One promotional idea

One little freebie promotion from the vault for you to try out. (We don’t have to wait for Christmas to get into the spirit of giving, right?)

Concept: Buy two matching puzzles. The size of the puzzle depends on how many customers you have on your mailing list. (You do have a mailing list right?). If you have a very large list for an individual store you may have to have more than one prize. Build one puzzle and stick on a wall, but take one piece out of the puzzle. Make sure it is large enough and visible enough with good signage explaining what it is all about.

Execution: You can execute in one of two ways:

Customers receive a mailing with one piece of the (matching) puzzle, and they are invited to the visit the store before a certain time and to spend a certain amount, or buy a certain product.

OR

Have a bowl of all the pieces of the other (matching) puzzle on the counter and everyone that spends more than X gets to draw a piece and match their piece to the missing gap of the completed puzzle. This way you are opening it up to all the customers who meet the criteria. (You could require them to join your mailing list too.)

Determine your prize: It can be anything from a gift voucher to hamper, but I like the idea (over Christmas especially) of pinning 100 scratchies to a mini Christmas tree. The potential value of the prize could easily be millions – which registers on everyone’s radar, and the cost is low and the customer is guaranteed to win something!

KPIs: Set your objectives for number of sign-ups (new customers), average sale, participation rate etc. Only if you achieve your objectives, will you repeat it. If not, dump it and try something else.

Total cost $300 plus mail out/communications costs.

But hey, this is RetailSmart, so you are not going to get away without having to think about the promotion.

Before you use it, run it through this little checklist and determine if it will do at least ONE of the following things for your business:

1. Increase the average sale?
2. Increase stockturn of a category that is below par?
3. Draw additional customers to my store?