Here’s a story of a lovely refund:
Some time ago, I promoted an affiliate offer. As with all affiliate offers I promote, I made sure it’s a great offer I can fully get behind.
A guy from my list, somebody who regularly replied to my emails but never bought anything, bought this offer via my affiliate link. Then a few days later, he refunded it.
That’s part of the deal. Sometimes people buy, and if you offer a money back guarantee, sometimes they refund.
The following however is not part of the deal:
That refunding customer started writing me emails. First he explained that the course he bought didn’t have that “wow factor” and that’s why he refunded. He also asked what I would have done in the same situation?
In a future email, he complained that the course creator wasn’t replying to emails and inquiries quickly enough.
And finally, once the refunding reader got his refund, he claimed he couldn’t see the money landing in his bank account (even though the money was refunded as per ThriveCart). He kept writing me updates about the supposedly pending refund for a couple months.
Maybe the point of my story is not really clear, so let me spell it out:
The point is social proof.
People take an action or make a decision.
They then have to create the reality for themselves that this was the right thing to do.
And since we are social animals, that means getting others to agree with us and feed that back to us, otherwise it’s not really real.
That’s what I felt was going on here. This refunding customer seemed to have no rancor for me for promoting an offer that he decided to refund. Quite the opposite. He was writing me messages for months, trying to get me in some way to agree that either the course or the course creator were to blame, and that he was right in his decision.
Maybe you know the famous story of a UFO cult who was expecting a UFO to land in Chicago on Dec 21 1954, and whisk away the believers before a huge tidal wave wiped out the face of the Earth.
December 21 came and went. No UFO came. No tidal wave came either.
The UFO cult was headed by a woman named Dorothy Martin. She was in contact with the aliens via automatic writing (and sometimes over the phone).
In the hours after the supposed UFO arrival failed to materialize, Martin got the message that the aliens had decided to spare the Earth because of the good work of the UFO cult in spreading the word.
But here’s the really curious thing:
The UFO cult, which until then had been very secretive, very hostile to publicity, very closed to outsiders, suddenly went on a PR blitz, announcing to the world the good news. It was no longer enough for the cultists to be in direct contact with powerful aliens who had decided to spare the Earth from destruction — everybody else had to know about it too.
So that’s the dark side of social proof. We don’t just rely on others’ experiences to help guide our beliefs and decisions. We also seek to convince others that our beliefs and past experiences are right.
That’s all I got for you today. I realize it’s a somehow nasty thing to talk about, a bit destabilizing and inhuman. A positive way to spin it is that our reality is co-created with others, and that you have the opportunity to impact and guide that.
Anyways, if you want to see social proof in action, I’ve got about six pages’ worth of it below in the form of testimonials, creating a reality that my Daily Email Habit is a wonderful service, maybe the best service in the world, at least if you have an email list. I believe it, and I really want you to believe it too, so please click through and start reading: