Free trials often come up in campaign planning discussions when either 1) there's an urgent need to close business in the short term, or 2) the sales force is complaining about unqualified leads.

The theory, one assumes, is that offering a free trial in a lead generation campaign is a means to reach potential customers who are actively seeking or evaluating solutions. However, there are also immense trade-offs when introducing a free trial into your offer mix, and as such, they should be used judiciously.

In the high-tech sector, free trials are most successful when the installation and evaluation process is simple and easy to follow, as is the case for most desktop software, for example.

Free trials have other downsides. They extend the sales cycle. They clog support lines. Depending on the nature of your product, just the process of fulfilling and shipping trial product can be an expensive proposition. Free trials are also risky. Left to evaluate your product on their own time, prospects can develop objections, often unwarranted, that you'll never have the opportunity to counter.

The secret of a successful trial program is to balance the compelling nature of the offer with some element of control over who gets the product and how he or she evaluates it. One way to accomplish this is to make the free trial part of the offer, but not the sole reason to respond, and grant requests only to "qualified" prospects. For example, lead with an information offer that requires less of a commitment, but add something to the effect of:

"A limited number of trial copies of WidgetMaker 1.0 are also available to qualified companies. To learn how your company can qualify, call 1-800-WIDGET to speak to a WidgetPro representative."