It seemed like a good idea at the time – an in store marketing campaign which sought to turn magazine browsers into greeting card customers. The idea didn’t work and now we’re processing the learnings from the experience.
I came up with the idea and convinced my colleagues at newsXpress to test it through five newsXpress locations. The tests, over the last month or so, have not resulted in the incremental sales I expected.
We designed coupons, business card size, had them professionally printed and offered these to people browsing magazines at high browser time – late night shoppers and guys on Saturdays and Sundays. We focused on guys as they are less likely to buy cards. The coupon was redeemable that day only and offered 25% off cards.
That test did not work does not concern us. We had a go and have learnt something from that. We’re likely to regroup and try again. All good marketing is developed this way – testing, tweaking and more testing. Some of the successes I blog about here are the end result of countless hours of hard work. I have faith in the concept at the heart of this idea, there are elements of the execution which need work such as the coupon itself, the pitch and even the core offer.
I see it as important that we work at leveraging existing traffic in addition to drawing new traffic. You cannot do one and not the other. While we drive our stores to up-sell themselves, it is always good to find ways to facilitate team member interaction with customers beyond a hello or a smile. Standing behind the counter serving doesn’t cut it nor does the gimmick promotions of If I don’t ask you about such and such you get a free thing. We need to engage with our customers and add value to their visit. It was belief in these things which led to the development of the coupon campaign.
There are some in the newsagency channel who are happy to report other’s failure. They see it as a badge of dishonour and gleefully gossip about it. Having a go is part of being Australian and part of what we newsagents need to do now more than ever. When was the last time you tried something challenging in our newsagency? I mean really challenging? Your competitors are doing it all the time so why not you?
Every day we make a change in the newsagencies I own – from moving product categories to creating a display outside of what suppliers ask us to do to running an local promotion to shifting product at the counter. This sense of perpetual motion is key to stopping customers and team members becoming store blind. Change is something we enjoy an celebrate.
The greeting card up-sell didn’t work. In the numbers game of marketing it strengthens the chances of the next idea working.
Why have I blogged about this? It’s important to me to be open with you here about ideas which don’t work so the learnings can be shared and to demonstrate that failure is an important part of success.
Thanks for reading.
Mark
Two possible reasons:
1. JND – just noticeable difference: The offer was below the threshold of what consumers would register as a value proposition.
2. More likely, for those familiar with the notion of a core product, it would be that a card is being purchased as an act of ‘forgiveness’ or any other emotional dimension which triggers card purchasing. That means that a card has almost no value as a ‘card’ if the the customer does not have that need that the ‘core’ product would have satisfied.
I think that the redemption would have been high(er) with a longer timeframe allowed
Dennis,
Thanks for the comments.
Key for us was an attempt to get a card purchase when there was not a plan for one. That’s why it was a redeem today only. If we left the time open it would certainly have worked better but that would have rewarded purchases we would have been likely to get regardless.
mark
Exactly what I meant to say – they would buy when the trigger to buy was there anyway.
Most sales promotions simply buy tomorrow’s sale today – the difference is you are actually track & measure and establish the facts.
The sad case that far too many sales promotions which are not innovative suffer from that fate but the retailer does not know it because they don’t measure diligently what works and what does not.
And not to belabour the point, but even when old stock is moved through discounting, retailers ignore the idea of creeper costs which may have added 30% over time to the original cost of the sale, and even some of those promotions don’t work either.
We measure everything.
Since guys are not natural card buyers we thought it was worth a crack at changing their behaviour. We’ll keep trying because I think a variation of this idea is going to work in newsagencies one day.
Mark,
Given that it is well accepted that guys are not good card buyers, is there any data that would be helpful?
Is there data available that shows the type, price range and style of cards that males do buy? Is there data that shows the features of males (age, career path, socio-economic status, etc) that do buy cards?
Also, is there converse data that shows why males don’t buy cards?
Hi, Mark and Jarryd.
On Gift Show Sydney 2008, some small suppliers have chocolates-on-the-card or tea-on-the-card.
I thought it is nice to add value on the greeting cards (cost simliar to a pure paper card), while other newsagents considered it may not bring more sales
Cheers,
Sunny
Sunny,
We tried this type of product (chocolate-on-the-card) at Valentines day and customers loved it. I agree, it is a nice value-added concept.