(This is in response to Tim Warnock's, John Anghelache, and Andrew Cavanagh's excellent rebuttal on another thread: http://www.copywritersboard.com/mark...e-video-3.html .)

Precisely.

There's a difference between "optional continuity," "forced continuity," and "hidden continuity." Optional is self-explanatory. Forced is a very common marketing practice (I'm not a fan of it, but I don't mind it). Forced continuity is not bad in itself.

The problem is, "forced continuity" is getting a bad reputation BECAUSE of marketers using "hidden continuity."

Forced continuity is nothing new. The vitamin industry uses it all the time. Anthony Robbins (as Andrew pointed it out) uses it all the time. Popular products like Video Professor, Columbia House, and tons of others use forced continuity. (One of my students reported to me that "Girls Gone Wild" videos do it, too. I personally don't know, but maybe Mr. Subtle does!?!?)

The fine line (and the whole thing that's not only affecting us marketers as a whole but also that's illegal) is hidden continuity -- or worst yet, when marketers use deception (like hiding tiny print) just so their forced continuity offers are "borderline legal."

Borderline or not, or misleading advertising or not, I'm not trying to focus on the legality of it myself. What I'm concerned with is the bad reputation it creates. It's also killing the good marketers, as well as "forced continuity" offers from legitimate marketers.

That's the real sinister side of forced continuity.

It's the abuse.

The bad taste it leaves in people's mouths creates a negative impact on our industry that affects us all -- including legitimate marketers, as well as marketers using legitimate offers like clear, transparent forced continuity offers.

I spent 2 hours on the phone with Matt Bacak today, on his way to New Orleans to give a check to Habitat for Humanity. He feels really bad about the initial error and backlash it created. And I believe him.

The strange thing about this whole ordeal was, the ability to opt-out at the beginning was actually a programmer glitch. It was supposed to be easily "opt-outable." But it wasn't, because the programmer forgot to make the changes (he was actually working on it), and some affiliates jumped the gun and started promoting prematurely before Matt said so.

(This is a whole different debate, I'm sure. And Matt can defend himself. He's a big boy.)

But, he got hammered as a result, obviously. And he got even more hammered because his offer came out at the exact same time Joel Comm did his thing, which compounded the entire issue.

Add to that the fact that Matt mixed his forced continuity offer with a bunch of upsells one had to listen to and go through before completing their order (which can be annoying), well... this gave people more to sink their teeth into.

Matt or Joel's mistakes aside (which have all since been fixed), the real problem is, is that Matt makes several upsell offers after you paid your $1. And in the flurry of negative feedback I received, what I found was, people were more upset about the upsell offers than they were about the forced continuity. That's what made matters worse.

Like I said to Matt, "If you're going to get a $5,000 seminar for just a buck, putting up with a few 'commercials' ain't bad. But when you're mixing that with a programmer glitch that forces continuity at the beginning, you're bound to freak people out."

My recent blog post had several purposes. For one, I think that people are confusing the issue, here, between optional continuity, forced continuity, and hidden continuity (Matt's was meant to be optional, not hidden, but the programmer made it "forced," which added fuel to the fire).

Plus, I had to blog about it to smooth things a bit on both sides of the issue. My post was, in some way, trying to divert some attention away from the ethics of the practice (which is an entirely different debate), to the more important long-term effects of misunderstanding the difference between forced and hidden...

... And how some real scammers, who do hide their forced continuity offers, on purpose, affects us all as marketers and copywriters as a whole.

The latter is the one I have a BIG problem with. I think that bad marketing causes a lot more problems than Matt's or Joel's mistake.

And when I said "We've seen worse," I meant it. Just last week, one of my coaching students (Liz) bought a package from a company who has a history of delivering poor customer service. (She didn't know this.)

But what dismayed her was, he not only outright refused to cancel her order and refund her (he actually exploited a loophole to prevent any client-side chargebacks), but he also had the coyones to call her an idiot for wanting a refund, and threatened legal action if she continued asking.

Literally!

So when people are forced into continuity, that's one thing. When they're forced into continuity against their will (when it is hidden), that's a whole different ball game. And when they outright refuse to cancel and refund their orders, that's the worst of the bunch.

To me, those are the real scammers. And those are the guys who are giving us a bad name -- including legitimate forced continuity offers. It's no wonder people are scared to buy into a forced continuity offer. (And it's also no wonder why some marketers feel they have to resort to hiding it.)

This floors me!

(Anyway, sorry for ranting.)

Bottom line, there's nothing wrong with forced continuity. And as Andrew pointed out, you need great copywriting to not only sell the continuity offer, but to persuade the customer to KEEP their subscriptions active after they bought.

Even if you're 100% transparent and above board with your forced continuity offer, you still need to sell your customer on keeping their subscriptions active before they signup.

And yes, it takes GREAT copywriting.

Unscrupulous tricks like hidden continuity only come back to bite. My husband was doing about $300 worth of business a year with a direct mail company who sells men's clothing and accessories. He'd been doing so for at least 10 years. Somehow he was "automatically enrolled" in a $10/month "travel club" through them. It appeared on several months' credit card statements before we caught it. When we called the company to ask about it, we were told nobody was automatically enrolled, he would have had to request it. (Yah. Right.) We were able to chargeback the most recent month, but not the previous months. (Note to self: pay more attention to the credit card statements.) Foolish company. Now their mailings just get tossed right into the trash. We'll never be doing business with them again.

Yea the fastest way to lose a client - is to "rip them off", tell lies, be deceitful, pull a con, or in anyway be devious.

Why not just write great copy, make a fabulous offer, over deliver, and...

Guess what - they keep buying and tell others to buy as well.

Steve

The initial flood of cash is what's probably taking in a lot of people. People who aren't monitoring their lifetime customer value.

Stealth continuity programs aren't going to stop with an article like this, even written by a Michael Fortin. The reason is simple: It works.

Direct response types are prone to 1) Do what works 2) Care for no opinion -- only action (specifically customers purchase).

Don't lecture. No need to rant. Show the difference in response between "optional continuity," "forced continuity," and "hidden continuity" in side-by-side tests. If and when the testing actually shows near term sales at the expense of long term customer lifetime value -- things change.

Nothing else matters to the people who implement these programs. One guy uses lawsuits as free publicity. Another one uses a Federal crackdown as proof the government, working at the direction of big pharma, is threatened by people getting the information product they're selling. A company in the fitness equipment industry uses their corporate shell as a patent infringement lawsuit magnet, folds, then starts fresh with a new shell when a new piece of exercise equipment hits big.

One guy came out of the prison he was sentenced and for all business practice purposes his first words upon release were "...as I was saying before I was interrupted."