Soaps & Premiums (1903)
The pattern
This still is filed under Mail-order catalog.
Define
A catalog that is the store: browse, choose, order, without a clerk and often without a website.
Mechanism
Assortment as argument. Density, numbering, and an order path do the closing. The book is the funnel.
Verdict
We have a range, remote buyers, and a way to take the order on the same object.
Why it works
The catalogue converts customers into an unpaid salesforce by inventing a currency: certificates accumulate, can be banked and redeemed later, and are earned only by acts that acquire new heads of families. Stating that no agents are employed reframes the reader's recruiting as a favour among friends rather than commission work, which is what makes the ask survive inside a neighbourhood. Every premium is priced twice - in certificates and in dollars - so a reader who will not canvass still has a way to buy, and the two numbers sitting side by side quantify what a referral is worth. Printing retail prices next to the halved price makes the reader perform the saving themselves, the same mechanism as the 1899 booklet but with the rules now formalised into numbered clauses that read like a membership contract.
Steal this when
Use this when you already have paying customers and your cheapest growth is their address book. Give the referral its own earned currency with published redemption values, define precisely who counts as a new customer, and let the reward catalogue double as the product catalogue.