I was about to leave work yesterday when I saw a tweet from Brutal Bands announcing:

BB FOOLS DAY SALE – During April 1st only, buy 1 CD, get one FREE, buy as many as you want – more details at www.brutalbands.com

My initial reaction was holy shit and a split second later I wondered whether this was a lousy, lousy April Fools’ Day joke. It would’ve been a (mean but) good joke if it hadn’t specifically mentioned it was April Fool’s Day, but it did, so I wasn’t sure whether it was for real or not. I headed to their site thinking it must be real as they would’ve ruined the whole joke by reminding people what day it was, but I was also tiny bit scared I might be let down. I wasn’t. Holy shit!

I have a “to buy” list of music and I was planning to order from Brutal Bands in the coming weeks anyway. Without this sale, I probably would’ve bought 3—6 CDs as I’ve done in the past (I’ve always gotten very good customer service from Scott and he’s always my first choice when I want to order brutal death metal). Now I bought 14. Fourteen! Pretty effective way to influence your customers, I would say. Is there a lesson here? I think so.

I was going to order in the coming weeks, now I ordered immediately. I was going to order my usual amount without this offer, now I more than doubled my order. Did I tell my friends about this deal? Of course! Did I retweet the announcement? Yep. Did I tweet again as a happy customer after I had placed my order? Did I share my order on Facebook and compare orders with a friend? Did I praise the customer service on a forum? Yes, yes and yes.

Let’s not fool anyone: I have a pretty good understanding how much wholesale prices for these CDs are (and how much the bands make) and while I ordered 14 CDs, I only paid for 7. Shipping was calculated on those 7 as well. There’s no way Scott was making too much money from my order and who knows, he might have made a whopping $0 from the whole day and of course he has to pack and ship all these orders too. So what’s the point? I was restless in sauna, because I wanted to go browse through his whole web store. I haven’t felt like that about shopping in a while! I told my friends not only about his sale, but about his business, that I ordered from him and that I’m happy doing business with him. He might have made $0 one day out of the whole year, but I’m sure he got a bunch of people excited, spreading the word about his business (whoever does crazy deals like this is worth keeping an eye on in my opinion) and I doubt I was the only person who made a decision to buy just like that and ordered more than they usually would have. How much is this worth in the long run? I doubt Scott lost any money, but I’m sure he gained something that’s actually worth something in the long run. All this for the cost of $0 isn’t that bad after all, now is it?

And not only that, but I actually discovered new music while browsing through the store. Whenever I came across something I thought might be my cup of coffee I checked it out on Myspace. “Prices like this, sure I can buy an extra CD as this band sounds promising.” In the end I bought albums from three bands that I’ve never listened to before and I have a pretty good feeling I won’t regret those decisions (not just because I paid $5 per CD). AND what if I really end up liking those bands I just discovered? Well, I know where to go when I want to buy their previous/future albums.

You can look at this two ways. 1) Scott made very little to no profit for a whole day’s sales which I’d imagine would be higher than an average day and all the work that comes with sales: emails, packing, shipping, re-stocking etc. What a dumb decision. 2) He got good publicity, sales and customer satisfaction for $0. Not bad.

Ain’t it funny how the smallest things can make people excited about your business? And something I’ve learned from personal experience as well; if you want to get people moving, give them something for free. Maybe you won’t make profit for one day, but you probably got something more valuable in return.

Here’s the 14 CDs that I ordered. For $76,6 / 56 € including shipping to the US where I’ll be visiting in couple of weeks I would say it’s the best deal I’ve ever made.

• Deeds of Flesh – Inbreeding the Anthropophagi
• Deeds of Flesh – Of What’s To Come
• Disgorge – Paralells of Infinite Torture
• Disgorge – Cranial Impalement
• Disgorge – She Lay Gutted
• Embryonic Depravity – Constrained by the Miscarriage of Conquest
• Hour of Penance – Paradogma
• Insidious Decrepancy – Extirpating Omniscient Certitude
• Inherit Disease – Procreating an Apocalypse
• Kronos – The Hellenic Terror
• Putridity – Mental Prolapse Induces Necrophilism
• Septycal Gorge – Erase the Insignificant
• The Berzerker – Animosity
• Vile – The New Age of Chaos