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Smart Sales At Audible

Monday, July 25, 2005

Even though my experiences as a customer with Audible are often poor, they do have smart ideas from time to time if you look at it from a business point of view.

The first smart thing they do, is give away free content every week. At Audible, you can take out a subscription to magazines, newspapers and radio shows. Every week they have a short bit of audio, usually about an hour, that gets you acquainted with a magazine, newspaper or radio show. Of course, the idea behind it is that, if you like the show, you subscribe to it.

The second thing they do right, is their sales. Most of the time they give you a discount if you buy a certain amount of books, or they have all classics on sale or something. At the moment, they are running an especially nice sale: you get 50% off when you take out a subscription. This will make it a lot easier for people to start taking out subscriptions. And once they are accustomed to their Scientific American or Harvard Business Review, they'll renew without even thinking about it.

But it's the combination of the free content and the subscription sale that's really the icing on the cake. You try some shows for free and find one you like. You're still not entirely sure about taking that subscription and then the subscription sale comes along. It's now or never! Nice.

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