Samples are a long-standing promotional device.
But traditional sampling hasn't been very sophisticated or informative. Granted, neighborhoods, stores, city corners and big events are chosen for distribution based on demographics. But beyond that, samples go out fairly indiscriminately, and tying results to a promotion requires seeking out sales information and making inferences about cause and effect. Just 1 percent of samples overall produces a product sale, says Dana Plotkin, FreeSamples' chief marketing officer. On the Internet, users pick the products they want, vastly increasing the chance the samples will be used.