Caroline Middlebrook blogged about a topic that hits close to home and has been a burr under my saddle for some time…forced continuity marketing.

By definition, “forced continuity” means setting up a system where the consumer purchasing a product also incurs a recurring charge for some service or additional product. Usually it’s in the fine print of a sales page, or very briefly mentioned over the phone.

Direct-mail marketers selling books and CD’s used this approach with great success for years. They would offer 5 to 10 titles at a fantastic discount with the requirement that customer would accept monthly “review copies” of additional titles. If the customer didn’t want to keep the book or CD, they could simply mail it back to the publisher. Most publishers started adding minimum purchase requirements to their offers once they figured out that the consumers would purchase their discount offer, receive the next month’s offer, then cancel their “subscription.”

With the advent of the internet, the profit potential of “forced continuity” skyrocketed since,
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