Yesterday I wrote about deception in marketing. Today I want to follow up on the example that I talked about.
I reloaded the landing page with the scarcity tactics again. The date (as I expected) was today’s date. The number of copies available was still 17. I know that at least 1 copy was downloaded by me.
So there we have it — 2 blatant lies on the landing page.
I decided to follow the exit splash pages and see where it lead. Rather interesting. There were 4 exit splashes in all.
The first was another opt-in page for a different product.
Exiting from that brought me to a sales page for another product (discounted from $77 to $4.95 until Midnight December 8, 2010).
Exit again, another sales page. This time for the same product but a free 10 day trial (just $4.95 processing fee). Uh, okay — NOT!
Exit and another exit splash page. This one is the creme-de-la-creme of exit splashes! I’m at the ClickBank page to enter my order information from the last sales page!
Can you imagine this at a shoe store?
“I don’t really like any of the shoes that you’ve shown me. I’m going to leave now.”
“That’s okay sir, but would you like to step over to the cash register on your way out? We can run your credit card and put these shoes in a bag for you.”
I don’t know whether I should feel angry at this guy or sorry for him. At least I can imagine that most people would never follow the trail all the way to the end like I did. I normally wouldn’t. In fact, I rarely follow exit splashes at all.
I’m hoping that once his emails start coming that they will show a little more integrity.
NOTE: This post is a Ramblings Classics. It was originally published at Ramblings on December 12, 2010.