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How to Reduce Refunds
By Robert Skrob | September 9, 2010
For 6 years, select information marketers have been “by-invitation-only” subscribers to Dan Kennedy’s Information Marketing Special Reports and Info-Marketing Letters. Now, for a limited time, Dan has opened his vault to make these available to you.
If you’d like to find out more about the archives, visit www.DKArchive.com. Here is an excerpt from Volume 2, Issue 3 of the archives. I’m sure you’ll find it valuable and enlightening.
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First of all, let me caution you not to emotionalize this. I’ve had a client for five years who makes tons of money with a (gulp!) 2% refund rate. Several others I know of abandoned the same market, incidentally, while he stayed, adjusted other aspects of his business and laughs all the way to the bank. (They All Laughed When I Admitted One Out Of Every Five Systems I Sold Came Back For Refund—Until I Got My Bank Statements Out Of The Trunk Of My Mercedes And Showed Them …) Having said that, there are any number of things you can try to bring down the refund rate—here are some of the best:
1. EXAMINE THE PRODUCT AND INTERVIEW CUSTOMERS TO FIND SOME “TRIGGER” OF DISSATISFACTION. It might be too much bulk or too little, something said that is a turn-off. In Jeff Paul’s first info-business, marketing to financial planners, there was one thing triggering most of his refunds, easily fixed. In our JPDK business, we found the “trigger” when an incredibly observant employee noticed that many of the returns had the same audio cassette stopped part way through, at the same spot. Editing out a few sentences at that spot cut refunds by about 1/3. If a lot of product’s coming back, there’s probably a reason!
2. USE A GOOD “STICK” LETTER. This letter resells the product; it is a sales letter rewritten; it may contain a direct confrontation of reasons “losers” fail to use the product. There’s a basic example in the back of The Ultimate Letter book. I use a version of this when I speak at some events; a confirmation letter that goes out immediately when product is being delivered a week or so later. Some I’ve used are 4 to 6 pages long, and work much harder. One is also delivering free teleseminars and the coupon they need to obtain their personal phone consultation. [Note: I exaggerate the delivery time so the stuff gets there sooner than promised, not later]. Also, use the “stick” tools that I’ve created for you: “Farting Cat” and “Ultimate Success Secret.” And if you haven’t carefully read “Cat,” you need to: in one place, it literally IS a “stick” letter, but better because it’s in my voice.
3. USE TESTIMONIALS. Usually, I include them with the above mentioned confirmation letter. I am amazed at the number of info-marketers who fail to use testimonials for this purpose. They should be featured early in the product itself; packed in with product; used with stick letters. TIP: Get some testimonials that directly address this. Egs.: “When I first got Bob’s system, I was overwhelmed and frankly, I started to pack everything up and send it back. Thank heavens Bob’s staff pushed me to the Fast Start call, because …” Go to my NO B.S. SALES book and get the ‘card’ to stick up and look at, to remind you to do this.
4. USE A FAST START CALL. And have an aggressive, multi-step e-mail, FAX and voice blast campaign to get them on this call. Both my client Craig Proctor and Gold/VIP member and client Dean Cipriano are very good at this, and have stats that prove it substantially reduces refunds.
This can also be an opportunity to take buyers on installments back out to a pre-pay (for a premium), for an upsell or some other purpose. I now have clients paying the customers to be on the call.
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If you enjoyed this excerpt, you may want to review the entire Dan Kennedy archive. It is available for a limited time at www.DKArchive.com. Every one of the 72 issues is packed with advanced, specialized, experience-tested insights into what it takes to succeed within the info-marketing business. Visit www.DKArchive.com to reserve your copy.
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