Did you know rebate checks in 2008 totaled over $6 billion?  It’s a hugely successful and popular merchandising tool.  We just released a new feature for online vendors that increases profits by offering a mail-in rebate to your customers instead of a coupon. This is the first online-based rebate service of its kind, and it is unavailable through any other e-commerce service. Rebates have proven to boost sales and profits in the offline world, but to date they were difficult or impossible to implement online because the online customer base is truly global and the logistics were too much of an obstacle…until now!

While customers redeem coupons nearly 100% of the time, typically less than 40% of rebates get redeemed, so the difference gets added to your profit instead.  Run these numbers on your own coupon promotions and you’ll quickly see how much you can potentially increase your profit in short order by replacing some coupon promotions with mail-in rebate promotions.  Through the service’s global mail-in locations and payment options, customers mail a form in to an in-country address and get paid in the default currency for that country.  For example, a customer in Germany would be provided with an address in Germany to mail their rebate to and would subsequently be paid via an EFT in Euros.

While some rebate companies try to disqualify consumers, hold consumers’ money for a long time for no other reason than the float, or send the consumer something other than what you promise them, we take the exact opposite approach and make the experience fast and easy for the consumer so that they are kept fully satisfied at all times.  Since the rebate form is simple and the payment is done quickly and efficiently, it’s a positive experience for both you and your customer.

You also have the option to offer a complementary product (already at a special discounted price) to which the consumer can apply their rebate, instead of having to mail in the rebate and wait for weeks to get reimbursed.  This will further decrease the number of actual rebates fulfilled, constituting additional savings for you (and more new customers who will potentially purchase upgrades).

You can view a diagram that illustrates the flow here:
http://www.fastspring.com/features_rebate.php

I hope you enjoy the financial benefits of this innovative new feature we’re introducing as a new merchandising opportunity for FastSpring vendors.  If you’d like to learn more about setting this up, please contact your FastSpring Dedicated Account Manager.

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