Sunday newsagency marketing tip: discount vouchers continue to be the best loyalty offering
Four years in and the discount voucher loyalty program continues to be the best loyalty offering in the business.
Managed automatically by the software, the vouchers provide to shoppers encouragement to increase their spend in the visit or to come back soon for another purchase.
Customers continue to respond with delight. This is because more than a third of shoppers we see are first time or infrequent.
I call the vouchers front end loyalty because they put the incentive in front of the customer to get them to act beyond average. Most loyalty systems only reward the customer after they have jumped through the hoops and carried a plastic card around.
The discount vouchers are easy.
- No paperwork.
- No card.
- No confusing points.
- Easily understood currency.
- Automatically managed by the software.
- delivering incremental business.
- They cost the business nothing.
The vouchers are particularly useful for habit based purchases such as magazines, greeting cards, collectibles and similar where a customer can comfortably purchase more as they know they will want the additional purchase at some point in time.
I had a shopper yesterday who purchased a bag and a bow and received a voucher for $1.00. They used that to purchase two cards and with that they received another $1 voucher. They used that to purchase a $20.00 item for a future birthday.
The business gave away $2.00 for an additional $33.00 in revenue to a customer who is not local and will not be back in the centre any time soon. The additional GP earned was $18.45. I am happy for this to cost $2.00 as banking $16.45 is better than banking nothing.
If this was the old-school points based offer they’d have to sign up, visit a few times and then maybe get enough to get a discount. That is why points based loyalty programs are regarded as past their use by date and no longer relevant to retail today.
Things are moving faster. Shoppers want more and sooner. Social media has educated people to seek instant gratification. Discount vouchers provide this.
The engagement with discount vouchers is across demographic groups and this another thing to love about them. While different demos respond differently, they all respond positively and valuably for the business.
So, my marketing tip today – embrace discount vouchers and make more money in your business.
Promoting Frankie magazine in the newsagency
The latest issue of Frankie magazine continues the pitch of a visually appealing title. This is a magazine to ensure you have on full face display, and in in two separate locations so as to drive impulse purchases – beyond the destination purchase. For a second location I suggest with her birthday cards.
Sunday newsagency marketing tip: pitch a non chocolate Easter
We are have had terrific success with non chocolate items for Easter for years, often selling out weeks in advance of Easter. Our range includes limited-edition collectible plush items valued at $200 or more. In fact, we have been successful at attracting new shoppers by promoting these. And, yes, the $200+ item sale is easy with the right product.
What should newsagents do about those who ignore publisher promotion rules?
Last week I received an anonymous note following my posts here about people selling newspaper promotion sets online. In the email, the correspondent included banking and address details which I have edited of the post below. I am happy to share these details with publisher folk to investigate:
Hi Mark,
I’m a fellow newsagent and a follower on your blog, your recent posts regarding a select few rouge agents selling magazines on eBay drew my attention.
I have done some investigating and hope you can forward my findings to the relevant suppliers and stop this behaviour.
Excuse the long email as I outline my findings.
One seller in particular I noticed is prolific at selling News Limited Promotions and other current magazines often at below cost price, with free delivery.
Link to this seller’s profile:
http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/auton_goyck/m.html?I couldn’t find much initially, the item locations are mainly Carlton VIC, with a few others listings stating Sydney which are likely false too to throw off suspensions from News Limited.
Examples of the listings include the Roald Dahl Full set.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/The-MARVELLOUS-ROALD-DAHL-LIBRARY-set-14-books-case-advisor-courier-mail-/252760717924
We’re not allowed to sell without tokens and this eBay seller is selling for $39.99 inc postage.AFL Season Guide
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-AFL-Record-Season-Guide-2017-By-Michael-Lovett-Paperback-Free-Shipping-/252762339055?
RRP $40 – Selling for $29.99 inc postagehttp://www.ebay.com.au/itm/OUR-WORLD-IN-CHARTS-UNDERSTANDING-THE-ECONOMY-MONEY-ALAN-KOHLER-/252688189246
RRP $30 – selling for $13 inc postageBy my calculations, with eBay and paypal fees close to 10% and postage for 1-3kg parcel close to $12. This seller must be doing dodgy returns as otherwise the items are being sold way below cost.
I created a fake account and purchased a small item, found the banking details.
In the checkout process, eBay actually linked me to another similar product which I discovered was the same seller with a different account :
http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/32168732/m.html?
This account has over 2300 listings for sale, mostly old magazines dating back to 2013 and around 600 stationary items from GNS all with the item location in Glenroy VIC.
The photos in some of the listings from these 2 accounts share the same floorboard in the background and I found the banking details matched too.
Quick check online showed no recent rental or sale history, presumably this seller own it, can’t really confirm it unless I do a title check but that has a fee.
With the AFL Season Guide I mentioned earlier, I bet not many newsagent’s receive over 12 copies for this title. I’m sure they are able to filter a list of newsagents receiving 12 or more (with a high history of returns) in Melbourne and cross check against Owner’s Names and address.
Hopefully this is enough of a lead to work with and you can forward this to the contacts at News Limited and Gordon Gotch who can do something about it, this character has obviously been around for a while given their feedback history.
There are of course other sellers on eBay selling magazines and promotion items, but none with the same scale and magnitude.
If the outcome from this finding leads to an appropriate action (ie a full audit on the identified newsagency account) , I would be willing to dig through the other sellers and gather more Intel.
Perhaps you can also share this on the blog and enlist some help. I myself do not seek any credit and wish to stay anonymous.
I, too, am concerned about people operating outside the rules when it comes to these promotions. It gives our channel a bad name.
For their part, publishers appear disinterested in what looks like rogue behaviour.
I welcome comments from others on this.
Sunday newsagency marketing tip: promote multiple categories
When promoting on social media try as much as practical to pitch multiple product categories. From what I see greeting cards are too often forgotten by newsagents in promoting their businesses.
Displays benefit from including cards as there are cards for every occasion. This lack of engagement in marketing could be a factor in newsagents seeing declining card sales while others are seeing growth.
The more (relevant) product categories you include in a marketing pitch the more likely you are differentiating your business from competitors.
Terrific Baker’s Delight back to school promotion
I love the creative for the BTS promotion in Baker’s Delight stores. In addition to the on-screen promotions there was a banner at the back of the counter and a pitch at the front of the counter. All visuals were consistent. This visual consistency is important in driving shopper engagement.
Their use of colour pencils was smart as it provided an appealing base for the marketing collateral. I also love the cheerful headline for the collateral.
Well done Baker’s Delight!
Sunday newsagency marketing tip: make locals an offer
One way to pitch the local focus of your business if to have a locals special, locals sale or a locals special day. Regardless of what you do, pitching it for locals, people who live locally, if a way of demonstrating being local in your focus. If you promote this on social media, use one or more of the the many hashtags that promote local.
Sunday newsagency marketing tip: promote away from the shingle
The report in the Queensland Times newspaper last week talking down the future of newsagency businesses is another reason to promote your business as your business and not as a newsagency. It is important to distance your business from those people connect with stories like this one.
Sunday newsagency marketing tip: approach social media posts as conversations
The engagement from this post noting the passing of Carrie Fisher is a reminder of the importance of approaching social media posts thoughtfully. Consider a post a conversation or an entertainment, and not as an attempt to sell. Selling will lose you followers.
People want to be entertained. They want to feel good. They want you to add value to the few seconds they give you of their life.
Not a cent was spent on this post.
The post Christmas sale is invaluable for shopping centre based newsagencies
We have had terrific success with our post Christmas sale, achieving excellent revenue and terrific GP thanks to buying for the event. We have been open for business every day except for Christmas Day.
Being in a major shopping centre with 250 stores, we benefit from the traffic spike of sales shoppers trawling for deals. Take Monday and Tuesday this week, while many suburban newsagencies were closed, we were open and did terrific business. It was well worth it.
the sale traffic is a benefit of being in a centre. However, it is competitive. Anything less than half price and people walk on by. A bookshop near us pitched their sale as 25% off and the shop was empty each time I checked.
Starting today we are pulling the sale back as we have new seasons for 2017 to kick in. That and the fact that we have little sale stock left.
The big category for us as been boxed Christmas cards. We have done well over $10,000 in the last week. At a terrific GP. It grows each year and never hurst boxed Christmas card sales in the next year.
Leveraging the charities we are supporting
Here is how we have had one of the stands at the front of the store set for the last eight trading days before Christmas. We wanted to ensure shoppers understood the variety of charities we are supporting.
While not for everyone, my experience is boxed cards sell well when stacked flat like this.
The display is being tidied and topped-up hourly.
A different approach to promoting magazines on social media
This post own Facebook pitches four different music magazines by highlighting the gift of free music with each of the four magazines.
This type of approach is better in my view than promoting the full cover of a magazine. It is the type of marketing other magazine retailers in Australia will not do. Plus, it is free, easy to do and enjoyable.
We need to do more of this.
People love beautiful things and beautiful things can broaden the appeal of a shop
The manager of one of my stores decided this Christmas they would feature snow globes. The range is beautiful. It lends itself to pitching on social media, to show the business as being different to what people may expect. It is a thrill to see shoppers stop and smile at the beautiful range.
This globe is especially popular as it swirls the ‘snow’ around in an eye catching way. A short video like this works a treat on social media. I shot it using my iPhone and had it loaded in seconds. It is the type of video people like to see on social media.
Boosting early Christmas season engagement
In the US, Black Friday, always the Friday after Thanksgiving, is huge for retailers. It goes from the Friday through the weekend. Then there is Cyber Monday, the Monday right after.
The US Black Friday ‘season’ is now entrenched in the UK. But it is yet to gain traction here. We do have an online sale but it’s not big.
I am interested in Black Friday as it is massive in the UK, a place to where the season migrated.
The idea of boosting seasonal sales ahead of when you might traditionally discount for a season is interesting. It is something we have tried a couple of times this year, discounting for one day only quite early in the season. The goal was to gain a buzz, and it did. This worked for a specific location where more than a third of shoppers are not regular, not local. I think that is the key.
Retail today demands thinks be changed up. This is why I think it is important we talk about a different approach to when we use a discount as a promotional mechanism.
We did a one-day Christmas sale early this month. It was a terrific boost. It was not a Black Friday event and I am not proposing this here.
In the UK ten days ago I was surprised at the extent of Black Friday. Here is a gallery of window signs, demonstrating the extent of retailer engagement in the season. I took all these photos in a short period the Saturday and Sunday following Black Friday.
