Servo Savers seem to be chasing newsagents to join their loyalty scheme again. When they approached me in 2005 I was turned off by the aggressive tactics used by the person representing their company. They said all manner of bad karma would fall on my business by saying no since they were about to such with some big retailers in my centre and I would be locked out.
Two newsagent colleagues have told me of approaches to them in the past week – both along similar lines. One said the pitch was quite threatening.
It makes no sense to reward customer loyalty in my business by sending those loyal customers elsewhere for their ‘reward’ – especially when that other business sells products I sell. I prefer to reward loyalty in my business with more genuine rewards in my business. Besides, every man and his dog offers fuel discounts.
In checking out Servo Savers this morning I found this story from New Zealand about disgruntled Servo Savers customers. I also found this ad offering $150,000 for a sales person for the company. This demonstrates why participating is expensive for small business – they pay a lot to their member acquisition team.
If a newsagent asks me about Servo Savers I suggest they develop their own in house loyalty scheme which drives customers back into their business. The magazine club card I run in my newsagency is a good example of this.
About 18 months ago we had a similar agressive/threatening approach from Servo Savers. What made it worse for us was that the offer was redeemable only in another town 20 kms away – not a real smart marketing move in the bush!
When this was pointed out to Servo Savers they lined up a local service station but by then we had long made a decision not to get involved based purely on the cost and unquantifiable benefits.
The theatrics of the rep when told that we would not be involved in the scheme would have been entertaining had the potential consequences not been so frightening.
Summary:- I can do one hell of a lot of local marketing for $24,000 a year and leave most of the money in town whilst doing it.
i personally thought that servo saver’s marketing material was quite tacky and the whole thing “not worth it” without BP, Shell, etc participating. i’m not surprised they’re in trouble!