Paying customers to get them on your mail list

Last week I took my car to the dealer to attend to the recall. The service manager asked if I wanted to be on their mailing list, "No spam, we will jsu send you coupons and offers". I was hesitant then I asked if they can do the oil change at a $10 discount and he immediatly agreed. This led me to thinking:

1. It is possible service manager is incented to signup as many customers as possible for the mailing list and may even be incented per email. Since he is not hit with the $10 reduction in oil change fee he is more inclined to offer these discounts to sign up people. If this is the case the dealership not only does not know for building its customer mailing list but also may be acquiring cutomers with very low or negative Long Term Value (LTV).
   
2. Perhaps the dealship always overcharges customers and only the uninformed pay the full charge. This would mean they are relying on their customers ignorance and not building a trust based relationship. If this were the case then it defeats the purpose of a mailing list, when your interactions with the customers are more transactional, you hope to capture all the value in one transaction.

I think it is more of case 1 than 2.

School Market Research

Results from our work with one of our clients.