Customer Service 101: good service = marketing
Last week, I lowered the digital download price for all of our albums on CD Baby's website from $15.97 to $9.97.
The first thing I did after lowered the price was to contact the only customer who actually paid that whopping $16 for a digital album download -- I invited him to receive a free digital download of any other album we've published on account of the reduced price. He was appreciative, and accepted a download of Kathy Mar's CD.
Even though
I've never been treated like this personally as a customer, I thought it was so obviously the right thing to do:
* It didn't cost Prometheus anything - just 20 minutes or so of my time - since the album was technically a 'promo' copy under the terms of our artist contracts.
* And why
wouldn't I go out of my way for any customer honest enough to pay $16 for a set of MP3 files that he could have ripped from a friend's CD for free in a matter of minutes? The customer may have also implicitly picked up on the truth that we value our customers primarily as people, and only secondarily as the source of revenue that we rely upon for making more albums.
* Finally, I am guessing his receipt of a "hey, we significantly lowered the price of what you bought, let us give you something else for free" e-mail may be a memorable experience for him. Perhaps it's even unusual enough that he may even retell it to a few of his friends.
Admittedly, I wasn't thinking about any of these personal benefits when I did it: I just felt that if I were the customer, I'd feel a bit pissed if I paid $16 for something and saw it available a few weeks later for $9 without any explanation from the company.
But the consequence remains that genuinely treating your customers well is a form of marketing. 
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