Casillero del Diablo has a promotion on right now: 2 free audio books from audible.co.uk. I’d never tried this Chilean Sauvignon Blanc 2009 before, and I’d never bought an audiobook before, so it seemed like a good way to pass a Friday night. The promotion appeared on a neck collar, and it was only when I opened it that I saw that it involved registering my credit card… it suddenly didn’t look like such a good deal because I could see myself ending up losing some money.
The neck collar instructions said “Logon to the website below with your unique code to take advantage of this great offer. chileanlegend.com/rewards“. Unfortunately this URL immediately re-directed to www.southamericanwines-coinks.co.uk/concha_rewards/ which was quite disconcerting as it effectively meant that the instructions were impossible. I could see this promotion amongst a few others on the home page, but the whole brand experience was lost. I clicked on the ‘view details’ link, but if you’re going to redirect somebody randomly from one website to another, at least redirect them to the correct page. Why make the user jump through another hoop?
There was a nice big ‘Claim reward’ button on the next page, so I clicked on it, only to be confronted with a page that said “You don’t appear to be logged in. Please either log-in or sign up first.” OK… so now I started looking for a sign up button. The trouble is, why should I trust a website called “southamericanwines-coinks” which wasn’t even mentioned on the pack? Many suspicious consumers would have dropped off by now, but I suspected mere ineptness, so I progressed in the interest of research.
I clicked on the ‘Sign-up’ button, and I was taken to a page that said “Create a Coinks account”. Coinks? In the back of my mind I thought I may have created a Coinks account so I clicked on the ‘login’ button. But seriously there’s so much disruption going on here. Do they seriously think that “Create a Coinks account” needs no explanation?
Having now logged in, I was confronted with a page that asked me what I would you like to do now, offering 3 options:
- Add points to your account by entering a code
- Use your points to take up a Reward
- Use your points to enter a Competition
This was confusing, because the neck collar had said “logon to the website with your unique code”. I wasn’t sure what to do next, but I decided to add points to my account by entering the code. Having done this, I discovered that I’d added 10 points to my account. But what did that mean, and how did I now get my audio books? I clicked around the site a bit, and ended up on a page that seemed to let me move forward. It asked if I wanted to convert 10 points for 2 audio books. I clicked ‘Confirm’.
I then waited, and waited for the ‘loading…’ screen to go, but to no avail. After a few minutes, I took the risk of refreshing the page and re-submitting. This time it worked and I was finally taken to the Audible site. I clicked the ‘Start Your FREE TRIAL’ button. Potentially for the second time, I was asked to fill in a form to submit my details. I’d love to see the drop-off for this promotion.
I then had to fill in my credit card details and was finally allowed to choose my audiobooks. I chose All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin and Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk. I then had to install the Audible desktop software. Eventually I got them both onto my iPhone. Cancelling my Audible account was very easy. In fact, they gave me an extra £5 voucher as an incentive to stay!
So I got £35 worth of audio books for a £5 bottle of wine, and the wine was actually quite nice. The brand was completely lost in the redemption process, but if the aim of the promotion was to incentivise trial then it probably did a good job as I’ll buy another bottle. Hanging off the back of Coinks and Audible also kept the cost to an absolute minimum. The whole user experience was confusing though, and a few hours of thinking the mechanic through properly would have increased the click through rate substantially.