Promote drinks when customers are thirsty.
Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash.

I have an Amazon Prime membership now. Why? Because they offered me free delivery for a bunch of purchases in exchange for a month of free membership.

That sales mechanism worked. The offer was timely. The savings was sufficiently substantial. And there were a couple of series I’d like to watch on Prime Video anyway.

When the free month passes, I will probably stay on for a few more months.

On a larger scale:

There will likely be a portion of new members who will forget to cancel at the end of the free period. And there will be others who discovered they liked the service after all and stay on.

These are great ways of leveraging understanding of the customer’s situation to increase membership. Their products are already set up (there is no significant capital outlay or set up costs to accommodate the new members.) The free offer is of substantive value (impressive number of channels and offerings.) And, in the case of Amazon Prime, they made the exit path and future charges very clear to ease any concerns about being locked in.