The great offers that are snatched back

We come across these truth-but-not-the-whole-truth sales and marketing tricks every day

special offers that aren’t very special when you read the small print

massive discounts that turn out to only apply to a few items

wonderfully enticing radio adverts – followed by a long, very rushed, and garbled piece of gobbledegook telling you why the offer probably doesn’t apply to you!

The ‘Snatch-back Offers’

You get the potential customer interested in your product.

And then you say ‘Fooled you!! You can’t have it’

It is a strange way of influencing the customer’s feelings regarding your brand.

Here in Bournemouth we have one large department store which holds a Special Sale every few months.  They have huge windows on two streets and each time they hold a Sale these windows will have big posters, sometimes filling the window announcing 60% Off! The letters are usually about 3 feet high.

This scam got me once – I actually crossed the road to go into the store and then looked carefully at the poster and in very light letters about 4 inches high and just below the giant 60% was the condition “on marked items only”!

What’s the thinking behind this approach?

These tricks or scams seem to be dreamed up by sales and marketing staff who have real disdain for their would-be customers, including a belief that these customers don’t really have that many active brain cells…

It’s insulting rather than respectful to would-be customers.

It’s a short-sighted approach that ultimately (and often quite quickly) damages the brand.

I fell for the snatch-back lure at the local department store only once – and even then I stopped before entering the store and noticed the snatch-back conditions. And I have never shopped there on one of their ‘special sales’ ever since.

I wonder how much business they have lost over the past couple of decades years since I first noticed this scam…?

There is a longer article on this topic on our main website.