Bring it on...

I'm gonna try something I think might be interesting starting next week. I'm going to keep a log of every commercial product/brand that I use during the course of one week. Then at the end of the week, I'll seek out the customer contact form on the web for each product, say something nice about the product, give them my email address and home address, and ask for coupons if available. I'll keep track of the initial list of products and then record what response, if any, I get. I think I saw something similar done before, but I can't find the link at the moment.

I'm curious not only what "financial gains" I might achieve (every coupon helps, and if they add me to a list for future mailings, even better), but also how companies are treating such requests these days. Are they reacting to more and more people trying to "milk the system," or are they seeing this as an avenue to reach more customers, instill brand loyalty and get them to purchase their product more often? Do they only respond via email, or will they respond via snail-mail as
well? Will they say "Thanks, we're glad you enjoy our products," or will they say, "If you liked that product, try this new product that we've just released."

My initial thought was to just pick a single day (weekday or weekend day), and use that list. I'm sure that there would be plenty of companies to contact. I'm talking about the alarm clock, the toothpaste, cereal, TV, car, cat food, bulk-goods store, grocery store, furnace, gasoline, lunch meat, "Tupperware-esque" containers, vitamins and everything else that I actually utilize in a day. I'm not going after stuff I don't use, just to get stuff. I'm communicating with companies with whom I already have a relationship of some kind. Then, I realized that over the course of the week (all seven-days), the number of companies added each day would dwindle geometrically as I use mostly the same things each day, so I decided to stretch it out for a whole week.

I'm sure it will generate more email. I'm sure it will generate more snail-mail. I recycle both, so I'm not worried too much about these increases. There are some things that won't necessarily justify a coupon, or "reward" of some kind. I'm thinking that the furnace manufacturer might deal only through dealers. The same thing with my car manufacturer. I might get a few cold calls from them, but with my Google Voice account, I can stop those as spam if I need to.

I might throw in a couple of brands I regularly visit or use, but just didn't hit during this period -- some fast food spots, etc. - just to see what happens as well.

There is definitely a selfish angle to this (the coupons, samples, etc), but I am very curious about the responsiveness of the companies as well.

I'll keep you updated on the experiment as it progresses.