Here's a great way to engage your customers

Clickz.com has an article about a web preview of “A Scanner Darkly.” I think this is, to quote those ubiquitous Bass Ale commercials, brilliant. I’ll explain why, in the same terms as my recent post about improving sales. In order, here are the ways they’ve done this:

1. By offering this on IGN.com, they’ve demonstrated an understanding of their core customer group.
2. They’ve made it as simple as possible for their customers to do what they want (in this case, find out if they’re going to get into the movie), by providing an extended, 24 minute preview of the film.
3. They’ve only put one thing in the way of their customers, which is an age verification step. This one makes sense since it’s an R-rated movie.
4. They “upsell” after a fashion, but in the right way. They provide a simple age verification check (which, admittedly, any kid could scam), but offer that first, before asking folks to sign up for an IGN.com membership. They also do a nice job of calling people to engage in the IGN.com community and view other related videos.

All in all, this is a great example of following the steps well. One question: can you buy advance tickets after watching the preview? (The movie isn’t out yet, so it’s unclear if you’ll be able to). The key question is, if not, why not? They also should leave this up through the release of the DVD to drive DVD sales, too.

What are you doing to follow these steps? Who else is doing it well? And, finally, is it your competition?