Send every active customer a free sim card! :)

[Greg1]

Along with a letter reminding us all about the referral discount, and maybe a brochure of the plan options and promotions, and an activation/porting guide that we can all give to a friend with the sim card.

Super cheap way to get new activations. Your happy customers are your best source of free advertising.

In a month, you could track which of those sim cards had been activated on new numbers and then either from that data, or the data you get from the numbers entered in the 'who referred you' field, you could send out more free sim cards to all those who actually referred someone.

[SD08]

There is a reason SIMs now cost $5.  In the past, when they were free, PM found that only 35% of SIMs were activated:
http://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Announcements/Seeing-our-SIM-cards-waste-away-made-us-...

[Greg1]

I wasn't around when they were free...interesting.

I have no idea how many active customers there are, but if they give away 10,000 cards and get 3,500 new activations that is definitely still profitable in a short period of time.

As an alternative, they could start with sending anyone who referred someone already in the past 6 months or something a sim card.  Probably a higher percentage of those people would refer someone else.

[Greg1]

It looks like when they were free one person could say order 10 free sim cards, probably in the hopes of finding 10 friends to activate them for referrals?  I suspect it was those type of orders that were going unactivated.

I think the unexpectedness of receiving a sim card you didn't ask for, or need, would also result in many Facebook posts like "Public Mobile sent me a free sim card.  Who wants it?" and getting replies like "What's Public Mobile" 😂  I didn't know it existed until recently...

[MoreYummy]

Sending one to all customers is overkill.   Many will be wasted.   Even when it was free, prefer to be one free per customer if they place an order.  So no more wasted for those ordering so many but doesnt even activate one.  And they will get one after previous one is activated. 😄

[Chaos_Scorpio]

someone doesnt care about the environment... sim card, sim card packing, shipping packing ... all waste if the user doesn't end up using/ giving to someone. 

never will happen. 

[paulie]

and then there will be some that receive a sim card and try to sell it. Ive seen some ads on Kijiji for as high as $20 for a PublicMobile sim card !

Maybe a twist to what you are suggesting.... order as many sim cards as you need, then when activated, PM pays an additional "finders fee" to the orignal purchaser.

[will13am]

Public Mobile pointed to the huge wastage when they were giving away SIM cards for free.  I don't see them going back to adopting any kind of give away strategy any time soon.

[Greg1]

Selling them for $5 to people that want them makes sense.  The $5 is not a deterrent.  And giving them free to those that request them doesn't really increase advertising, and really, the people requesting sim cards already (for the most part) intend to activate them.  I'm not suggesting to change that they are normally sold for $5.

Giving sim cards to people that didn't ask for them, either as a reward for referring a customer, or as a one-time thing for everyone, has more potential to get new activations that would not otherwise have happened.  

I hear what you all are saying, but I still think it's a good idea.

[Acekiller]

$5 is not a big investment, but the problem is it is hard to get one immediately when you need one.  PM needs to have more places carry the sim card.

[ShawnC13]

$5 isn't a big investment so that is why I bought some to have if I need it immediately.  No big deal to have a couple of sim cards at home.   The hard part is remembering where you put them for safe keeping.