How a giveaway delayed or lost my order

Yesterday I told a story about an opt-in giveaway I signed up for (opt-in to win prizes from a few companies, etc, etc).

Today I want to share some details about how that giveaway delayed an order for one of the companies.

I was browsing this store and getting ready to order a couple of products. I was narrowing down which one I wanted before I bought.

That's when I saw the giveway pop-up and noticed it included a few other companies I trust. Clicking though to it (leaving the product page) I noticed there was a $100 gift card as one of the prizes.

Seeing as that gift card would buy more than what I was planning to order and that I'll probably not ever need to order these products again, I decided to delay my purchase and see how this giveaway turns out.

Best case for me, I win and get the products I wanted to buy for free (worst case for company).

Worst case for me, I don't win and order later on if I remember.

In either case, the company misses out on my order for at least several weeks and risks losing the order entirely if I forget about it. (Last time I thought about these products was about five years ago and delayed the purchase back then)

Knowing how giveaways work, they might even offer me a participation discount which is just extra money for me.

Giveaways can be good for building your mailing list but they can be disruptive to potential buyers. They take attention and promotion away from your regular product promotion so you need to make sure you can weather the drop in sales or scale up your marketing to compensate.

This is just one example of how customer behavior is complex and messy. If you haven't installed Repeat Customer Insights yet, it's an easy way to get a detailed look at your customer behavior and maybe learn how to prevent some of these situations.

Eric Davis

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Topics: Customer behavior Giveaway

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