Promotions That Work & Work with Your Technology

It’s May – and that can only mean that your busy season is about to start winding down. Since revenue doesn’t just walk itself through your front door, you’ll want to get more aggressive in your marketing and promotion efforts in order to “make a little rain” during the dry, summer season. I certainly don’t advocate a cart-before-the-horse approach; rather, I suggest a whole-view approach in order to come up with a winning campaign that won’t add to your workload. This means not only developing an offer that entices more customers and more revenue, but also testing its compatibility with existing controls and reporting capabilities and then timing the campaign to begin and end on the best schedule to produce results.

From a technology standpoint, regardless of the campaign’s focus, your current tech solutions should be able to administer the guidelines of the campaign & provide tangible results by its end.

Any campaign will focus on one of two primary aims: either the recruitment of new customers or the opportunity to upsell existing customers. For this reason, you may actually choose to run parallel campaigns, each with a specific purpose; or, you may choose to offset the timing of campaigns, knowing that the best time to recruit isn’t necessarily the best time to upsell.

From a technology standpoint, regardless of the campaign’s focus, your current tech solutions should be able to administer the guidelines of the campaign and provide tangible results by its end. At the very least, your technology should be able to:

• Determine which customers to include in any marketing campaign targeting a specific customer demographic;
• Prevent campaign promotional offers from being made available before the first day or after the last day of the scheduled campaign;
• Limit the number of times any single customer can take advantage of a particular promotional offer;
• Limit new customer offers to new customers only to prevent “gaming” the campaign by current customers;
• Keep employees honest in the execution of the campaign’s rules and restrictions;
• Provide analytics following the conclusion of the campaign to report on its effectiveness, reach and ROI.

Scheduling Your Message
In real estate, the three most important factors are location, location and location. In marketing, it can be said that these three factors amount to timing, timing, and timing. The proper timing of a promotional message has a remarkable impact on its success. For instance, if you’re trying to recruit new customers, a mass media campaign like a billboard, newspaper ad or radio spot can run for a week or more and apply to a promotion that is good for an entire month. In contrast, if you’re trying to increase impulse purchases by your existing customer base, a minimum amount of lead time is better. You can use direct marketing tools like email and text messaging which should be able to be scheduled in advance, but reach the target audience only hours or days before the promotional period. The promotion should only run a couple of days also, further reinforcing the sense of urgency to respond. This method is particularly effective during holiday weekends and any two- or three-day event.

In-Store Experience
The marketing efforts don’t stop at your front doorstep; inside, there should be a concerted and uniform effort to promote the current campaign. It can be as simple as displaying a countertop placard the day of the promotion or getting buttons for the staff to wear, or it can be as elaborate as your own custom video ads which can be played prior to and during the campaign. The same goes for any direct marketing tools like email, text messaging and social media.

Post-Campaign Analysis
Once the campaign is over, the task of data analysis should begin in order to learn what worked and what can be improved for next time. One way to gauge the effectiveness of different offers is to use different promotional codes to track them and also to track the different methods of delivery. In other words, even if the offer is the same, use a different code to redeem the promotion sent via email blast than the one delivered via text message. The response rates can then be compared to the applicable group to determine which one works or doesn’t work. Then, the next time, you can mix it up and see what works better!

Even when no specific campaign or promotional drive is in place, it’s a good idea to have a few “unadvertised specials” on standby and available for staff to use. This provides the opportunity for your team to “close the deal” with a new or prospective customer. It also works to allow staff to “be the hero” when they know they have some leverage to address customer complaints.