We took a range of steps last last week to leverage the Father’s Day opportunity to the max. The result has been an excellent year on year boost in sales. Cards alone are up 30%. Gifts are up. magazines are up beyond our natural growth too. While we have run the season for six weeks, here is what we did specifically in the last few days:
- Placed Top Gear with newspapers – as a reminder that this is a great gift for Dad.
- Placed a selection of Dad magazines with our weekly impulse display unit – again as a reminder that these are great gift ideas for Dad.
- Reminded all our shoppers of the Sony DVD Home Theatre System one of our customers will win for buying a Hallmark Father’s Day card
- Made the front of the store, facing into the mall, our Father’s Day zone – every shopper had to go through this.
The result is a terrific boost in sales of Father’s Day cards, gifts and magazines. Indeed I saw plenty of magazines purchased yesterday for Father’s Day – customers were happy to share that information.
Maybe publishers could work with retailers on this rather than chasing subscriptions online for Father’s Day. My sense is that we going boost Father’s Day magazine sales considerably with a united and well co-ordinated campaign.
The knock-on benefit of being a destination for Father’s Day is the other sales we get from the increased traffic. Just wonderful!