Sweepstakes Winners
Want to get past, inactive customers back into your place of business? All your customers in this week?
I got this in the mail, and the headline immediately grabbed me:
FINALLY—YOU AREA SWEEPSTAKES WINNER
I don't know about you, but I enter all those darned magazine-company sweepstakes. I go for the Readers Digest sweepstakes, and I buy my weekly lottery tickets—after all, as a character in the movie Let It Ride said, "You could be walking around lucky and not know it" In a lot of years, though, I have gone winless. Ed McMahon has not called me. But the headline FINALLY—YOU ARE A SWEEPSTAKES WINNER got me. I read that letter. And if you send a letter to every one of your customers with that headline on it every one of them will read it
Now, what should the letter say? Here's an example, courtesy of Gary Halbert:
Dear Valued Customer:
I am writing to tell you that your name was entered into a drawing here at my store and you have won a valuable prize.
As you know, my store, ABC Jewelry, specializes in low-cost top-quality diamond rings and diamond earrings. Well, guess what? The other day we got in a small shipment offake diamonds that are made with a new process that makes them look so real they almost fooled me!
Anyway, I don't want to sell these fakes because they could cause a lot of trouble for the pawnbrokers around town. So I've decided to give them away to some of my good customers whose names were selected at random by having my wife, Janet, put all the names in ajar and pull out the winners.
So, you're one of the winners—and all you've got to do is drop in sometime before 5:00pm Friday and you'll have a 1-karat "diamond" that looks so good it'll knock your eyes out!
Sincerely,
John Jones
P.S.: After 5:00pm Friday, I reserve the right to give your prize to someone else.
Thank you.
With some variation of this idea, you can get all your customers to flood your store within a short period of time. Then, if you have new products or special offers ready and waiting, the cash register'll ring happily.
The Red-Tag Sale
"It's inventory clearance time and we're closing all day Friday to go through the stores and place new, red tags on as many items as possible, each with the lowest price ever offered on it. Only a certain number of each red-tag item will be available, on a first-come, first-satisfied basis. The red-tag sale starts at 10:00 am Saturday morning. Red tags will disappear all day long. The later in the day, the fewer the red tags." That's the basic pitch for a red-tag sale. These tend to work well once or twice a year for retail businesses.
Coupons, Double Coupons and Checks
Lots of people buy the newspaper on certain days just to get all the grocery-store and manufacturers' coupons inside. They carefully go through all this coupon-driven advertising and inserts, scissors in hand, with buying on their minds. You can capitalize on this with an ad or insert on this day that is made up of coupons and looks like all the other coupon advertising.
If I had a shoe store, for example, my Sunday newspaper insert might be a page of coupons: one for boys' shoes, one for girls' shoes, one for men's etc.
There's usually at least one supermarket in each area that advertises a "Double Coupon Day," when all manufacturers' coupons are accepted and doubled; a 500-off coupon becomes worth $1.00 off.
If you accept manufacturers' coupons, this is a promotion worth considering. If not, there may be another way you can use the same idea. You might, for example, send a letter to your customer list in advance of your coupon-type newspaper ad advising them of its impending appearance and giving them a card or certificate that doubles the value of the coupons.
I saw a fast-food chain put up signs outside all its stores while Burger King, its competitor, was running a big coupon promotion:
WE ACCEPT BURGER KING COUPONS AND GIVE DOUBLE VALUE!
If mailing to customers for a special sale, consider enclosing a "real" check, made out to your own store, with the customer's name on it where the signature belongs. The check is redeemable at your store but otherwise useless. There's something psychologically challenging about throwing out a check.
The Premium Makes the Difference
Find a wholesale source for one or more very desirable, appealing premiums and you can build a surge around the "free gift" you offer.
Television sets and jewelry are very effective premiums, particularly around Christmas. Getaway weekend packages work well for car dealers. The most interesting one I've ever seen: a free Mustang convertible with purchase of a Rolls-Royce. One outstanding source of low-cost premium merchandise, is the close-out merchandise industry. This industry has its own trade shows, newspaper, and catalog companies. If you are not familiar with this, information is available from my office. See the opening pages of the book for address information.
The "My Accountant Thinks I'm Crazy" Sale
Sometimes humor works in marketing. I've used this myself, in sale promotions for my mail-order company, and I've seen both retailers and service providers use it effectively.
A tongue-in-cheek ad or letter talks about your annoyance at your nagging, domineering, penny-pinching, Scroogeish accountant, how he bullies you, pushes you around, and watches you like a hawk... but now that he's out-of-town on vacation for the week, you're going to have some fun... with the wildest, most generous offers in the history of your business...
Sports-related Promotions
America loves its sports activities, and sports are always on the minds of a lot of people, so tie-in promotions get favorable attention. For several years in a row, I've run a "triple play" promotion for my mail order company, offering a "buy one, get two free" deal to my best customers. This is the same as a 67% discount, but three for one sounds a lot bigger. And I tie the whole thing to baseball, either early in spring or at World Series time, with free baseball cards, baseball terminology and clip-art, and so on. IT'S TRIPLE PLAY TIME has pulled as much as a 70% response from my customers!
Trade-ins
Trade-in promotions are, of course, standard in the automobile business and common with sewing machines, vacuum cleaners and automobile batteries—but there are lots of other businesses that could use this technique, including office equipment; television, stereo, and electronics; clothing, with the trade-ins going to the Salvation Army. A spa selling memberships could accept old exercise equipment.
Easy Payment Terms
If you cover your costs, why not finance your profits? Let's say you want to feature and sell a $300 item that costs you $100. You might offer your customers this deal: $100 down, then four monthly payments of $50 each, no interest, no carrying charges. Just have them place their VISA card, MasterCard or American Express Card numbers with you and sign a simple statement authorizing you to charge their credit cards each month automatically.
You can apply the same structure to hitting a certain size of purchase; buy $500 or more and we'll finance two-thirds of the sale.
In Canada, it's common for home mortgages to be set up with payments twice a month instead of once a month, because most wage earners get paid twice a month. If you set up any of your own financing, you might consider doing the same thing. Smaller payments every two weeks may be more appealing than one larger payment once a month.
Celebrity Appearances
A surge of customers can be drawn to one retail location within just a few hours by promoting the appearance of a celebrity or celebrities, including local radio or TV personalities, players from the local pro teams, or a beauty pageant winner, race car driver, or similar "star."
It has become common practice in the go-go bar business to bring in a Penthouse centerfold or an adult-movie starlet for one night (and one night only!) and heavily promote her appearance all month long to regular customers and to the public. Clubs that normally draw a hundred customers in a night can draw a thousand with this technique.
Retail merchants in a'shopping center or neighborhood can pool their resources to arrange and promote a celebrity appearance.
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