Don’t want the marketing pitch? So go study Italian instead!

Buondì.

A lady sent me this email the other day:

I thought I would be sent lessons 3x a week appropriate for my level. It looks like I am getting a sales pitch 3x a week. Yes I can sign up for one free lesson, but then have to pay for the rest. Please correct my understanding if I am not right!

No, that seems about right.

This week I’m busy pushing our FREE TRIAL ONLINE LESSON promotion.

We have a team of Italian teachers who need work.

I control a marketing budget which allows me to pay them the usual rate to give you a free online lesson, if you want to try one.

Our teachers are NOT expected to bear the cost of this promotion. It comes out of the club funds.

And even knowing that 80% of people who do the free trial are ONLY interested in the free trial, it’s a fun thing to do.

Several people have written in to say ‘thanks for this great opportunity’ or words to that effect.

For those who go on to actually BUY some online lessons, I get the satisfaction of knowing that my efforts have helped young people get work, while introducing you to what, I genuinely believe, is a stellar way for you to build your communicative skills in Italian.

It’s win-win, really.

Besides, the revenues from people who decide that online Italian lessons are just what they need, or what’s left after deducting the fees for the teacher and teaching-manager, go to pay the club’s hosting costs, the bills from the company that sends out these emails three times a week, and so on.

Anything left over will be reinvested: in materials for the club, staff to make it better, or other similar projects.

I don’t get paid, and don’t plan to.

You can check by looking at the company accounts, which are available online for anyone to examine.

See? No dividends, director salary, not even a home office…

Though my Swedish lessons are charged to the company credit card. That comes under market research!

OK, but yeah, maybe the sales pitches are a BORE.

In which case, no problem.

The thrice-weekly emails from me ARE a mix of commercial and, what I hope will be, motivational content.

If it’s not for you, simply get off the list. It’s not hard to do.

There’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom of each email I send.

Click it and follow the simple instructions. Or write to me and I’ll do it for you.

What about the “3x a week appropriate for my level” bit, that the lady was moaning about.

I had hoped that our new-ish ‘Start Here!‘ page would have cleared this up.

But people tend to sign up for things in a rush, without reading the details.

ALL of our free materials are published directly to the website and are available for you to use at any time, whether or not you choose to be a ‘member’ of our club, and without any registrations, logins, and so on.

There are literally thousands of pages of it.

Literally, not figuratively. Our content management system can count.

And there’s a minimum of advertising, too.

I do often think about increasing it – that would be the professional thing to do.

But, given that I don’t get paid, why bother?

Anway, you can access all of those thousands of pages of free stuff for learning Italian from our ‘Levels‘ page.

Or you could search for what interests you on the ‘Grammar‘, ‘Vocabulary‘, ‘Verbs‘, ‘Listenings‘ or ‘Dialogues‘ pages.

Some people write to tell me that the club is ‘one of the best learn Italian sites on the web’.

That’s as may be.

Personally, after following a club member’s tip and because of my Swedish studies, I’ve become a big Duolingo fan.

Magari we had that type of technology, rather than being a shoe-string operation run from my kitchen!

But, for better or worse, DL don’t send me emails like this one three times a week.

And they don’t try to sell me online lessons.

Maybe they should???

I (the club) bought my online Swedish lessons from another company, which I hadn’t heard of before.

The other company is also very high-tec, and the teacher is nice.

But frankly I’d rather spend my language-learning money on a site that I value and trust.

Like DL.

Beh, enough of me ranting.

The lady who wrote in probably isn’t reading this anyway, as she caught me at a bad moment and I replied rather rudely (which I now regret…)

To summarise, as the title of this article puts it:

“Don’t want the marketing pitch? So go study Italian instead!”

Click this link to get right on with that.

If you can’t find what you need, write to me and I’ll consider paying an Italian teacher to create it for you.

O.K., and NOW for the ‘sales pitch’.

As of this morning, 71 people from around the world have signed up for a free online lesson.

We talking one-to-one, on Skype, with a real person, and a native-speaker Italian teacher to boot!

Chosen by our teaching manager, Lucia, who takes personal responsibility for your satisfaction and continued contentment.

It’s not just an automated class or some gimmick. We are real people, offering a real service.

And the trial lesson IS genuinely free.

It’s not one of those ‘input your card details but you can always cancel later if you’re not happy’ scams.

All we need to organise your lesson is your name, and email (which, in all probability, I already have…)

Once we get your order, Lucia, our teaching manager, will contact you to find out when you’d like to take your class and what your preferences are.

If you don’t hear from her within a reasonable time, feel free to write to me and I’ll chase it up for you.

She’ll then assign you what we hope will be a suitable teacher and you can finalise the day and time directly with them.

Low-tech and personal, the club way!

We have capacity for another 30-50 online lessons, beyond the seventy-one orders already received, so if you’ve not taken the plunge yet, please do so now.

It takes just a minute or so to make your order (see the links below.)

And no payment details are asked for.

So what’s to lose??

The offer ends on SUNDAY NIGHT but you don’t have to take your free trial lesson immediately.

When it suits you, is just fine.

Below are the links to the booking thingy, plus the summary details of the offer, lazily copied and pasted from Wednesday’s article.

I’ll be back Monday (or if things are really slow, over the weekend with a final reminder…)

Buono studio, buon fine settimana!

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Book your free trial Italian lesson today in the club shop or at easyreaders.org.

• We’ve got the capacity for around a hundred of you to do a trial lesson
• If demand exceeds that, we’ll organise the lessons in the order they are booked
• This offer is for NEW STUDENTS ONLY, for obvious reasons
• If you booked a free trial last time but didn’t take it – do try again!
• But if you’ve already done a free trial (Lucia has a list), this is not for you
• The offer is good until Sunday, 19/11/17
• Afterwards, Lucia will send out a 15% discount coupon…