case, it is the issue of FORCED recurring billing for another product just to get the main product with absolutely no options to just get the main offer is the whole point of this.
It could have easily been a TICK BOX option instead or a OTO after they have gotten the $1 main offer – which is the whole reason people are interested anyways.
It’s like going to a store and buying a book, when you get to the check out counter they say you get this free newsletter included as a bonus also. Great you say, but then they tell you your card will be charged $29.95 or whatever in 30 days. If you say, you don’t want to do that then you cannot buy the book – which is what you wanted in the first place.
It’s not good marketing – PERIOD
Start of Damage Control at midnight for me
I immediately emailed Matt and asked him why he was doing this without ANY mention of the fact that everyone was being added to autorebill for $29.97 his monthly newsletter since it was just a ‘bonus’ anyways and not even part of the main offer.
I pointed out to him that by LAW he must be very clear about this. A quick google search pulled up the FTC link about this which I sent to him so he could rethink what he was doing and correct his mistake asap – which he did.
I got a reply about 30 min later and he’d updated the sales page to say:
Okay – fine – that is the first step at least and as an experienced marketer he should have known that.
It is also MY FAULT for not seeing that before the mail went out so I totally appologize to everyone in regards to the autobilling issue. I couldn’t sleep last night from worry and was up until 4am talking with Matt and replying to others who were complaining.
If anyone signed up and would like to cancel your autobilling please contact them (info is on their sales page website)
Second Lesson Here
Even if you state why you need someone’s credit card and that they will be autorebilled the way this offer was structured was totally off.
The main offer is the package at $1
The autobilling is for a newsletter
Two totally non related products here
So what they should have done (and I told them this – hopefully Matt changes the page) is to put a simple TICK BOX under the $1 offer asking people to check ONLY IF they would like to get 1 month of his newsletter free and be billed in 30 days at full price as an OPTION only.
This most likely would make customers happier and also increase his $1 offer conversions anyways.
I guarantee hundreds if not thousands of people saw that offer only to leave disappointed or angry about having to be put on a rebilling process just to get the orginal $1 offer.
He could have had more sales and more happy customers by making things 100% clear and as options – not ‘forcing’ people into things.
I hope Matt has learned from this and I do hope some of the other promoters also can learn from this.
I know I sure have…I will certainly be even MORE CAREFUL about fully reviewing the sales process as well as the products before endrosements.
In closing I respect Matt for the fact that he did listen to my advice and take action on it (even when no one else seemed to be pointing it out to him) and I think he just made some honest mistakes here. I do not think it was his intention to deceive anyone or try to ‘cheat’ anyone from his original offer.
We all make mistakes and the important thing is we can learn from the.
I posted this somewhat ‘private’ matter here on the public blog for several reasons, none of which are to hurt Matt, in fact we will probably discuss this more today on skype.
I mainly wanted to explain and apologize to all my members – as a token for your lost time & money I’d like to show you where you can get some great ‘FREE’ info as well:
Click Here to Get Free audio podcasts
Click Here to Get a Free Starter Membership to D4M – Lots of quality info inside (Note: you will get a OTO after you sign up – you can just click the No Thanks button – then click No Thanks again and you can enter the Starter member area.)
But ALSO I truely hope this helps anyone in business doing or thinking of doing trial offers. It would be a shame to see similar situations happen to others.
If you are doing trial offers make sure you are VERY CLEAR about your offer, time frame, conditions, rebilling amounts and dates etc BEFORE you ask people to put in their payment details.
Keep your customers happy, provide great products and services and you will certainly succeed in business offline or online. (You can leave your comments below)
so let’s focus on some core elements I used throughout my journey online…
