I’m always wary about offers on Facebook. I’m particularly concerned about those which ask you to sign up to do surveys and earn cash (many just want to sell your particulars, so please be careful). For some strange reason, when I saw a Jelly Bee offer of 4 free sample cups of their ‘Ice Jelly Honey Lime’ drink, I signed up. After all, they were offering to deliver those free samples to my home, so why not? I waited… and that delivery never came. When I’d just about forgotten about this freebie, I received an email telling me that due to overwhelming response, the company isn’t able to do any further deliveries BUT I can head to their office (in some ulu location) and get 8 sample cups instead of the original 4 promised.
I’m sure that put a lot of people in a fix. It’s like ‘I want to get angry at you for not delivering on your promise (pun fully intended), but you’re offering me double the number of samples now so… hmm.”
Thankfully, I have the sweetest other half, who went to collect the 8 sample cups for me. Hehe! 
So… does giving out free samples actually help a business?
The straightforward answer: Yes and No.
It really depends on the execution of the free sampling.
#1: Do What You Said You Were Going To Do
I guess it’s no excuse to say that ‘we didn’t expect this overwhelming response’. Singaporeans LOVE freebies. You could have pulled the plug on that promotion once you hit your ‘target’ number. You could have stated that it’s limited to the first (X-number) of customers. So then you don’t take (what seems like) forever to deliver the samples and you don’t disappoint those who aren’t sent those samples.
And I’m sure a lot of people won’t bother ‘chasing’ the company for the missing samples. A few did… via their facebook page. I wouldn’t, as it’d make me feel desperate / cheap / greedy if I were to do that. Even though I can understand it may be a matter of principle for some people: You offered to send me samples, so I gave you my particulars (including my address), so you’d jolly well send me those promised samples.
In short, make it easy for your potential customers to trust and love your company and your brand.
#2: Provide A Call To Action
Unlike in a supermarket, where you can try a sample of the mini hotdogs or the instant coffee, and decide on the spot whether you like it or not, and whether you want to purchase the product right away, samples delivered to someone’s home or collected from an office doesn’t provide this option. There’s no ready stock sitting around for them to grab and go (pay for).
So you need to include, for instance, a coupon that comes with a time-sensitive discount code. “Like our product? Order within the next 15 days and receive free delivery PLUS 25% discount off our retail price. This special offer is not available anywhere else! Code expires on 10th June 2017, 23:59hrs. BUY NOW!”
You don’t want people to take the samples (especially all 8 cups of them) and take their own sweet time to drink it all, then not buy anything, and forget all about the brand / drink.
Once they open the plastic bag containing the 8 samples, there should be at least a slip of paper to notify the potential customer that he/she is doing a sampling, and there’s a special offer to purchase this product and the offer expires very soon, so he/she has to make a decision quickly.
So as I’m enjoying this cold treat, and silently thanking your company for the generosity, I’ll be thinking of whether I should be stocking up our fridge with this drink, or offering it to guests at someone’s birthday party, etc.
Also, there should be a call from the company within a week of me receiving the samples, to ask if I have feedback (so important for companies) or would like to place an order (take my money now!) Assuming each person who receives a call and places an order ends up buying 2 cartons ($48), and each call takes about 5 minutes, in one hour, 12 calls can be made, yielding $576 revenue. Assuming the staff doing the calling just works for 3 hours, that’s $1,728 revenue in a day. Multiplied by 20 days, that’s $34,560 in revenue that month just from the sampling + follow-up calls. And that’s just a very conservative estimate since there was an ‘overwhelming response’ to the free sampling.
#3: Make Sure The Product Is Amazing
I really do like this drink. It’s like a calamansi drink with jelly that, when served cold, is so refreshing and thirst-quenching. Also, according to Mom, it whets the appetite. I think this drink would be great with, say, sambal stingray or laksa. #IAmHungry Bubble tea lovers will certainly like this one. Instead of these little cups they come in (with those impossible-to-tear-open lids that you have to stab with a fork or straw), the drink should be packaged in bottles, like the new Milo Peng bottles. I certainly won’t mind getting a bottle of this ‘ice jelly honey lime’ instead of my usual (overpriced) bubble tea.
That said, I do wonder why ‘jelly’ isn’t listed in their ingredients list. It states “Water, Sugar, Lime, Lemon, Honey and Permitted Preservatives”. So where’s the ‘jelly’?
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That’s all for now. I just thought I’d put together this blogpost after I saw how the initial generosity of a company might not give it the sales figures it desires because certain parts of the sampling process needs tweaking. It’s not that sampling doesn’t work, it’s just that the process needs work. I have a few other ideas for them that I may or may not convey to them privately. We’ll see.
