I love spring! The warm days, sunshine, fresh flowers…it’s a welcome relief from colder, shorter, wetter winter months. Plus, it’s a built-in great opportunity for a sales promotion! From March 21 – June 20, you can run a promotion targeted at both existing and new customers. There's never a bad time for a great sales promotion and spring is real-made for such an event.
There are two broad elements of a good promotion to remain mindful of: time and reward. Time limit your promotions to create an urgency to act and include a reward to benefit those that act within the time you offer. For example, you can offer a spring promotion whereby a new customer gets a discount or a premium added to their order if placed between March 21 and June 20. I prefer to offer a reward as opposed to giving discounts. Rewards preserve the value of your product or service and don’t set a precedent of a lower price for an established offering.
Get creative with the rewards you offer as purchase incentives. What I do is take the value of the discount I’m comfortable giving and use that as a budget for the premium I offer. For example, if you are in the business of selling outdoor gear, you could run a spring promotion to sell kayaks. Let’s say the average price of the kayaks you sell are $1000 and you’re comfortable discounting the kayaks 20%. You could take $200 and apply it to premiums to reward purchases within your promotion period. You could include paddles and helmet, pay for kayaking lessons, include a river pass, partner with a travel agency to discount a kayaking vacation, include monthly subscriptions to outdoor magazines, pay for entry fees to a local event, etc. The possibilities are endless! This concept can be used for any product or service, it doesn’t make any difference if you’re selling kayaks for $1000 or telecom equipment and services for $1M.
Promotions certainly aren’t limited to seasons, any occasion can be made a promotion – anniversary, goofy holiday, birthday, business event…you name it. System Administrator Appreciation Day can be a promotion event. Again, the possibilities are endless!
Pull out your customer and prospect lists, package an offering with a premium to reward action, announce the promotion with a press release, direct mail, web-site, email campaigns, etc. Get enthused and celebrate! Let your imagination run wild!
I love spring!
It's In The Mail - Direct Mail is Alive and Kicking!
Compared to a lot of companies in our field we do a lot of direct mail – postcards, sales letters, promotions, announcements, lead generation. Between client business and ours, we’re averaging one campaign every two weeks; about 1500 pieces per mailing. We’re planning expansion to over 2000 pieces per campaign and will increase mailings to once per week. One particular business interest will grow to 10,000 pieces a month. We’re constantly building and adding to our mailing lists.
Are You Afraid to Ask For The Order?
"The time has come for one of us to buy and you’re the only one at the table that can do that." It’s not the most polished closing statement ever made, but it won a $3.5M deal when I gave it. I smiled, looked our prospect in the eye, and almost saw one of my regional manager’s lunch when I said it.
Paper Direct Mail Is Not Dead
I recently witnessed a conversation about the “death” of paper direct mail due to the “life” of web presence and blogs. I’m not exactly sure why, but someone seems to declare the “death” of a marketing technique every few months…I guess that’s how some consultants stay employed – announce the “death” of something and create the “life” of something new. Anyway, I disagree with the notion paper direct mail is dead and as such thought I’d share how we integrate paper direct mail into our marketing, sales, and lead nurturing systems.
